Synology Network Attached Storage (NAS)?

CC268

CC268

Final Approach
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CC268
I have posted on several other forums that are better suited to answer this question, but I figure I would post my question/discussion here and see if any of you have any thoughts.

I am going to be upfront here. I am completely lost. I've been doing a lot of research on what my best options are for archiving video/media projects from Adobe Premiere Pro. Originally I thought I would just pick up a cheap 4TB external hard drive, then I learned about RAID configurations and thought I would do a RAID1 configuration for some redundancy. Then I was exposed to this whole idea of NAS and having a "home cloud". The amount of options for storing data now a days is simply overwhelming.

I want to make one thing clear. This is a hobby, I don't do this for a living, as a profession, etc. I make a few family vacation videos each year and make a lot of small 3-5 minute drone videos. The family vacation videos are often 500GB+ of footage when transcoded from h.264 to Cineform or DNxHD. I had no idea when I got into video editing that I would be dealing with such large amounts of data. I have opened a can of worms that I am really not prepared to deal with I guess. So here I am.

I don't have thousands to spend on an NAS setup, but I'd like to know what it would cost me to setup an NAS to keep my archived video/media files on. Maybe an NAS is not best suited for this - if so please feel free to tell me. I am somewhat familiar with Synology and have looked at their products. They seem to have some solutions that are reasonably priced. Looking at the DS218, DS218play, DS418, and DS418play.

In terms of how much "storage" I need...well I'm not exactly sure at this point. I think starting with 4-8TB is probably a decent starting point. More if the price is right.

My internet speed is only 60MB/s so that is obviously a limiting factor as well. Not sure what it would cost me to upgrade to gigabyte speeds.

If there is any other information you guys need from me in order to provide some good feedback, please let me know.

Thanks!
 
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So I use a NAS (a "cheapo" that will be replaced by Synology when I get around to it). I use it for daily system backups of the other computers and for keeping some common files that I share between systems. I also maintain 2-3 completely offline hard drive backups of the systems that I do every 2-4 weeks - those get taken off premises or in a safe. The NAS itself gets backed up periodically.
 
I think @denverpilot can provide one of his usually short posts outlining the best option for you.

I keep it simple. Qnap = good, TeraStation=maybe serviceable, SmartStor=horrible- - -

Select the correct RAID level....it ain't 1
 
Clark1961 said:
I think @denverpilot can provide one of his usually short posts outlining the best option for you.

I keep it simple. Qnap = good, TeraStation=maybe serviceable, SmartStor=horrible- - -

Select the correct RAID level....it ain't 1
Click to expand...

Raid 5 would be ideal...but I can't afford that right now lol. I'm looking at the Synology DS418play with two 4GB Seagate Ironwolfs. I can expand to four drives later.

Qnap looks awesome, but I haven't checked them out yet and what their pricing looks like.
 
wsuffa said:
So I use a NAS (a "cheapo" that will be replaced by Synology when I get around to it). I use it for daily system backups of the other computers and for keeping some common files that I share between systems. I also maintain 2-3 completely offline hard drive backups of the systems that I do every 2-4 weeks - those get taken off premises or in a safe. The NAS itself gets backed up periodically.
Click to expand...

I originally was just going to get like a LaCie Rugged 4TB external HD for now...but...it might make sense to just spend the money and make a nice NAS setup.
 
Clark1961 said:
I think @denverpilot can provide one of his usually short posts outlining the best option for you.

I keep it simple. Qnap = good, TeraStation=maybe serviceable, SmartStor=horrible- - -

Select the correct RAID level....it ain't 1
Click to expand...

Just looking the QNAP TS451+ is quite reasonable as well...hmm...
 
ytodd said:
RAID 5 and large capacity disks is a bad combination.
Click to expand...
Take it easy on me I am still learning all this...I am WAYYY out of my element here. I'm very computer savvy, but storage, NAS, etc is all new to me.
 
Qnap is pretty good. They do keep developing and upgrading the OS. I've got a cloud set up that all PC's and tablets can access.
 
Clark1961 said:
Qnap is pretty good. They do keep developing and upgrading the OS. I've got a cloud set up that all PC's and tablets can access.
Click to expand...

Hmm...what do you think of QNAP over Synology?
 
CC268 said:
Hmm...what do you think of QNAP over Synology?
Click to expand...
Imma a rookie on this stuff. I was happy to find QNAP after my SmartStor disaster and living with TeraStation performance. I'll let the expurts weigh in.
 
The other issue is that I have pretty basic internet..60MB/s I believe. So...that will limit speeds in terms of transferring video files to and from the NAS. Not sure what it would cost me to upgrade to gigabyte internet, new modem, router, etc. Could get pricey pretty quick.

Best solution may just be an external HD for now.
 
Reaching back to the days when I used to be good at this and knew what I was talking about:

Raid 0 = striping. Serialize two disks to get twice the storage, and excellent speed, but if one disk fails, you lose everything.
Raid 1 = Mirroring. Everything on one disk is duplicated on another disk. This gives the best redundancy and performance, but is the most expensive.
Raid 5 = ???. You virtually stripe any number of disks, but reserve an extra disk to write parity information. If any one drive fails, it can be rebuilt from data on the other disks.
This gives a good amount of redundancy at the expense of speed, and if you lose two disks, you are up feces creek.
There are other configs like RAID 15 which is a hybrid Raid 1 and Raid 5, but that really gets expensive.

Raid 0 could actually be a satisfactory, cost effective solution for you. If you only use it as a backup for non-critical data, you will only need it if your primary fails. If the Raid 0 backup fails, you still have your good data. But beware, I took a lightning strike one time and it took out my primary data AND my backup Raid 5 array. Fortunately, I had a removable drive that I backed up to once a week and put on a shelf. It was good when I needed it, but I still lost 5 days data.
 
Can’t speak for QNAP but we took a risk on using a Synology to handle all file share duties for 100 users three years ago and we’ve had zero problems other than a failed power supply. It backs itself up to S3 every night, and just runs. Security updates have been timely and without error.

We don’t have a more set it and forget it device i our entire IT inventory.

If I have one gripe it was replacement speed on the power supply. Over a week. No option for overnight which is bad in business hardware. But we have two supplies in the rack mount unit so it wasn’t a real problem.

All of them run the exact same software so if ours will handle 100 people beating on it (it’s also AD synched for user auth), it should handle any home scenario fine.

We bonded the multiple gig Ethernet ports and it handles that fine too. Setup is a touch wonky on that but no big deal. It’ll happily hammer 4Gb/sec into the drives but you can also add SSDs for cache.

Impressive devices. We were worried it was too “consumer” grade but it’s been fine.
 
So...what is the easiest/most cost effective way for me to store/archive my video files/projects? Is it just external HDs (which have no redundancy) or an NAS?

With the NAS I am afraid I am going to be quite limited by my internet speed and by the crappy Cox router I have right now?

Amazing how complex this stuff gets.
 
JOhnH said:
Reaching back to the days when I used to be good at this and knew what I was talking about:

Raid 0 = striping. Serialize two disks to get twice the storage, and excellent speed, but if one disk fails, you lose everything.
Raid 1 = Mirroring. Everything on one disk is duplicated on another disk. This gives the best redundancy and performance, but is the most expensive.
Raid 5 = ???. You virtually stripe any number of disks, but reserve an extra disk to write parity information. If any one drive fails, it can be rebuilt from data on the other disks.
This gives a good amount of redundancy at the expense of speed, and if you lose two disks, you are up feces creek.
There are other configs like RAID 15 which is a hybrid Raid 1 and Raid 5, but that really gets expensive.

Raid 0 could actually be a satisfactory, cost effective solution for you. If you only use it as a backup for non-critical data, you will only need it if your primary fails. If the Raid 0 backup fails, you still have your good data. But beware, I took a lightning strike one time and it took out my primary data AND my backup Raid 5 array. Fortunately, I had a removable drive that I backed up to once a week and put on a shelf. It was good when I needed it, but I still lost 5 days data.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure I completely understand. I currently have a 250GB SSD for OS and programs and a 1TB HDD for general storage on my desktop. I am adding a 1TB SSD into my system and adding a 4TB HDD to replace the 1TB HDD I currently have. I'm really just looking for a cost effective solution to get all the older video files/projects of my desktop and onto something else. Whether it is a NAS, external HD, etc. I just don't know what way I should be going.

The cheapest route would be an external HD and just realize if it fails I lose my stuff. At least I upload my final videos to YouTube lol.
 
CC268 said:
So...what is the easiest/most cost effective way for me to store/archive my video files/projects? Is it just external HDs (which have no redundancy) or an NAS?

With the NAS I am afraid I am going to be quite limited by my internet speed and by the crappy Cox router I have right now?

Amazing how complex this stuff gets.
Click to expand...
I'm thinking if you just put your NAS on the same switch as your computer, the router shouldn't really limit you. Gigabit switches are cheap.
 
Hahaha I am way over my head here, but I appreciate all the feedback so far.
 
I have a Synology DS416 with 4 1TB drives in a raid 5 array. It's been trouble-free for ~3 years of moderate use. I periodically back it up to a removable external drive. Not getting a cheap external drive to back stuff up while you decide what to do is false economy, in my opinion.

Nauga,
back up
 
nauga said:
I have a Synology DS416 with 4 1TB drives in a raid 5 array. It's been trouble-free for ~3 years of moderate use. I periodically back it up to a removable external drive. Not getting a cheap external drive to back stuff up while you decide what to do is false economy, in my opinion.

Nauga,
back up
Click to expand...

Yea I think I’m gonna start with a 4TB LaCie Rugged external hard drive. I can think about the NAS in the meantime. I’ve thought about cloud storage but that gets really pricey if you need a lot of it.

I just don’t understand how these people who do a lot of video work handle such large amounts of data. I took over 300+ video clips (typically 5-15 seconds long) in Maui. It’s all in h.264 so I transcoded it to Cineform for easier editing...something like 600GB. Seems insane to me.
 
I have done a lot of research on these things and just have not pulled the trigger yet. The QNAP version's, especially in gray are basically servers and can do video transcoding internally along with other stuff. They have tons of apps available for them also. Seems to me like they are the best buy and seem to be quite popular. They might be able to do all your video work without taking up resources on your main machine. Also, I do not think your internet connection speed matters unless you will be streaming remotely from the NAS.

Also the have an HDMI port and remote control for video stuff.

Just my 5 cents.
 
flhrci said:
I have done a lot of research on these things and just have not pulled the trigger yet. The QNAP version's, especially in gray are basically servers and can do video transcoding internally along with other stuff. They have tons of apps available for them also. Seems to me like they are the best buy and seem to be quite popular. They might be able to do all your video work without taking up resources on your main machine. Also, I do not think your internet connection speed matters unless you will be streaming remotely from the NAS.

Also the have an HDMI port and remote control for video stuff.

Just my 5 cents.
Click to expand...

Just from some preliminary research it looks like the Synology stuff is probably actually preferred over QNAP but they both seem to be very good products
 
CC268 said:
Just from some preliminary research it looks like the Synology stuff is probably actually preferred over QNAP but they both seem to be very good products
Click to expand...
Is possible. Both are HQ'd in Taiwan so that should make them equal. :)
 
CC268 said:
I want to make one thing clear. This is a hobby, I don't do this for a living, as a profession, etc. I make a few family vacation videos each year and make a lot of small 3-5 minute drone videos. The family vacation videos are often 500GB+ of footage when transcoded from h.264 to Cineform or DNxHD. I had no idea when I got into video editing that I would be dealing with such large amounts of data. I have opened a can of worms that I am really not prepared to deal with I guess. So here I am.
Click to expand...

I'm going to start with this. Any particular reason you are transcoding your h.264 footage? Am I right in I suspecting this is the main thing driving your massive storage needs? If you're transcoding for performance, would a system upgrade or use of video proxies be more cost-effective than scrambling to find storage for multiple TBs of transcoded video?
 
CC268 said:
So...what is the easiest/most cost effective way for me to store/archive my video files/projects? Is it just external HDs (which have no redundancy) or an NAS?

With the NAS I am afraid I am going to be quite limited by my internet speed and by the crappy Cox router I have right now?

Amazing how complex this stuff gets.
Click to expand...

I had to go back and read your post to see what the goal was since I was tagged into this late.

Your goal as I understand it is “Archive”. I would call that “backup” but whatever term is fine.

An on site backup and an off site are usually the minimum.

It really doesn’t matter if you just copy your files to an external USB disk and then another and then take one to your safety deposit box, or if you go with something easier and more automated here other than your time and maybe a touch more money.

I really like the Synology but I think for video the problem you’ll run into is just sheer storage size. What do you think your total storage needs would be for a few years if you calculate out how much video you shoot?

Most folks I know doing video for podcasts or movies or whatever just have piles and piles of cheap USB drives. Nothing else is economical enough. And they don’t need “online” access to the raw footage all the time.
 
denverpilot said:
Most folks I know doing video for podcasts or movies or whatever just have piles and piles of cheap USB drives. Nothing else is economical enough. And they don’t need “online” access to the raw footage all the time.
Click to expand...
How bout Blu-Ray m-disc? The 1000-year plus storage quality blu-ray disc. I think you can get up to 100GB blu-ray discs for this.
 
I have a Synology DS413J which I believe is no longer in production but still works for my purposes- mainly a backup and central place to story all my files on my home network. I've had it for several years and it just sits in the closet humming away, never had a problem with it. One nice feature mine has is it actually runs a media server using the DLNA standard so a lot of devices like smart TVs and other network media players will detect it and let me stream video directly from it.

The synology units don't really use standard RAID, it's a proprietary standard. I would definitely go with a > 2 drive configuration because with 2 drives your only options are straight up mirroring for redundancy which only gives you the space of one drive or striping which gives you double the performance and twice the chance of losing data.

They have a nice tool to see how much available space you get with different configurations and which models work with that here
https://www.synology.com/en-us/support/RAID_calculator
 
F01LA said:
I'm going to start with this. Any particular reason you are transcoding your h.264 footage? Am I right in I suspecting this is the main thing driving your massive storage needs? If you're transcoding for performance, would a system upgrade or use of video proxies be more cost-effective than scrambling to find storage for multiple TBs of transcoded video?
Click to expand...

Good comment - I actually have a very good desktop that I built 2 years ago. Granted it was built for high end gaming (ironically I don't game at all) and not video editing, so my storage configuration is not optimized for video editing. I actually mispoke as MUCH of my footage is in the new h.265 codec, although some of it is in h.264. My computer struggles to play this back smoothly. My understanding is that unless you go to the highest end processors (which would require a different socket and hence a new motherboard) most computers struggle to playback h.264 and h.265 smoothly.

I originally started with Cineform proxies, which seemed great, but then someone told me that you should not be doing color correcting with proxies, hence why I went to a full transcode to Cineform YUV 10 bit. Realistically, you are probably right that I should just stick with the proxies. If I did this I could keep my system as is and not spend a dime. Although a slick solution would be external hard drives as one backup and then a NAS for a secondary backup.

I thought about doing some system upgrades, but that gets incredibly expensive quickly and quite frankly my current desktop is pretty damn good. These are the list of upgrades I could do, but it would be costly and really isn't necessary.

Current system here: https://pcpartpicker.com/b/bcnnTW

Storage updates:

1. 860 EVO 1TB SSD

2. 960 EVO M.2 1TB SSD

3. Seagate Barracuda 4TB HDD

Processor updates:

1. i7-7700K

Memory updates:

1. 32GB DDR4 3000MHz (would do 2x8 since I already have 2x8)
 
denverpilot said:
I had to go back and read your post to see what the goal was since I was tagged into this late.

Your goal as I understand it is “Archive”. I would call that “backup” but whatever term is fine.

An on site backup and an off site are usually the minimum.

It really doesn’t matter if you just copy your files to an external USB disk and then another and then take one to your safety deposit box, or if you go with something easier and more automated here other than your time and maybe a touch more money.

I really like the Synology but I think for video the problem you’ll run into is just sheer storage size. What do you think your total storage needs would be for a few years if you calculate out how much video you shoot?

Most folks I know doing video for podcasts or movies or whatever just have piles and piles of cheap USB drives. Nothing else is economical enough. And they don’t need “online” access to the raw footage all the time.
Click to expand...

I will probably end up deleting a lot of the footage I don't use for my edits, which will reduce the size. As F01LA above stated, I should just use a proxy workflow and that would basically eliminate this problem altogether.

A slick solution would be external hard drives and then the NAS as a secondary backup.
 
One simple solution I just thought of is that if your router supports it (or get a new one), it can be a file server. My NetGear router has a USB 3.0 port that is designed to accommodate an external hard drive. It has built in file server software that lets you use the drive as a network drive. Just another thought. May be a cheaper solution for backup only.
 
cowman said:
The synology units don't really use standard RAID, it's a proprietary standard. I would definitely go with a > 2 drive configuration because with 2 drives your only options are straight up mirroring for redundancy which only gives you the space of one drive or striping which gives you double the performance and twice the chance of losing data.
Click to expand...

Mirroring really isn't that awful, you just lose half of the purchased disk space. But for home gamers, if you pay attention to any individual disk failures, the little two drive mirrored units are fine and have enough redundancy that if you're paying attention and swap in another drive when one fails, you can save some coin on the Synology unit, and just set it to backup off-site for the "lightning hit my house and friend the entire synology" moment... which I've had... not with a synology, but the lightning thing and fried drives...

Another reason to make offsite backups... or at least UNPLUGGED backups if you're too lazy to drive them somewhere else... crack, boom, all the computers and the TV are smoking... wheeeeee! LOL
 
flhrci said:
One simple solution I just thought of is that if your router supports it (or get a new one), it can be a file server. My NetGear router has a USB 3.0 port that is designed to accommodate an external hard drive. It has built in file server software that lets you use the drive as a network drive. Just another thought. May be a cheaper solution for backup only.
Click to expand...

Hmm never thought of that. I just have a router/modem AIO that Cox gave us...will have to check it out.
 
flhrci said:
One simple solution I just thought of is that if your router supports it (or get a new one), it can be a file server. My NetGear router has a USB 3.0 port that is designed to accommodate an external hard drive. It has built in file server software that lets you use the drive as a network drive. Just another thought. May be a cheaper solution for backup only.
Click to expand...

Very common. It's just running Samba. Acts like a windows file share. Works good on the little routers that have it. Usually doesn't run anywhere near wire-speed though... processor in the router can't deal with that much data.
 
CC268 said:
Hmm never thought of that. I just have a router/modem AIO that Cox gave us...will have to check it out.
Click to expand...
From Netgear...

Available on many NETGEAR routers, ReadySHARE USB lets you plug in even more capabilities and convenient features through your router’s USB port. These include USB storage you can wirelessly access at home, free software to easily backup your PC or Mac, wirelessly printing from any PC or Mac and the ability to play, view, listen to, and share your videos, photos, and music on DNLA connected TVs, game consoles, or media players.
 
flhrci said:
One could always go the other way and build a data center if you have the cash. :D
Click to expand...

Been there, done that... wasn't worth it. And it wasn't even my cash. ROI was $6M at sale, on 18 sites, including the buyer paying off the loans, in almost ten years... not great. :)
 
At this point if I went with NAS I would likely get the DS418play with two 2GB or 4GB drives (Seagate IronWolf). I would add two more later down the road. Probably would run RAID1 for now. And then have a decent external 4TB HD. Does this seem like a decent plan?
 
CC268 said:
At this point if I went with NAS I would likely get the DS418play with two 2GB or 4GB drives (Seagate IronWolf). I would add two more later down the road. Probably would run RAID1 for now. And then have a decent external 4TB HD. Does this seem like a decent plan?
Click to expand...

Did you mean 2TB or 4TB internally? That'd be a nice setup either way. Not sure what you'd want the external for if you had the NAS, though... since you could just back it up to a super cheap cloud service nightly, or weekly, or whatever you liked.

Example, if you used the internal app to back up to Amazon Glacier, it's $0.004 per GB per month. If you used S3 it's $0.023 per GB per month. I like S3 because I can go poking around and pull down an individual file or ten without messing with a restore on the NAS. You also pay some transfer fees if you ever have to download the whole thing back, but those don't kick in unless you do.

You can do a full estimate with their tool here, but we're talking single digit dollars for the most part here for a home NAS backup, monthly.

https://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/

Of course, you could always plug your external drive into the NAS and back the NAS up into it also and then unplug it and take it somewhere... so there's that...
 
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