Upgrading My Video & Photo Storage Solutions with The Synology DS1821+!

[@ArifKhan.]

Great video Dunna. As someone who takes care of enterprise level backup solutions in my day job, I have you say that you did a great job explaining what can often be a very complex subject. Bonus points for mentioning the UPS part. These are not sexy things to drop money on, but they are sOOooOOooo important. One part I'd add (appologies if you already mentioned it and I missed it), but lots of consumer grade NAS systems also allow for NVME cache drives. If the NAS allows for this, it's a great way to significantly speed up your workflow. NVME will always R/W faster than your HDD. So allowing the faster cache drive to process your most used files is a big win. Don't need anything large, even a basic 1TB m.2 stick is sufficient. Synology (Just like QNAP, Terramaster, UGREEN etc.) will handle the caching stuff automagically in the back ground. :)

[@dunnadidit]

Haha you're two steps ahead! Literally the day after I finished editing this video my NVME drives showed up to create a cache system, I didn't want to talk about them before I had it set up so it didn't make it into the video but it's all set up and running now! Great addition, thanks for watching and for commenting!

[@benjaminwhatever]

I love my DS1821+ been using it for a couple of years now and it's been amazing for my backups! So stoked for you and hope you love using it too!

[@dunnadidit]

1821+ Friends!

[@JacobGagoOfficial]

Came at the right time. Spent the last few days figuring out NAS

[@dunnadidit]

Nice! I hope this was a little bit helpful!

[@JacobGagoOfficial]

@ yes! I’m a music producer and KZbinr would you recommend DS1522+?

[@andyxfilms]

Just showing love to an OG - thanks for all you do Dunna! Great video!

[@dunnadidit]

Dude! I appreciate that so much! Thanks for swinging by!

[@stalman]

Wait, tell us more about how you’re doing the backup of your travel drive, I didn’t really know there was a way to do that but I should

[@dunnadidit]

I’m just using the synology drive function for sync/backup. So the whole drive just constantly gets backed up to the nas and then I have snapshots enabled too.

[@adamhutletfilms]

Great video! I ordered the 1821+ on Black Friday but am waiting to see if they release the 1825+ (which was leaked a couple months ago) at CES in January before I set mine up. Depending on if / what they release I might exchange. Can't wait to have all my footage in one spot.

[@dunnadidit]

Ooooh exciting!

[@livingstonlee]

@dunna great video. I did this same type of video about my setup. Synology is awesome. I use everything you talked about, including snapshots, but my system is old now 😂 I’m looking to upgrade to the 1522+ in 2025. I have everything in my cart with all the new NAS hard drives. I just need to pull the trigger. I’m using Synology SHR (Synology Hybrid Raid) I think it’s the best choice IMHO. I’m also using the 3-2-1 backup method. Making sure I have certain files backed up to the cloud, I use Backblaze for that. It’s a weird way how to set up the backblaze backup but it works. It has to be setup through AWS but you get the pricing of backblaze, which is much cheaper than AWS. My actual NAS is backed up to an external hard drive connected directly to my NAS. Synology has a deep learning curb, but if you geek out on all this stuff it’s so much fun. Congrats on the new setup 👍🏾

[@_planejoe_]

Awesome breakdown, I've been looking into some other options for backing up my drives and Synology seems to be the way. Now to figure out which RAID setup to go with

[@dunnadidit]

Glad you liked the video! Good luck with the research! There’s a lot to figure out in these systems but once you get it sorted it’s great to have.

[@justonbrazda3846]

Raid 5

[@MarkWebbPhotography]

For 8 drives and under go with raid 5… if you have one with 12 or 16 drives you’ll want raid 6.

[@dunnadidit]

I agree with all the votes here for Raid 5. Thats the way I went too... well technically its SHR but it's the same idea as Raid 5

[@versa319]

@@dunnadidit I'm glad I had mine setup to RAID 5 because I knew I was going to add more hardrives.

[@justonbrazda3846]

I just did almost the exact same thing. I went with Ugreen for the nas but also did a 10gbe switch and cable and adapter and wifi7 router, etc. Works Great. I maybe should have went with synology but too late now.

[@dunnadidit]

Great minds think alike!

[@versa319]

I went with Synology because they've been around for some time now and their products work great with Macs. Ugreen is going to catch up to Synology eventually and they're on the right track with their products.

[@filmmakerevolution]

Thanks, this was super helpful. Just considering what I should do for storage as I've been fast approaching maxxed out on the drives I already have.

[@rogerhuston8287]

Not sure 10G with HD drives is the way to go. Editing on NAS HD is like editing on local HD. It is low for random read / writes. Consider SSD NAS storage to help buffer the read/writes. Also, Raid 5 is ok, I would consider 2x16 running raid 10 with 2 HD's that can fail and you are good. ZFS is a proven technology for Raid and you are better protected using parity bit drives. If you need more space you can always get another HD unit to piggy back on the system.

[@dunnadidit]

Gotta look into some of this! I did add a couple of NVME cache drives in there and that keeps things zippy, haven't had any issues thus far! In terms of the Raid, my research + my situation lead me to raid 5 but I know it's highly dependent on a specific person's situation. Thanks for the input!

[@rogerhuston8287]

@@dunnadidit - It is a good start. NVME will certainly help speed up writes until they are full. They can also help on the edit as they could cache the entire directory. This is helpful as if you haven't used your NAS in a while, the HD Spinup lag is significant. While my Synology NAS is older and without NVME drives, I use rclone on my server to do something similar. Suggestion, make sure you have an APS that works with Synology, that way if power is cut, it will write all data to disk before shutting itself down. However, having an adaptive array, where you can have different sizes, usually means they duplicate files to other places in the array, ultimately taking up more space. With a ZFS array setup from the start, you simply writing part of a file on all the disks with parity stored on the spare. This means its actually faster. Lastly, Raid 5 or Raid 10, where you use 1 or 2 spare disks really comes down to how many drives you have. 5 disks, Raid 5 makes sense but for larger arrays it can be seen as a higher risk as the more drives you have spinning the larger the risk for failure. Adaptive size arrays are fine for personal use, but if something goes wrong, a ZFS array can be read by any raid controller to recover data.

[@Nicholastank2]

Was curious what version of MacBook Pro your using ? Did you upgrade from the 16inch M1 Max MacBook Pro ?

[@dunnadidit]

I did! I just got the 14" Macbook Pro M4 Max a few weeks ago. Still super new yet and getting things set up!

[@Nicholastank2]

@ why did you go with the smaller size ? Kind of figured you for a big laptop kind of guy xD

[@dunnadidit]

98% of the time I'm in my studio with my dual 27" monitors. The only time I really use my laptop as a laptop is when I need to do quick little things at home or when I'm travelling and I kept finding that the 16" was kind of overkill and cumbersome in those situations. Not that I don't miss the extra space, but when I weighed the options I figured I'd try out a smaller screen and it's already been great for my back lol. Also it fits in more bags and I'm kind of obsessed with camera backpacks lol.

[@Nicholastank2]

@@dunnadidit yeah, I am missing some good old fashion backpack reviews xD gotta admit, 14inch MacBook Pro with m4 pro has been so compact and power it’s insane

[@cwTheDrummist]

Very helpful! Thanks!

[@dunnadidit]

Cheers!

[@rogerhuston8287]

16TB drives are so yesterday. Seagate announced 32TB laser drives today.

[@dunnadidit]

Haha HDD's are getting SO HUGE nowadays!

[@justonbrazda3846]

But............can you open a Final Cut library that's on the NAS from a computer that is somewhere else?

[@dunnadidit]

I'm not sure! I think Final cut libraries might be a bit too much to run that way... they hold a lot of information don't they? However, if you are able to use Synology drive, you could localize the library file while you're using it and then "un-localize" it so that its only held on the NAS once you're done with it.

[@Doug_Photographs]

Great Video, I am getting ready to jump back to a Mac with the new Mac Mini, and am looking at a NAS to add to my system. Could you do a video on your photo workflow using Mac and the NAS?

[@vincent915]

Hey thanks for the video. I can’t see the links to the synology. Is it just me? 😅

[@dunnadidit]

Weird! They're definitely there, you might have to click a "see more" or "read more" button to open up the description though.

[@vincent915]

@@dunnadiditthe video title and description is weirdly translated in German. Maybe that’s the reason I can’t see the description properly

[@ForYouFromTemp]

Wait wait wait. What is this usb4 working drive you’re using for 2025??? Those speeds are insane

[@justin-tyme]

Crazy they don't include 10gb by standard on their hardware 😢😑😊

[@anamorphicalan]

Interesting

[@dunnadidit]

Thanks for watching!

[@DanielRodriguez-fg5ll]

oh man, spinning disks in almost 2025? the amount of noise, heat, power consumption !!!