I Built a NAS: One Year Later. EVERYTHING I Learned and the Mistakes

[@JimmyTriesWorld]

Error on my part. The smaller NAS in the video is the DS923+ The number after "DS" in the Synology naming convention means how many drives it supports when you include the expansion units they sell. These add 5 drive bays. The larger 8bay one supports 2 expansion units for a total of 18 (DS1821+). In my mind, I kept thinking the smaller one had support for 2 expansions but it only has 1, hence me saying "14" instead of "9". Not sure how the 14 stuck through my script review. But everyone can enjoy my blunder now 🙃

[@WizardNumberNext]

Correction I have 12 Bay Extension unit for synology Don't be so hasty in stating things you may not know fully

[@pauly871]

You didn't mention about the nvme cache, that would help to speed up a lot of things. plus if u are using mac you should utilise the thunderbolt port. just get ur self a thunderbolt nvme external enclosure and connect to ur main mac or mac mini it will speed things up alot its actually faster then mac drive it self. then u can do a backup to your synology drive. 1. get your self a mac mini 2. daisy chain ur external thunderbolt nvme enclouser 3.share that drive too 4. do your back up to synology. 5.clean up your external thunderbolt nvme files when u no longer use it. just treat it as a scratch disk.

[@Capitan_Cavernicola_1]

A bit confusing… so in a few sentences what would be your recommendation looking back? Less bays and higher capacity drives plus a cloud copy and an off-site copy? Also go with a NAS that uses M.2 SSDs to speed up workflow?

[@JustinMacri007]

Does it work on Xbox?

[@SeaJay_Oceans]

You Really should check out the HighPoint SSD7540 PCIe 4.0 x16 8-Port M.2 NVMe RAID Controller ... 64TB storage 55 GB / sec reads 52 GB sec writes. If that's a bit pricy for you, they also have the HighPoint SSD7105 PCI-Express 3.0 x16 4-Port M.2 NVMe RAID Controller for one third the price.

[@memento316]

I came here because I want to buy a Nas now I need two

[@c0nsumption]

lol for real though 🧍🏽‍♂️

[@carlopolisini2100]

😂

[@mabelguerra]

Which NAS do you wanna buy?

[@fernandoalvarez9613]

Why 2.

[@p0kepengin592]

@@fernandoalvarez9613 watch the video

[@lidge1994]

I have a suggestion: 1. Build a NAS type device at a relative's house with WoL. 2. Backup the data. 3. When you need to update the data, send WoL signal to turn the machine on. 4. Connect to the device 5. Update the data slowly via internet (cus it's long distance). 6. Turn off the device remotely. 7. Realize you forgot something and start again from step 3.

[@rickacton7540]

preferably a relative that places his home-brewing beer apparatus right over your half-rack server setup

[@yeahthatkornel]

@@rickacton7540 lol

[@MrPir84free]

WOL usually requires a device on the remote subnet to send the magic packet. A cheaper solution is to schedule the turning on and powering down of the remote NAS. The remote NAS should also be configured with a full on firewall, and preferably some sort of VPN connection. But overall, the NAS is designed to run 24x7 anyways, so leaving it running is often a smarter, cheaper, and easier choice. You'll also want to make sure that it's locked down so it can't be removed, sold, or traded because it's a convenient source of cash.. If your relative is using the NAS, you should also reciprocate their data to your location as an offsite backup for them.

[@AnthonyThomas-o4l]

Backblaze is very affordable. 3 copies, 2 locations (Client and NAS), 1 off site (Cloud).

[@JnManuelAG]

​@@AnthonyThomas-o4lhow much is "affordable" to you? New in NAS here so I'm asking to learn and make better decisions

[@BlockThrone]

12TB drives are the best bang for the buck size right now for a 4-5 bay NAS. In case anyone was wondering. I got 8TB drives due to not wanting to go too big, but now wish I got the 12 TBs as the total size of 4x8TB in RAID 5 is filling up shockingly fast and not much room for expansion (I have 5 bays). 3x12TB would have cost me the same with lots more room to expand in the future. Seagate Exos are currently the best in price/performance, if you don't mind the noise. You should have the NAS in a separate room anyway so it shouldn't be a big deal.

[@micker9830]

I think most people way underestimate how much space they need. I did the same, bought 12TB drives and now replacing those with 22TB ones.

[@BlockThrone]

@@micker9830 I'm worried about going that big. In case of failure it takes a very long time to rebuild. You'd want to have 2 drive fault tolerance RAID array if you're going that big on drive capacity. I know RAID is not a backup, but for many people it kindda is as they're not that good doing actual regular backups.

[@micker9830]

@@BlockThrone I just replaced a drive with a 22tb drive and it took one day to rebuild.

[@BlockThrone]

@@micker9830 that's not too bad. What sort of NAS do you have?

[@micker9830]

@@BlockThrone Synology 920+ 4 bay.

[@nadtz]

I went the DIY route and for the networking went SFP+ + DAC cables. The NAS (running truenas) cost me about 300 before drives and mellanox cards + DAC cables about $90. Throw in a switch for another $200 and I was set. Currently rebuilding my little home lab and picked up an Epyc CPU/mobo and some ram to replace my NAS and VM box with one machine. I totally get the convenience of using Synology and understand not everyone wants to DIY for something like this though. In the end so long as you get to where you want to get it's all good.

[@trrjecto4459]

How is the power consumption?

[@nadtz]

@@trrjecto4459 It's honestly been years since I've measured power consumption so I honestly don't remember but TDP for the CPU is 65w and it's 8 spinning drives + 2 ssd's. Power consumption is not high on my list of priorities though, if it was I could switch to a Xeon L and get TDP down to I think 35w and set the drives to spin down to save a bit more. I'm still testing the EPYC system but TDP on that is around 125w iirc.

[@marcojuco21]

There’s one thing I’ll say. It’s nice to have the large storage capacity but if your HDD fails and you have it in raid for redundancy. It would take almost 3days to rebuild that 20TB and if any of the other HDD fail while it’s rebuilding for 3days you loose all your data. VS if you had 8TB it could be rebuilt in Hours. I’m pretty sure i heard this from somewhere before but all those cloud storage companies use 8TB instead like a 16TB or 20TB bc of how expensive they are and how long they take to rebuild your data. Thanks for an amazing and informative video Jimmy!😊

[@seapanda-117]

I have an unraid machine set up. I always worry about this when the idea of having to rebuild from parity comes into my head. I know unraid and your scenario are not a 1:1 analog, but still… the fear is real haha.

[@WizardNumberNext]

Who sane is running RAID5 on anything bigger then 2TB array RAID6 is absolute minimum for that size

[@patrickdonegan9559]

@@WizardNumberNext tell us more about this please:

[@NuclearPrime360]

RAID is not a backup. Keep your data in an offsite backup to protect from fire, flood, or theft. It will be inconvenient to load on a new NAS, but not lost.

[@companyoflosers]

How fast your array is rebuilt depends on the hardware running it all and what raid configuration you go with. You can also set up more than just redundancy for a single drive. You can set it up for failure of any number of drives depending on how much capacity vs redundancy you want, and depending on the number of drives. Typically though, multiple drives don't ordinarily fail within days of each other unless there's something else going on. And rebuilding your array doesn't prevent you from using it in the meantime.

[@daveworkman5213]

I'd recommend considering AWS S3 deep archive for your remote backup. It's

[@CaseyHardman]

Was using a Synology DS218+ for general storage and Plex for a few years, then moved to a DS418 for just file storage and the DS218+ for a dedicated Plex machine. Both are being backed up to Backblaze B2. Also have a DS220 for video projects for the day job. I'm definitely a Synology fan. haha

[@st3rg]

you are an investor

[@BrianDavids]

Good video, Jimmy. I use Synology exclusively at the office for editing I have about 18, 1821+ at this point. I just started adding 1221+ rack units. One thing that is really important with the Synology NAS is to increase memory. I typically add a 16 GB memory chip but in my last build I added 32. Every unit gets 10 GbE cards for network performance, and we are able to edit massive amounts of video through the Synology without lag.

[@OrigEntertainmentOfficial]

This right here plus the internal NVMe slots.

[@MarkMcCabeMarkMcCabeVideo]

Hi Brian, quick question for you. You're telling me you edit video, without lag using: Synology NAS, updated 16gb (or 32gb) RAM, and Synology E10G18-T1 10GbE PCIe expansion card? Are you running HDD with 7200RPM? Thanks - really need help on this!

[@pizzlespettime]

​@@OrigEntertainmentOfficialAre you using the internal NVMez as cash or extra storage? 😊

[@pizzlespettime]

​@@MarkMcCabeMarkMcCabeVideoI would assume editing off an ass for anything higher than 1080p is going to be lackluster. I use an NVMe for the render and work drive and then offload it to sata after. I am getting a NAS soon but I'm still undecided on the drive sizes as it is very expensive

[@OrigEntertainmentOfficial]

@@pizzlespettime as the cache.

[@tonyvalenti6614]

Great video! I started out similarly. Got a DS1621+ as my main NAS, but almost immediately got the 1821+ when released a month later. It became my primary and the 1621+ became my backup. I had (7) 14TB drives and a 2TB SSD for VMs, but recently replaced it with another 14TB drive with the intention of using one of my NVMe drives as a storage pool when I upgrade to DSM 7.2. I use SHR2 on the 1821+. On the 1621+ I have (6) 14TB drives using SHR and it’s now my backup NAS for my 1821+ which includes PC backups along with data. As for and offsite backup, I got a 920+ with (4) 16TB drives using SHR and keep it at my daughters house. I do as you mentioned. I have two storage pools, one I backup my 1821+ to and the other I give to her for storage. I also backup her data to my 1621+ to return the favor. I will also eventually hang a HD off my 1821+ for critical data and store it on my safe. So, I think I’ve more than covered the 3-2-1 strategy. 😊 One critical thing I would mention to your subs is absolutely, positively get one or two UPS’s. They can be a NAS lifesaver! 😉

[@danielmcgowan9534]

An Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) is a requirement in my experience.

[@KellyHirano]

I was going to suggest the same thing: use a lower powered Synology at a family member’s house as your offsite backup. I saw you mentioning Ubiquiti equipment. I use a site-to-site VPN and use Hyperbackup to do an rsync across (I just keep one remote copy). Locally, I have two Synology’s, one as a backup, both with external drives hanging off of them for more local backup. I’ve found that for my photo editing light video editing, I use local drives, use Synology Drive for some files, and rsync to the NAS for others. The lag you mention is real. I like the idea of a small pool of SSDs. I need to try that. :)

[@nandeepathwall]

External backup, store a NAS in a purpose built water & fire resistant box, outside the property, possibly even underground, keep it connected via cat 5. It’s more likely, if you survive a fire, the fire department will put the blaze out and you can rescue your data. Just make sure the cables are coming out of the box from the bottom side so water from the fire truck won’t penetrate the box. Obviously much more thought would be needed but the option is there

[@curtisthomas4541]

I have a 4 bay QNAB NAS, and I definitely agree with you about HD size. I made two mistakes. 1st I bought 4 8TB drives. NEVER thought I’d run out of space within 4yrs. And, unlike Synology, QNAB doesn’t allow you to mix drives. So, I have to replace all of my drives before I can use all of the drive capacity. The 2nd mistake was going with QNAB over synology. It works, but for my use case the user friendly OS from synology would’ve been the better choice.

[@pavelbuchnevich1229]

Unless you use disk striping (RAID0), it doesn't matter what hardware you use, you cannot use all of the drive capacity when you mix drive capacity. Whether you have a Synology or QNAP, you will have to upgrade all your drives to the same capacity.

[@katersaid11]

@@pavelbuchnevich1229 With Synology you have SHR though. With this you can mix hard drives with different capacities. On the website there is a raid calculator where you can simulate the whole thing. There will still be unusable storage, but it is significantly better than with a normal raid.

[@melaniezette886]

Remember 4 years may be the end of life of your drives so you made the good choice. I have lost a lot of old drives. Age matters.

[@catalystguitarguy]

I found SFP+ cards and switches years ago when I built my NAS. I think I spent around $300 on the networking side and got a 4 x SFP+/gigabit eth switch, along with 4 SFP+ PCIe cards, and all the cabling. Later on I’ve picked up other switches with a mix of SFP+ for cheap 10gig and SFP+ to 24+ port gigabit networking. Been keeping things cheap while hardlining everything that stays in one spot. My next network upgrade will be when 100gb gets cheaper. My NAS is an old full tower currently running TrueNAS. with 10 x 3.5” hard drives, 8 x 2.5” SSDs, boots from mirrored intel optane drives, and has a couple PCIe Cache SSDs(Sun/Oracle F80s), handling metadata, read cache, write cache, etc. and 64GB of DDR4.

[@gamecollectorbr]

What I did for backups: my synology is attached to a cheap small micropc with a celeron and 32gb of ram. I installed Ubuntu and then mapped the storage to it, with a good password. Then I have crashplan for small business running and backing it up. Wayy cheaper then backblaze. Now I am also planning to get a second nas to keep at my mom's house as a second nas. My synology also has nvme cache, with 2 256gb ssds wich made it snappier for my lightroom collection.

[@aajeev]

I was thinking of a similar solution. But I don’t follow completely. When you say “attached” what do you mean? Over the network or via USB? Can you talk in more detail how this is done? Thanks.

[@cooldispatch]

I purchased Synology 213J with 2 WD Reds, probably 7-8 years ago. Still rocking without any problems. Synology makes such a great devices :) Now it's time for upgrade... Thanks for sharing your experience with us.

[@leoguevara9303]

I'm still rocking a 213J as well. awesome piece of software. very reliable for file transfers.

[@cooldispatch]

@@leoguevara9303 I cannot achieve promised 100MB transfer speed. LAN or wireless, it is always 40-50MB/s. Not sure is NAS too slow or disks are dying :/

[@AndrewCCM]

Just be sure it's backed up too. See my experience posted above...This was after about 6-7yrs. Drives died consecutively before they could be replaced. RAID corrupted and lost it all.

[@duke96]

and...........drum roll please....what are you going to purchase now , to update your present system....please and thank you !!

[@k4x4map46]

perfect view timing!! was going to purchase another WD external hard drive and stopped short of doing so...just came across your vid; new inspiration b/c wanted to do this RAID type storage years ago...nice

[@asmi06]

If you use SHR-2 system (and you really should on larger Synology NAS as it gives you 2 HDDs worth of redundancy), you can upgrade your drives and this way increase available capacity as you need it, without investing a ton of money upfront. I also recommend having an extra HDD configured as a hot spare so that NAS would automatically begin restoration of redundancy in case of HDD failure, removing an urgency of buying a new HDD after a failure. For your video editing, add SSD cache and upgrade RAM on your NAS to 32 GB, and your experience with change dramatically without the need for extra NAS as it uses free RAM as a disk cache too. I also have DS1821+, loaded with 6 HDDs of various capacities (some were leftovers from my prevous NAS DS1512+. which served me well for over 10 years!) for a data storage, and one more as a hot spare. When I get close to running out of space, I buy two new larger HDDs and replace two lowest capacity ones I had, this way I get more capacity, save some money (as HDDs get cheaper over time) and reduce a chance of failures because my HDDs are newer on average than they might've been if I would've followed your advice and invested into a few huge drives upfront. Over my ~13 years of owning Synology NAS (DS1512+, then DS1821+) I had 5 HDD failures, and none of them caused any data loss.

[@mtheoryx83]

Would love if you have a link of how this "external hot spare" and auto restore process was explained, it sounds great.

[@daklhs6460]

This is the kind of information I was expecting from the video. Thank you for share.

[@jesuspadilla1432]

So your saying this better to get your minimum storage you need vs just getting a high ceiling and see if you reach it? And just swap as you go? And what can cause hard drive to fail? I only ask because I have PCs with 2 drives and haven't gone wrong for 4+ years. Would like more info

[@danielot]

Built is a pretty strong wording here :) Although nice video, I love how happy you seem by adding this to your workflow.

[@british31]

So I got the 8 bay Synology NAS and put eight 4TB WD Blue SSD's in it, there was a killer deal for Christmas about a year ago on those drives. I get some amazing speeds doing that, however at the cost of adding a larger storage pool. SO, enter the 5-BAY expansion unit for the Synology, I plan on a later date, getting that unit and populating it with 20TB drives and using that as my backup and catchall since my 8bay SSD solution is only 20TB total usable pool storage. I do love how the only sound from that setup are the fans. So quiet and I get 821 MB/s write and 1126 MB/s read! Holy smokes! So I am ready for that 8k edit!

[@ZeuzIncorporated]

No mention of the NVME cache that the 1821+ could take advantage off. Certainly faster than the SSD in the 923+ and cheaper than buying a second NAS

[@OrigEntertainmentOfficial]

I have a video production company and we use the Synology 1821+ for our editing needs with 12TB Iron Wolf drives. We use 2.5Gb connections to four M1 mac minis and one M1 mac studio via a 2.5Gb switch with one 10Gb connection on that switch for the NAS. We do not experience any lag for the most part even when editing 4K projects on all the machines at once. But we did add 4TB internal PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 Internal SSD and maxed out the memory on the NAS. I missed if you mentioned upgrading these on your 8 bay. This will be key to help you improve editing performance over the network. Also, not sure what kind of cables you are using. I think you need a minimum 5e in order to have enough speed over the cable. We are using Cat8 though I know that is overkill. We have a really short run so I didn't mind the expense.

[@GarryMah85]

I have a 8-bay NAS with total usable storage of 24TB, which I only use for archiving. I had the idea of using it as my personal cloud storage, but the noise and heat makes it less practical for keeping it running all the time. Thanks for sharing the idea of using a smaller NAS with SSD for stuff that are fequently access. I'll have to look into whether it can be run quieter and cooler with SSD, maybe my a solution for me if it can.

[@malachinewbern1949]

eeyy, saw that LTT screw driver ! Also dude you are so chill, its refreshing to watch your videos. Youre kind of a upper end regular tech nerd that people can still relate too.

[@muskaos]

Big beefy external HD in a small safe deposit box is what I'm doing for off site back up. My total data archive footprint fits into a 14 TB or bigger single drive, so a single drive works for me. I update it every 6 months.

[@gregneumarke9373]

One thing to think about is having at least 3 of the backup drives that you rotate. You don't want all the drives in the same place at the same time. And protect against what would happen if lighting struck while freshening up the external drive backup.

[@antoniogoncalves705]

4:00 Also another thing to point out is that having a 10GB connection to your router or main switch is useful if you have for example 10 devices using 1GB/s. So having a faster connecting from the server to the router could be advantageous even if you don't have 10GB on your devices but instead have multiple users connecting to the server and pulling or uploading data.

[@lucklassen]

Great video! I also purchased the DS1821+ and super happy with it. I have x6 - 10TB HD (Raid 5) and x2 - 4TB SSD installed (Raid 0) (Yes i have nightly backups to external drives). I updated the RAM from the standard 4GB to 20GB and used a dual port 10GB NIC I already had to install in the expansion slot. Runs great but I am not stressing it very much, the larger array serves all my ripped blu-ray movies. The smaller array is for photos, music and data files. I used to run a custom built Ubuntu server, learned a LOT but in the end the maintenance of it was overwhelming at times (botched updates, incorrect command entries by me!) and the giant server box was just too much (x14 - 2TB drives!). Synology makes it all so easy, very happy with my purchase.

[@godfathernt]

so 2 volumes as well? The SSD one for photos, music and data while the other houses the rips?

[@CodingWithLewis]

Incredible video. Loved how you introduced them sending in the product (they are seeing this video the same time you are). I have been using a single TB external SSD and was on the fence about purchasing a NAS system. This video was extremely helpful. Subbed

[@KarlRock]

Thanks for the tips! NAS' are so costly to setup, so this video was helpful.

[@kertpilman]

Thanks for the update. Viewed your previous video on NASs a little while ago when doing research on what to get. So a few weeks ago I set up my DS1821+ with currently 5 14TB drives for all my storage and editing (with 1 drive redundancy), and 1 x 14TB without redundancy for the media server. That means I have 2 bays empty, ready to be filled for more storage in the future. Actually planning on using one bay for surveillance once I decide on the right cameras I need to keep an eye on my dog while working in the homeoffice lol. And what I also did was added 2 x 1TB NVME SSDs in a read/write cache which makes the whole experience lightning fast... the speeds over 10Gbit network are amazing, nothing lags and basically viewing/editing 4k footage is smooth as butter. There is that initial delay when all the footage is loaded, but 750GB of cache will keep things around when you are working on something longer than a minute. The 3-2-1 backup problem I havent also solved yet, but as a first action I'm thinking of running those hard drives I migrated all my stuff from to the NAS as backup drives. These are WD 2-drive RAIDs that in RAID0 will have 16+20TB (36TB - plenty for now!) of space for that first backup of most important stuff, just in case the NAS gets fried. But yeah they will still be in the same house and connected to the NAS via USB. Even if I could have a wall between the actual devices... still not ideal. Backblaze seems like an option but will get a bit expensive. Will have to see. If you find a good affordable solution in the mean time, let us know ;)

[@kertpilman]

PS, Maxed out RAM To 32GB - which also helps when running multiple things on the NAS.

[@justpeachyrl]

Thank you for sharing your experience Jimmy! Very helpful, even a year later :) Probably going to setup my first NAS soon!

[@JapChinLuvr]

Just before I recently retired, I got a QNAP TS-1635AX, and a few 12TB and 14TB drives, planning a big re-design of my multi-computer network. My dream of lots of spare time in retirement is slow coming, so also is my incorporation of the NAS box. I appreciate videos like this one to help me understand the finer points of what I'm getting myself into.

[@cyberwasp461]

Great video Jimmy. I'm running a DS920+ with 40tb. Backing up my pc, plex along with 10 other friends cell phones, "photos," and 2 friends pc's. I have a 16tb external NAS drive for backup plus a friends NAS at her place. I was using C2 but it was going to cost more so I stopped it. am looking to get a larger NAS when Synology comes out with an intel version.

[@musicman0024]

Thanks Jimmie, a very helpful video! This is my first year in the NAS/Network world, and so far, from videos like yours I'm off to a decent start. I bought two UGreen NASs during it's Kickstarter phase early 2024, so I have a 6 Bay unit and 4 Bay unit (which I scored for less than $1k total back then... absolutely amazing deal!). In bot NASs I have 24TB Seagate Ironwolf Pro drives in them, so a total of 240TB HDD space to work with. Both units also have upgradable NVMe M.2 slots (2 each), to which I have 16TB (Two 8TB WD SN850X NVMe) in each. So another 32TB of Fast SSD to work with. At first I was running the NVMes as caches to the Primary / Volume 1 storage pool, but the nice thing about the UGreen units/OS is that they allow you to use the NVMe as a separate / Volume 2 storage pool, so thats I did, and switched each unit over to two volumes. I maxed the DDR5 RAM out on each as well 96GB on the 6 bay, and 64GB on the 4 bay). Networking wise, each unit comes with 10Gbe built in (2 on the 6 bay for up to 20Gbe link aggregation) and (10Gbe and 2.5Gbe on the 4 bay unit, for upto 12.5 Gbe link aggregation). I run two switches. TP Link 8 port 10G unmanaged, and a TP Link 6 port managed switch, so my internal lan runs very fast. The last piece of the puzzle that I'm going to add (for a couple reason) is a Synology NAS so I can take advantage of it's DSM software while I wait for UGreen OS to become more competitive. I was hoping to get a 2 Bay unit such as the DS723 which is upgradable to a 10Gbe NIC, 32GB of RAM, 5 expansion bays, and NVMe slots...BUT :-( It and the 923+ that you reference in your video, unfortunately, have the AMD Ryzen R 1600 CPU, which as you know does NOT have integrated graphics, so you cant use the unit for media transcoding such as needed in Plex, Emby or Jellyfin. So I may forced to get the lessor DS224+ and just run the Plex on the UGreen units. The upside is the 224+ has an Intel CPU, so it can do Plex, but the downside is it is not expandable, so 1Gbe max transfer speed. Sadly most of the rest of the home user line is AMD CPUs so I'm not just yet on that. Also, in a couple of months I'll be converting one of UGreen units to HexOS as I was able to get the $99 beta lifetime pricing and am curious to see that evolve. That being said,I be curious your thoughts based on your current setup. Thanks kindly.

[@stephenkolostyak4087]

2:57 "giant gaping pipes" - toilet humor has never been so advanced. subscribed.

[@edwinpagan7784]

Yr video was awesome. Really appreciate yr sharing. I own a small PC repair company I just bought a small two bay synology I have been backing up by creating images of my clients PCs externally. So now I plan to use synology

[@asyukr]

Hi Jimmy, you have demonstrated a good approach, showing the system dedicated for performance access and data backup. Personally I think that direct attached storage will work way faster for your video editing. I would oppose a combination of a high capacity NVMe SSD connected via thunderbolt interface to your PC and the NAS for the data backup. On my MacBook I'm using embedded rsync - command line toll to backup data from directly connected storage. Mac automator helps me to schedule backup process and avoid use of common line interface.

[@senseimitch]

Great video, very insightful given my own similar experience. I have 3 2-bay NASs each with more capacity (HD size). I finally moved to the DS920+ which will last me for a while but lie you I am looking at purchasing a second (perhaps bigger to support 2 volumes equal to my 920+). I had free storage with Google Cloud through my University however they are ending that program next year so I will be scrambling to get my own secondary backup in place! One idea you didn't mention, place the backup drive/nas in a firebox/safe (to survive house fire) taking it out periodically to update it! Thanks again I now know I am not alone in the mistakes I have made (mostly financially motivated).

[@CapsLock33]

i love my DS920+. I plan on getting the Synology 1U server NAS with SSD harddrive as soon as i get more funds. I do hate the latency delay at time.

[@micktinker]

Thanks for the video. I have a DS416play, which has a miserable 1GB of RAM and for the last year or two hasn't even completed a backup. Saw a comment about adding more ram and it suddenly became obvious why it would only start backing up right after a boot. The speed of your UI is insane compared to my unit!

[@MissFoxification]

I don't technically have a NAS, but I do have a server running Proxmox and I can set up a NAS in a container or VM in a handful of clicks. I am considering a NAS though, any streaming whatnot can be done via the cloud, that's what it's there for.. so the NAS doesn't need many features, it only has to be reliable.

[@KangoV]

As for cables, if your runs are less than 37m, then you can get away with CAT6 which is way cheaper than CAT6a (required if longer runs are needed up to 100m). My Synology 1010 is still chugging away nicely.

[@zephyrkhambatta]

Ok I thought I was crazy for thinking about all this, but apparently it's a real thing. Thanks for sharing! About to possibly get my first NAS.

[@ardentdfender4116]

I have a DS1520+ which I’ve bought at least 2 years ago. My need for extra large storage space wasn’t as huge when I bought it, but it was still a need to back up a lot of media files I had. Instead of buying like large capacity single 20 TB HD drive which 2 years ago was extremely expensive. I just bought smaller drives, all 4 TB HD drives and populated all 5 drive bays for total 20 TB. I did the raid option that allowed in future replacing any drive with a larger capacity drive. That allowed as drives got cheaper over time I could buyer larger capacity drives at cheaper prices each going into the future and slowly increased the DS storage capacity as needed and as prices got much cheaper. With just 1 large drive, you have no backup. I don’t make vids or anything, but my DS1520+ sits on my computer desk. I hardly even notice it’s even there and running unless I don’t see the blue lights to even notice it’s not even on from a power failure.

[@shanelewis8556]

Thanks for the video. This 'One Year Later & Lessons Learned' is a great idea!

[@KobyPierce]

Hey! I saw you were talking about expensive cloud storage, what I would recommend is using a deticated server from hetzner in a storage box, it is a quite slow connection but works great for offsite backups.

[@alwayscuriousalwayslearnin]

Your explanation on speeds is so true, remember when Fiberoptics first came out people were paying through the nose for it not realizing that some where wasting ther money because although those speeds came to their Home ( the pole on the street in front of their home) it is the internal part of their home that also had to be able to fully support the fibre optics which at that time pretty much no homes were

[@RxZ95sssPG]

Did you know Synology Drive for mac has on demand download? It will download the needed files onto your computer and syncs changes back to the NAS. Just like iCloud Drive.

[@ZestyPlays713]

This video answered SO many of my questions about NAS's!! Thank you!

[@vaporycoder]

When you use it to watch movies on your TV, how do you get it to the TV? (Via HDMI or Stream/Cloud)

[@siral2000]

HDMI, if you have a device connected to the tv (or the tv itself) capable of accessing network drives and running video files just open it as you would a file, or streaming using one of the onboard programs/apps. I've heard generally (and experienced with QNAP) that streaming can be hit or miss depending on the devices using it, streaming software, drivers installed, and video file encoding/file type.

[@philippemiller4740]

I wish the 3rd option for the NAS would've been considering other companies. Something like Truenas mini lineup. It uses open-zfs filesystem which uses ram as read cache and you can even add nvme drives for a level 2 read cache. Which both would be faster than your DS923+. You can fill it with large capacity drives and it caches the most recent written files as well as the most common read files intelligently and automatically. Have you considered that way to get more speed?

[@danielmcgowan9534]

The 923+ supports using NVME as read or read/write cache. He should have mentioned it.

[@philippemiller4740]

@@danielmcgowan9534 True, can you create a pool with those drives with any regular nvme drives tho?

[@NetGawker]

Excellent video, no mis-information spread. What really makes me take pause is what is considered as slow in today's connected world. We used to wait no less than a full minute for a single web page to load and now, if people were forced through such an experience....well, we don't need another Jan.06

[@JasonLorette]

Thanks for this...I'm researching my first NAS now, since starting to do video/KZbin my storage needs have just gotten crazy out of hand.

[@Paidcreator]

This is the best video I’ve seen. I’m talking about NAS systems. Thank you so much!

[@SmackeysGarage]

Great video. I'm at the point in my YT career where I need more storage. I'm currently filling small external Samsung SSDs and trying to find the point where I feel the price justifies having a single central backup. The DS923+ is what I'm looking at when I decide to bite the bullet.

[@lysolan269]

If looking for a much cheaper NAS solution, look into old workstations! While not the easiest option, forcing you to learn another OS like TrueNAS or Unraid and losing the ease-of-access that comes with prebulit hardware and software, it is a much more budget friendly option. I bought a refurbished Dell optiplex 5040 with an i5 and 16gb of ram just as an intro into the idea of running a NAS, and the original system came out to like $180 USD for the system and a SATA expansion card to connect more drives. Might not fit everybody, but it's a way to get into using a NAS without spending 5-600 $ on something from Synology or another company. Also allows for you to drop in something like a graphics card to make a media server at home possible with hardware transcoding! Worth checking out if for nothing else other than experimentation.

[@AnthonyThomas-o4l]

Depends, while it's hard to get up to the price of a 8 bay Synology with a self-built NAS/Server it is certainly possible especially when you start talking about other things like self hosted cloud gaming. Mini PC (new or used) and a couple of used SATA drives can be done for around $250 if you shop around. The cheapest two bay NAS from the two leaders is easily $200 or more without drives. Plus you'll be getting a ARM based CPU which may or may not handle 4K streaming to more than two users.

[@savrip]

I ran across your channel last night. I like your humor and you're right on par with the things I've been working on. I started using Synology a few years ago with a 5-bay (DS1019+), but I have the same one you set up a year ago and donated my 5-bay to my church. Eh... free off-site backup location... I didn't do the 10Gbps card, since I didn't want to re-purchase my equipment. I am building a house within the next year and the plan was to get the 10Gbps equipment there. Thanks for the videos and I'll look forward to many more.

[@AnthonyThomas-o4l]

Further proof that Churches no longer need to be tax exempt!

[@GrantButler]

1 year later, and this video is still so helpful! Thank you!

[@kingneutron1]

Jimmy if you have the budget, I would look into Tape backup and store the tapes offsite in a safety deposit box or with family. Definitely post a video if you go that route!

[@erbartlett]

Great overview, it saved me from buying a 5 bay nas for video editing. I don' think the synologies are tested for 20TB drive compatibility, think it maxes out at 16tb.

[@JosephHawkins]

You missed another solution is to have DAS - direct attached storage - via thunderbolt - this will be fast for working data back it up or mirror it to the NAS - also backblaze cloud storage for a single computer and all directly connected drives is only 99$ per year,- unlimited size - use the NAS os a onsite backup and for data not needing fast access 3-2-1

[@jigsound]

Indeed. To exactly achieve what Jimmy does with the full-flash NAS, you would probably need to utilize OWC SoftRAID to create a storage pool for a multi-drive DAS system, right?

[@garydauphin3948]

That's what I do, and it works fine. In addition, I run PLEX and file sharing on my computer, and every device in my home office has access to the files, even to the point of NAS-level speeds.

[@TomRyanElliott]

Brilliant. At the moment, I just have one DS418 that I keep in my room next to my PC that I have turn off each evening at 11pm and on again in the morning at 7am using it's Power Schedule allowing me to sleep. Currently, use it to store my Photography and Videograohy but understand a backup is needed just incase. Will contact my friend in swizerland who also uses a NAS and see if we can share files together to backup

[@belv13]

Thanks for sharing your pros and cons of Synology units. Your video helped solve a few questions I had.

[@kingneutron1]

Thanks!

[@LuKiSCraft]

Obviously one downside of this system is that you cannot send/receive data to/from the NAS unless you are actually attached to your LOCAL network (LAN). This is unlike Cloud Storage where you can access it anywhere over the internet after authenticating into your account. Yes the NAS storage is MUCH faster but cannot be accessed outside of your LAN. Question: how do you handle taking a project off-site? Do you download the needed files first, then sync with your NAS when you come back home?

[@dmnddog7417]

DSM (Synology's NAS operating system) gives you the ability of accessing your NAS from outside your LAN. You can either do it via their QuickConnect service, or by setting up DDNS. You just have to be very careful about setting up firewall rules on either your gateway router or the NAS itself (or both).

[@LuKiSCraft]

@@dmnddog7417 Oh, okay! That's interesting. I wonder what the read/write speeds are when accessing across the internet. Is it simply limited by your internet speed?

[@RylanTech]

10:38 Hi Synology!

[@duckboy_leo]

Hey! Just found this video and I normally don't subscribe instantly, but I looked through the channel out of curiosity, because this video is extremely good and helpful. To make it short: new Sub, keep it going! :)

[@realkingbrandon]

Anyone use ssd cache? I'm considering it but don't know if it makes a difference with video editing or plex.

[@yaboirafiki9291]

definitely going to try and get a NAS going once I'm out of college since I will most likely need it for all my complex electrical simulations and projects. This helps a lot to get a good handle on how they work and their pros and cons.

[@Naku-SomewhereYouAreNot]

Started with a 2 bay Synology with 6TB (x2) netting 6TB (SNR raid). Then shelved the 6TB and put in 12TB (x2) netting 12 TB. Close to outgrowing that, got a DS918+ (4 bay expandable) and used the 6TB (x2) + 12TB (x2) netting 24TB. Eventually shelved the 6TBs and went to 12TB (x4) netting 36 TB. Lived haunted by no backup. Got a Raid PRO 4 bay USB enclosure. Increased NAS to 16TB (x2) + 12TB (x2) netting 40TB. Put 12TB (x2) + 6TB (x2) with raid 0 (JBOD) and netting 38 TB for backup. The era of my 4 bay NAS has a maximum drive size of 16TB. So I can only expand the NAS another 8TB without buying the expansion case. I'm at 40% utilization so I won't see a problem soon. I doubt ever, but I also thought 6TB (x2) was enough at the beginning. The raid capable USB enclosure was huge as a backup solution. Low cost enclosure using demoted NAS drives. I don't have offsite backup, but if/when I do, it will likely be an inexpensive multi-bay USB enclosure. Understand a USB enclosure is NOT a NAS. It's just raw storage. Any services using that storage must be hosted/run in a different device. For me, it's just a 38TB drive on my desktop. Having a NAS is a learning experience and well worth the effort. I couldn't live without one now.

[@kneecaps2000]

This should be called,"I bought a NAS, then got sent another one free". But the principal is there.

[@laborspy]

Yea…you didn’t really build anything

[@jgirizarry]

I have my rack mounted Synology NAS with an external disk and I run Hyper Backup to run daily backups to it. I also pay Synology C2, which is their Cloud backup for 60.00/year and Hyper Backup backs up daily to C2. When I make videos in my mac, I store the video file on my mac, but Synology Drive syncs it to my NAS as a backup, when changes are made to the video file.

[@datasickness]

One HUGE feature of the 1821+ you didn’t mention was the two MVMe bays to setup for cache to assist in the delays in writing and retrievals of files. I have 8 16tb drives in mine with 4 VM’s running with little issue. Also, you can group the 4 NIC’s built in together and do a LAG for 4gbps to a switch. I see you use Unifi, and that is possible very easily.

[@chrisp5329]

IMO when starting, id invest in getting a nas that has a few more slots. Most users eventually nees to grow and the most costly thing to do is have to buy another nas. If your planning to use 4 drives, get a 5,6 or 8 slot nas. The diff is not that much. Id also invest in getting a unit with the pci-e expansion slot. Alway good to have a path to improve, add a 10g card or a m.2 card or both. Plan ahead, specially if your a video editor or data junkie!

[@sebastianslapek]

how can you build out of the box ready nas?

[@AnthonyThomas-o4l]

Why are people making this point? The thumbnail has a bought NAS in it. However I will give him credit for "building" it because he's running docker containers on it, which most people don't do.

[@Repeatedlyreminded]

Can you combine SSD and HDD drives? Wouldn't it be great to have fast SSDs for daily use (like photo editing) and back them up via RAID?

[@tianlechen]

If it's for backup then just use aws glacier, which is much cheaper. You'll pay for retrieval though, but that may never happen unless you lose the other backups.

[@NCPhotography]

You know I had that problem with the latency, but I use premiere pro and Resolve and I have very very limited experience with Final Cut Pro so I don’t know if it works the same. Oh and I’m on a desktop pc. I just copy the files from my server to a high speed scratch drive and when I’m done I’ll delete them off that scratch drive. The project file is so small and just uploads to the cloud. I’m sure this isn’t perfect but it is very consistent and fast and it keeps me from accidentally deleting data. For reference my average wedding project is around about 200GB

[@bitpickersplace494]

Granted, my response is a year late, but this nas has mounts for two nvme drives that can be used to cache files when they are read or they can be used for a read/write cache. The read/write option does as another potential point for failure during a write.

[@PremiumProductionsUK]

The DS923+ offers storage pool for the NVME bays on the bottom of it, so long as you use their drives, which are expensive but you’d be getting a twice as fast experience with it. Personally I’d suggest just plugging the SSD in to your Mac as that’ll be faster than 10Gb (with an NVME) and using the NAS as archive data.

[@grakkiel]

Great video with all the details, regrets and possible solutions for the problem. Thank you very much for this!

[@eddie.b2k]

Great video with some insights for somone who wants to start a NAS journey. Thinking of building one with PC components or buying one off the shelf. Missed the part where you explained, why you preferred not to build one yourself.

[@ThomasGoor]

Great video! 🎉 appreciate your insights! I'll be setting up a NAS this year for video editing! I'm aiming for NVME drives, but my bank account will probably disagree 😢

[@AndrewCCM]

I had two drives die in my Synology 918+ a couple of weeks ago. 1st one died and I ordered a replacement. Before it arrived, the second one died and I lost everything (20TB). Only had about 25% backed up to cloud due to such a slow ISP. :(

[@Ninjakees]

Thanks for the video. I don't have a NAS yet, currently to expensive for me, so for now have smaller external HDDs. But in the future want to get something like that. To much data to be stored haha, especially with video editing and such.

[@TabularConferta]

I was initially confused by this video, but then realised you had intended to use the NAS as direct access for heavy workloads (something I've never really considered doing, but useful to know its feasible). One thing I've looked at is Amazon Glacier, with the intent that I should hopefully never touch it and aware that getting the data back will be expensive.

[@RobJorg]

problem with synologie is that they are pushing their own drives.

[@shrimpinpat]

Linus did a video on a modified version of an open source NAS that allows you to put a nas in two locations and allows friends and family to use it as cloud and you get the remote redundancy too.

[@cambike]

For video editing you should maybe look at ssd cache solutions. Used tiered storage to speed up access and then you can use smaller ssd for access speeds and larger hdd for the storage capacity.

[@HollandseFC]

would the M.2 nvme slots not been good for the SSDs? Synology SNV3400 series M.2 NVMe SSD drives can be installed through the built-in M.2 slots to enable SSD caching or create SSD storage pools. Drives are sold separately.

[@pizzlespettime]

I really like the way you started off of this video I really need help deciding what to do and how to work with my first NAS. I ended up getting the you green on Kickstarter and I have not ordered the drives yet or received it

[@FatheredPuma81]

An idea I thought of for you was to just give one of your family members a NAS and turn it into a plex server for them to use. Then reality hits and you realize that you've just volunteered to be their 24/7 free tech support by doing this.

[@daemon.mythos]

I have a currently waiting self-repair DS2411+ & DS1211 setup, and a DS620s. The motherboard ended up failing on the 2411, but synology is of no assistance with any of their products if you are out of warranty. Looking at going DIY with the replacement because of that, and other choices Synology has recently made.

[@bvp663]

My setup: 1. Use an OWC Thunderbay to get a fast RAID setup at your desk. This also means it's technically a desktop-attached drive, and not a NAS drive, which you can backup using a standard unlimited Backblaze plan. 2. Sync the data from that Thunderbay to the Synology (over 10Gbe if you want that to be snappy) There you go. You've got 1 copy in the thunderbay, a second on the Synology (plus RAID assurance on both), and back up to the cloud to Backblaze.

[@macdoctorsg]

Hi Jimmy, I've been using the Drobo 5D3 for a long time, I like the workflow and speed of the drive connected directly onto my Mac whilst I edit a lot of 4K videos almost without any lag. Unfortunately, we all know by now what happened to the company and it's gone down. I need a replacement and what I understand is that the Synology has the capability of being connected directly unto the Mac via a Thunderbolt 3 to ethernet adapter. Will this work as well?

[@CareySalander]

Came here confident, leaving with more questions. All I really want to do is have a NAS setup for home media library - stream personal movies/pictures at home and be able to store documents as needed. Not sure if I need a NAS with 2gb or 4+gb of RAM, not sure how many bays to go with now, and cpu speed. Are the ones from pre 2022 year good enough? Do I need one with expandable RAM size or are the ones like the DS223J good enough? Getting in the weeds now.

[@ceeroussproductions7093]

I don't know if I am missing something or not, but I am checking up this current NAS setup, and it seems that the hard drive and ssds wont work together within the NAS drive? So I am confused how you are able to make a small setup using the SSD with the other hard drives? Let me know!

[@jd52wtf]

You have a single point of failure on the SSD drive. Always get two of each and at least run in Raid1. So if it dies you just rebuild with a spare. Also the second NAS for backup should be the same as well. "Sneaker netting" an offsite backup every so often is not a bad idea.

[@Dries007BE]

My (starter) recommendation is that you spend money on good quality drives and buy a reasonably recent (2~4 years old) second hand Synology NAS. Synology has very good long term support, even for older hardware. Even just a 2 bay model is a good starting point for basics and getting you used to the workflow etc. My current setup is a new 2 bay model (DS220+) with a media transcoding & docker capable CPU (2x4TB in RAID0 for 8 TB of quick access, I now wish I sprung for larger TB drives), and a second hand 8 bay (DS1817+) that's ~5 years old with a 5 drive expansion box (2x 36TB volumes in various combinations of disks, RAID 6 on the 8 bay and RAID 5 on the expansion box). The smaller NAS is my "work in progress" machine, the big one is "The Vault". My "cloud drive" folders, file shares, Plex, PC backups etc all happen on the small NAS. The small NAS is backed up every night to the vault, along side my servers (for website/game hosting etc) backup nightly to the vault. Select important files are also backed up to Backblaze2B with immutable copies setup with a month long retention time (meaning they are undeletable for at least a month) at ~1$USD/month cost. Those same files are also backed up to a NAS at my parent's house via the hyperbackup thingy, while their important files are backed up on my box. The vault also holds a "media archive" for when I run out of diskspace on the smaller NAS. The big one is on a power on/off schedule to save power/heat/noise, it reduces wear, reduces possible attack surface (since its not on the network when my PC/laptop is on). It can be powered on via Wake-on-lan via my router if I need to access the archive for some reason. Actually, the DS1817+ is still capable of decoding some media files, but can struggle with H265 or super high bitrate formats, so I don't usually even have to copy stuff back to the DS220+ if I want to re-watch something old. All of this hardware was built up over quite a few years, but man does Synology make it easy to stick with them once you're used to it. The one downside IMO is the lack of native high-bandwidth connections. Now you have to choose to give up your SSD cache slot for faster ethernet. I would love to see at least a 2.5G port become standard... As a sidenote: Their surveillance station is also quite usable, although for more than 2 cameras you need additional (perpetual, one time cost) licenses. I use the second ethernet jack to hook the cameras into their own dedicated POE network, so it doesn't interfere with the rest of the network.

[@peterschmidt9942]

You didn't build anything - you just bought a NAS off the shelf, slapped some drives in and configured it. I was expecting you would build a NAS from components, install Proxmox, FreeNAS etc with a title like that.

[@eidodoos]

agreed. he clickbait us

[@hugobotter8007]

Bro is butthurt fr

[@armoniapush8281]

😂 Yo

[@umekk99]

This guy didn't build a shit 🤦🏻‍♂️

[@thomasvu7916]

Does building a computer mean I should be soldering?

[@2cool0]

Another good option is building your own Nas. Might be harder to set up certain softwares but would be very worth it