I recently made a video on modding my Synology DS918+ to 5GbE and it works great using a QNAP 5GbE USB adapter for $79 but when I eventually outgrow my current NAS I'll probably go with a higher end QNAP, but for now 5GbE is fast enough for me video editing and storage needs.
I don’t even have a computer 😢. But it’s still great 👍 to watch. So when I’m ready to buy. I will know what to buy 😊. Education in Tech is always great 👍.
As a Synology owner, let me suggest a slightly different workflow that might work better for some people. Synology (don't know about Qnap) has a program called "Drive". This lets you sync directories from your local computer to the Synology box as quickly as you write them. This way you edit on your local machine on super fast NVME disks and your project is instantly synced the moment you write anything to disk. You then backup that NAS dir to the cloud or whereever. You can sync between other computers too. On windows, it gets better because there is a feature called On Demand sync which will, as the disk gets fuller, unload files that haven't been used in a long time (you can pin directories to never be unloaded) so you see their filenames, but they don't take up space on the disk. If you need them, they are transparently copied from the NAS back to your drive. This means on a small local super fast NVME disk you can have access to as much larger amount of content on your NAS without you having to manage everything. This means in the vast majority of cases a 1 gig link and cheap platter drives are just fine and you get all the benefits of local NVME editing.
Appreciate this comment, as it might be exactly what I'm looking for. I've got nVME internal, and I'm considering a 6-bay, with two, 3-drive volumes (one as mass storage with SHR1, the other as a backup for my actual computer and the other volume, also SHR1) Would that be a workable use case? Or is there a better way altogether?
@@JustinDoesTriathlon I have a 6 drive Synology (1618+) and made one 6 drive RAID6 Storage Pool. On top of that, I made two logical volumes. This accomplishes the same thing as what you want to do, but imho is much more flexible and gives 2 drive redundancy to all data. You also don't need to allocate all data into the volumes and can grow each independently based on your needs. If you eventually swap in new, bigger drives you can also add space as you see fit and grow each volume as needed. The only downside I can think of is each time you swap in a new drive you have to rebuild the entire storage pool, but that's a small penalty for the flexibility and RAID6 redundancy.
@@machinethinking Wow, that's really fantastic, thanks for your help. I feel decently knowledgeable about building computers, but nas/server volumes are very new to me. Appreciate the input (and your videos, coincidentally! Have watched them all in the past) I'll give that a strong look over, seems like it could be great.
Hi. Thank you for sharing. This sounds really interesting and like something that can save me some bucks as I have a team of 5 and each PC has fast nvme drives to work off and then archive on slower HDDs. Can you please point me to a resource where I can find out how to set this up and how it works in more depth? Thank you!
Thanks for putting another review with clear description of use case, acceptance criteria, expertise limits, etc. I personally was not considering all SSDs in my next RAID box; but, you got me wondering about TRIM support and accurate SSD status. SSDs rarely die; but, when they do, it can get really ugly. Storage is where I tend to setup and forget. Then a lot of years go by and suddenly realize I got end of life issues on my oldest components. I think I would put a sticker on my all SSD RAID box saying "Replace drives around 7/15/2024 (+4 years from use)" as a reminder.
Max would you recommend a thunderbay 4 with thunderbolt 3 for fast read and write speeds over synology? I don’t want to spend OVER $800; this is without any hard drives.
How do you compare to Synology's new 1618xs+? It seems like they had an answer to these issues and it's the same price with upgraded CPU, RAM and built in 10GB / NVME cache. I only ask because I need to upgrade my Synology solution and I'm used to their amazing UI.
Hey Gerald, I exhanged the stock fans in my Synology to Noctua fans. Very easy mod to do, and it runs much quieter (and probably cooler, although unconfirmed) now.
I like your philosophy of only keeping the finished videos. Archival storage is such a beast and it's only getting worse with higher resolutions and multiple cameras. I have to convince myself to jettison the old footage once the final result is achieved.
Gerald, your reviews are incredible. Thank you for putting this together. As always your thoroughness is astounding. Hands down, the best channel on TH-cam.
Thank you so much for this video. Because of these videos, I was able to buy a Synology NAS (my first ever NAS) 920+. I am in the initial phase of my YouTubing career and 920+ has been incredible, especially DSM 7. With Synology Photos, I could organize with photos like Google Photos. I am using my NAS with MBP M1 Pro 2021 and the experience has been mind-blowing. with 7GBPS speeds in the new Mac, it has been a hell of an experince.
Thank you for the video. I am definitely interested in a custom solution. Now that I have completed my storage cleanup, I am interested in upgrading my current setup and would be interested in seeing how a custom setup compares to the Synology and QNAP. Great job once again.
I built my own custom server for a few reasons. Redundancy on EVERYTHING, infinitely expandable, and its faster and cheaper than most off the shelf options. Its a complicated experience, for those without a networking background, but still possible.
I personally build a UnRaid setup and it has been awesome. Even using old tech the system is faster and easier to add things like 10gbe, ssd caching etc. Of course it'll cost more if you're looking to save space but since I was putting this into my storage room in my basement I didn't mind. I love the Qnap but $1500 for just an enclosure is wild.
Synology DS1618+ is by far the best solution I've used. My suggestion is that if you edit heavy footage from the NAS max out the NAS RAM and if you can add a NVMe then max that out too in order to have the fastest buffer. Now I'm planning to get a larger NAS to handle Plex from a different box just to keep things separate. Also way more apps within the Synology ecosystem.
I've been using (rather deploying) QNAPs in various studios. Ranging from small 5-bay models up to a few 16-bay models. I can say I am really satisfied with them! One of the nice things - you can put double the amount of 2.5" drives into them! This means if you have a 6-bay model you can put 12 drives into them. QNAP provides a special "craddle" for the 3.5" bay that has some form of raid. This means you can make your QNAP a RAID0 because the craddle is basically a RAID1.
@@levraichris3321 Haha, somehow I still am! One of them is QNAP QDA-A2AR, maybe they have other models as well, but this one I know of that definitely works :)
@@jamesj4998 You wouldn't say that if you knew what was planned... although, we aren't evolving at the moment we are de-volving due to the majority of the population not having a positive mind-pattern.
Solid video. This is why I just keep 50TB in my system rather than using a NAS. I get all the speed I need, it's accessible to other computers, and I can still have external & cloud backups for a fraction of the total cost.
Right time,through video,nice segmented video titles.Was thinking to purchase a NAS system,watched a bunch of distracted videos,but you nailed it Gerald. Salute from London,ON.
Something I read on the internet: SSD RAID makes more sense if you're using similar spec drives of different models from different manufacturers. If you buy a bunch of drives from the same manufacturer and retailer, they're quite likely to die around the same time, unlike a HDD, which has a much more random lifespan.
This was incredibly dense and concise. I watched it the whole way through and all information was pertinent but clearly explained. Excellent video. Thank you for this.
Loved this review!!! QNAP also makes add in cards to add both 10gbe and M.2 cache drives on the same card. So you could probably swap out the dual thunderbolt for a dual M.2. Also on a side note these cards can be used in a PC as an Add in card. So 10gbe & an M.2 on the same card.
Gerald - I wonder if the thing to do would be to go back to the 672, swap the dual Thunderbolt for the 10 Gb/s Ethernet. Then an interesting experiment would be to add (2) NVMe drives in a RAID 1 as the front-end cache to the storage. That might allow you to saturate the network since the NVMe's would be faster than SATA SSD's and the RAID 1 algorithm is even simpler than the RAID 10. Just some thoughts. Thanks for the video!
I would substitute all third parties with "dirty danglers." Friends, family, children, postal workers, best buy employees, babysitters, let your imagination soar...
How cone after so many years on YT Just now I found the best reviewer!? 🤷♂️ Last week I picked up a new DS920+ and I love it despite still having 1gb port.
@@StreetsOfVancouverChannel What is funny, man? I was being serious. Full Spectrum allows you to see two extra wavelengths that the human eye cannot see... infrared and UV. Cameras block these frequencies by default with the hot mirror filter.
Great video Gerald. I’ve been a QNAP user for 10+ years now. They have got better and better for multipurpose video editing. Tech support is also fantastic. Now I have 6 of the buggers. Haha. Keep up the good work. Pete.
"I'm not really interested in storing all that nerd talk perpetually" haha. As always, even a few years later, excellent content from Gerald Undone. Thanks for all that you do. TJ
I set this up at the beginning of the year. DS1618, three 6TB spinners (for now), maxed out the ram, put in an SFP+ PCIe card (Mellanox connect-x2 in the NAS and the 2 computers) , and ran fiber to the PCs. Edit 6k video off it without issue in Davinci Resolve. Using a ramdisk on the DS1618, got 1.08GB/sec file transfer. I didn't go with the QNAP because I read about the security / malware issues they've had scared me away.
Looking into getting myself a NAS. This is very helpful. Actually the most helpful I've watched! Why have I not stumbled upon your channel before? No idea. But I've already subscribed! Thanks for this 👌
I don’t even have a computer 😢. But it’s still great 👍 to watch. So when I’m ready to buy. I will know what to buy 😊. Education in Tech is always great 👍.
As an infrequent amateur my needs aren't intense, but I have definitely found my Synology 918+ to be sufficiently fast for light timeline work in Resolve. Also, I just discovered Backblaze B2 and am over the moon! Great video. It was good to have my own experience confirmed
I've been using the Synology Diskstation for 5 years now and have accumulated 5 of them across 3 sites for redundancy and sheer lunacy. In fact I've had the 1618+ for year plus now and am really happy with it. I picked up a QNAP TS-251+ today and was pleasantly surprised to see your video comparing the two companies offerings. My reason for buying the TS-251+ is to offload some operations off my 1618+ so that I can get back to editing off of it. I may make a video explaining all of that but it will probably be 3 hours long and not as entertaining as I hope. Will probably be some high level nerd stuff. Thanks for your video.
I started with Synology diskstations but this year I upgraded to a RS1619xs+ with four 4TB Samsung Evos in RAID F1 and then a RS2818RP+ with over 100tb for bulk storage. You definitely would have to keep these in a server closet with sound dampening and ventilation but this setup is rock solid if you prefer performance and reliability over noise levels (about 60 dba eek). NVME caching on the 1619xs+ actually had a performance penalty but it’s plenty fast enough without it. For the Synology disk stations you can swap the 40mm fans for quieter noctua fans.
Thanks for doing your videos in my own bespoke order. I literally bought a Synology RS2418 and a QNAP TS-1635 in the last 2 days! The QNAP is replacing the LOUD Synology (which is a rack unit, granted). Would be easier if you made the videos right *before* instead of right after my purchases though :-) The good news is I can play back a clip in Final Cut with four 4K camera angles and the angle viewer AND the main clip visible and it just rocks along at 10G.
Please do a continuation to this video. I was in a similar situation with storage and simply upgraded to 13tb but a long term solution is needed for me.
Wow...I made it to the four minute mark before getting a bit glassy eyed. That is not bad for a landlord. Great video! tHanks for all the info. I have a super Triple Drive backup system - but this is next level stuff!
Hey. Amazing video! This is kind of exactly what I was planning to build for editing from 2 or 3 PCs. Awesome to see a great video about it. What about using regular HDs in the NAS, though? Too slow? Does anybody know if regular HDs and 1GBit network would be enough to edit from (mainly 1080p footage/video though)?
I have a QNAP TS-932X with 10 GB SPF+ connection. I have 4 4 TB Iron Wolf drives set-up in a RAID-5 array, and 2 256 MB SSD drives set up as a read cache. I edit 5.9K directly off of the NAS.
I've been using Synology for years. Purchased for a resilient place to store my photos, but now using it for much more. I like the little Intel Atom CPU on this, as its quite capable, while overall power draw on the server is extremely low.
Awesome review. Very professional and well delivered. And entertaining, too. You've given everyone enough info to know whether or not this tech will work for them and their use case.
I went with a QNAP unit. With any of those pre-fab storage solutions (QNAP or Synology), I would recommend ONLY using the drives that are fully compatible with the specific storage unit. I believe this is a more expensive route, but less headache in terms of troubleshooting & maintaining.
Missing out on a lot of good stuff on both those boxes by just using them as file storage, for that a custom setup will come in significantly cheaper and with significantly higher spec. I personally use the Synology kit and once you bump the RAM and start adding a few virtual machines, automated remote encrypted backups, surveillance station etc it really shines.
Hey Gerald, just to be on the safe side with the unplugged fan on the network card, maybe put a 40mm Noctua fan on top the heatsink? They're only like 20 bucks and SUPER quiet.
We have a QNAP 1282 T3 and it's a vast improvement over an earlier unit - why? Processor i7 v. i3. The I7 make a huge difference. Boot times, transfers and so on. Quiet as well. We configured completely differently with two 2TB M.2 NVME drives and 4 12TB hard drives in raid 1 pairs. for backup. It's been flawless, but I know what you mean about interface. It's not very easy or intuitive. But how often do you need to look at it, not very.... Great video.
Storage is an expensive but interesting topic. I do try to save my video projects and it does add up fast... I recently picked up a QNAP TR-004 and filled it with 10TB drives. I'm happy with it so far for my use case. Using it in RAID 10 with the software configuration option instead of dip switches on the unit to select RAID level. I'm getting around 200mb/s writes which isn't great, but I'm using it for backup rather than trying to edit off of it. I might convert it to RAID 5 eventually to get more storage. At least until it makes sense to change out the drives. It sounds like you will benefit from a custom solution, but saturating a pair of 10 gbit ethernet ports would be a (fun) challenge to build a compact storage focused system around. I wonder if there are speed limitations related to the network gear rather than the NAS to consider as well.
@@MiaogisTeas 2.5 gigabytes a second over the two connections that do 10 gigabit. I haven't watched this video in 3 years so no idea what specific SSDs he was using but if they were SATA they will be limited to that interface and it's not 2.5 gigabytes/sec, more like a maximum of 500 MB/sec but with my older SATA SSDs it's a bit slower. You also don't get 1:1 transfer speeds in RAID situations.
I'd never thought about just getting rid of all the non used files. My issue is I don't publish 99% of what I film so it's often not edited into something nice. Maybe I should spend more time doing that so I can delete the old stuff.
I would like to see how a custom build that achieves your goals and compares to these NAS boxes. I have recently been considering building a NAS so I'm glad to see these videos. Thanks Gerald.
Great review - always wondered if anyone else had edited over a network. I only use the NAS for backups these days, and edit a working copy off of local drives. I've found a few network hiccups that led to corrupted premiere pro project files and a tonne of re-work. There was no advantage to editing via network. (exporting to network has some advantages) Thanks for putting the time into this.
Good job on the review. Network anything is hard to review and talk about so its hard to find good information about differences and uses. I ended up with going with Synology DS918+ with 2 10T Drives at the start for budget reasons. Synology allows you to add drives in over time and I have since added another drive with no problems.
Thank you for the insight. My current solution is to keep the files on my iPad (I edit on it) until finished editing, then upload to an external drive. Hdd may not be optimal for editing, but I just use them for storage 😂 keep up the good work Gerald I enjoy your videos 💚💙💜
Definitely would be fun to see what kind of crazy custom setup you could rig up. Check out all of the used enterprise server hardware on Ebay... Massive supply combined with very little demand. I bought an HP proliant rack server with dual 8 core xeons, 128gb ram, 8x2.5" drive bays, 3x dual sfp+ 20g cards, and redundant power supplies for $300! Overkill for storage? Sure, but I set it up to automatically transcode all of our offloaded camera footage to a better mezzanine codec as well as small, web-friendly versions that we often use. I'm sure you could think of some more creative ways to put cheap compute horsepower to good use!
This is a blast from the past! I went out and bought the i5 version of the QNAP in August of 2022 (the same 672xt-i5-8gb. It cost right around $1700 w/tax. The processor says 1.7ghz with turbo up to 3.1ghz. I did the i5 because it is a 6-core processor. Anyone know if this was a dumb choice versus the newer version with the i3 that runs at a solid 3.1ghz but with 4 cores? I am going to plug this directly into an 8k tv for streaming 4K/8k home video projects. A lot of thought went into the correct model/features but would I have been better off with just buying the newer one with the i3? This is an oldie but goodie video so I don’t know if anyone is reading these (including the G-Man but feel free to share ANY thoughts on this unit). Thanks all & Gerald. These videos hold up years later! ;)
Also synology has an auto ingest mode. right when you plugin a USB / ESATA drive you can have it pull the data and place it chronologically in the synology system.
Awesome video, Gerald! I would love to see a video of a regular day of filming and editing workflow, as well as the time it takes you. Thank you for the knowledge here my friend!
Gerald, the performance of single threaded reads/writes will with few exceptions be the speed of the slowest drive. This is because a single threaded write isn't spread out to all of the drives, you would need multiple writes which could be distributed. This is why you always see the performance go up with threading/queuing. It's also the reason why you won't functionally notice a speed difference between all of the boxes you tested. The reason why your 10Gb ethernet was never saturated is because your slowest drive is constrained by it's 6Gb path over SATA. If you really want the ultimate in performance you will need a box that has extreme caching (it helps with read performance) and a very fast staging area to write synchronous writes to. Many that really understand storage like the freenas group will build a fairly powerful PC with lots of memory, spinning drives, and a very fast NVME drive that acts as a write cache using ZFS. The topology is this: The network always reads from the memory based cache first, then goes to disk. After a little bit, the cache gets enough data and makes this very fast. For writes, it will write to the NVME drive as well as the cache. Because the data was committed to NVME, it is stored safely and quickly, but we never bother to read it again unless we have a failure, instead we read from the cache. In other words, the NVME is only there to say we actually wrote the data to no volatile storage. There is so much more to explain so if you want more, shoot me an email at schu@schu.net, otherwise just know that you really aren't going to get more than 1 SSD drive's worth of performance out of any of the boxes you are looking at. If you want a great test to confirm that, put one of the SSD drives in your desktop and do all of the same tests again, you will notice, it's not really any faster (maybe a little due to overhead). Matt
I should also note that storage is harder than it looks because much of it isn't obvious. The experts that understand the bottle necks can get amazing performance, but non-experts like Linus Tech Tips just keep swapping nas distros in order to find one that works the best and hopefully get lucky. I recommend reading through the ZFS articles at arstechnica by Jim Salter, he really does understand what's going on: arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/05/zfs-101-understanding-zfs-storage-and-performance/ Keep in mind that the article is from a ZFS perspective, but all raid systems will have similar issues to overcome.
Careful with those Aquantia cards. Everywhere Ive worked they tend to fail from load and heat when frequently in use. The Intel’s are ROCK solid. x550 cards. Well worth it.
I'm right at the line needing to upgrade to a NAS. I have, like a zillion portable SSD plugged in everywhere. And archive past footage? Guilty as charged.
I swapped out the fans on my Synology unit for high quality Silent Wings 4 fans from BeQuiet. Much quieter. Something to consider if you are in the market for a NAS and near-silent operation is important to you.
Get yourself a tiny little Noctua fan to replace the one on the 10Gb NIC. They even come with a low-noise adapter which will lower the maximum RPM of the fan and keep the noise down. The NF-A4x10 FLX is a tiny fan that should fit. If you don't want to cut and solder the 3 pin DC fan plug to that 2 pin VGA fan plug, get something like a Kolink fan adapter on Amazon and it's all plug and play! I would feel MUCH more comfortable knowing that there was active cooling on a component that was intended to have it!
It's not every day you hear someone say that Synology is the cheaper solution. To be fair, this is like comparing a $750 camera from one vendor with a $1.5k camera from another. For the amount that QNAP costs you could get the Synology FileStation FS1018 with support for 12 SSD drives and expand with with a dual 10 GbE NIC. Anyway, I have a QNAP box, my brother uses Synology... both are good. The most important part is understanding your need and matching it to the correct hardware.
![ILLSLICK - KILLSHOT REMIX [FULL VERSION]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/RIK8RrqIAzE/mqdefault.jpg)
This level of nerddom is fantastic.
Benj Haisch Exactly. Most of what he said went over my head. Was still pleasing to watch, guy knows his stuff.
I recently made a video on modding my Synology DS918+ to 5GbE and it works great using a QNAP 5GbE USB adapter for $79 but when I eventually outgrow my current NAS I'll probably go with a higher end QNAP, but for now 5GbE is fast enough for me video editing and storage needs.
I don’t even have a computer 😢. But it’s still great 👍 to watch. So when I’m ready to buy. I will know what to buy 😊. Education in Tech is always great 👍.
As a Synology owner, let me suggest a slightly different workflow that might work better for some people. Synology (don't know about Qnap) has a program called "Drive". This lets you sync directories from your local computer to the Synology box as quickly as you write them. This way you edit on your local machine on super fast NVME disks and your project is instantly synced the moment you write anything to disk. You then backup that NAS dir to the cloud or whereever. You can sync between other computers too. On windows, it gets better because there is a feature called On Demand sync which will, as the disk gets fuller, unload files that haven't been used in a long time (you can pin directories to never be unloaded) so you see their filenames, but they don't take up space on the disk. If you need them, they are transparently copied from the NAS back to your drive. This means on a small local super fast NVME disk you can have access to as much larger amount of content on your NAS without you having to manage everything. This means in the vast majority of cases a 1 gig link and cheap platter drives are just fine and you get all the benefits of local NVME editing.
Appreciate this comment, as it might be exactly what I'm looking for. I've got nVME internal, and I'm considering a 6-bay, with two, 3-drive volumes (one as mass storage with SHR1, the other as a backup for my actual computer and the other volume, also SHR1) Would that be a workable use case? Or is there a better way altogether?
@@JustinDoesTriathlon I have a 6 drive Synology (1618+) and made one 6 drive RAID6 Storage Pool. On top of that, I made two logical volumes. This accomplishes the same thing as what you want to do, but imho is much more flexible and gives 2 drive redundancy to all data. You also don't need to allocate all data into the volumes and can grow each independently based on your needs. If you eventually swap in new, bigger drives you can also add space as you see fit and grow each volume as needed. The only downside I can think of is each time you swap in a new drive you have to rebuild the entire storage pool, but that's a small penalty for the flexibility and RAID6 redundancy.
@@machinethinking Wow, that's really fantastic, thanks for your help. I feel decently knowledgeable about building computers, but nas/server volumes are very new to me. Appreciate the input (and your videos, coincidentally! Have watched them all in the past) I'll give that a strong look over, seems like it could be great.
Hi. Thank you for sharing. This sounds really interesting and like something that can save me some bucks as I have a team of 5 and each PC has fast nvme drives to work off and then archive on slower HDDs.
Can you please point me to a resource where I can find out how to set this up and how it works in more depth?
Thank you!
Solid tip
Thanks for putting another review with clear description of use case, acceptance criteria, expertise limits, etc.
I personally was not considering all SSDs in my next RAID box; but, you got me wondering about TRIM support and accurate SSD status. SSDs rarely die; but, when they do, it can get really ugly. Storage is where I tend to setup and forget. Then a lot of years go by and suddenly realize I got end of life issues on my oldest components. I think I would put a sticker on my all SSD RAID box saying "Replace drives around 7/15/2024 (+4 years from use)" as a reminder.
Qnap crew 👏👌👍 . Thanks for making this vid! Always wanted to but never did so glad you made it instead and it’s fantastic!
A nerd bromance good to see.
Max would you recommend a thunderbay 4 with thunderbolt 3 for fast read and write speeds over synology? I don’t want to spend OVER $800; this is without any hard drives.
@@Sapientiaa If you don't need it to be connected to the web or multiple computers then yes.
Qnap all the way bros! 💪🏼
How do you compare to Synology's new 1618xs+? It seems like they had an answer to these issues and it's the same price with upgraded CPU, RAM and built in 10GB / NVME cache.
I only ask because I need to upgrade my Synology solution and I'm used to their amazing UI.
Hey Gerald, I exhanged the stock fans in my Synology to Noctua fans. Very easy mod to do, and it runs much quieter (and probably cooler, although unconfirmed) now.
I've been using an old Qnap for 5 yrs now and still receiving constant updates on them, definitely sticking with Qnap!
"Give me about 15 minutes..." SO excited to hear that line again!😃😍
Wonder who was able to cut his hair as well as go hang gliding, within that 15 minute window? Aircuts 'R' us?
I like your philosophy of only keeping the finished videos. Archival storage is such a beast and it's only getting worse with higher resolutions and multiple cameras. I have to convince myself to jettison the old footage once the final result is achieved.
I have a Synology setup on my UniFi equipped network. I simply cannot give up that Synology UI. It’s just so good.
As an agency owner and video editor… I love what you’re talking about and wish I knew what you are saying 😂
Gerald, your reviews are incredible. Thank you for putting this together. As always your thoroughness is astounding. Hands down, the best channel on TH-cam.
Thank you so much for this video. Because of these videos, I was able to buy a Synology NAS (my first ever NAS) 920+. I am in the initial phase of my YouTubing career and 920+ has been incredible, especially DSM 7. With Synology Photos, I could organize with photos like Google Photos. I am using my NAS with MBP M1 Pro 2021 and the experience has been mind-blowing. with 7GBPS speeds in the new Mac, it has been a hell of an experince.
Thank you for the video. I am definitely interested in a custom solution. Now that I have completed my storage cleanup, I am interested in upgrading my current setup and would be interested in seeing how a custom setup compares to the Synology and QNAP. Great job once again.
Would love to see you make a custom solution, especially after getting burned by NAS's custom power supplies that tend to fail.
Check yt for zfs raids. Tutorials allows total nobs to make it.
I built my own custom server for a few reasons. Redundancy on EVERYTHING, infinitely expandable, and its faster and cheaper than most off the shelf options. Its a complicated experience, for those without a networking background, but still possible.
@@joejamesphoto Any walkthroughs/tutorials you'd recommend on how to do this?
I personally build a UnRaid setup and it has been awesome. Even using old tech the system is faster and easier to add things like 10gbe, ssd caching etc. Of course it'll cost more if you're looking to save space but since I was putting this into my storage room in my basement I didn't mind.
I love the Qnap but $1500 for just an enclosure is wild.
Even though I don't understand 3/4 of the technical details you talk about sometimes, you still make it interesting 😊👍🏻
Synology DS1618+ is by far the best solution I've used. My suggestion is that if you edit heavy footage from the NAS max out the NAS RAM and if you can add a NVMe then max that out too in order to have the fastest buffer. Now I'm planning to get a larger NAS to handle Plex from a different box just to keep things separate. Also way more apps within the Synology ecosystem.
I've been using (rather deploying) QNAPs in various studios. Ranging from small 5-bay models up to a few 16-bay models.
I can say I am really satisfied with them!
One of the nice things - you can put double the amount of 2.5" drives into them! This means if you have a 6-bay model you can put 12 drives into them.
QNAP provides a special "craddle" for the 3.5" bay that has some form of raid. This means you can make your QNAP a RAID0 because the craddle is basically a RAID1.
Hey ! if you are still alive 3years later, can you point me out that accessory ? I can't find them ! Thanks !
@@levraichris3321 Haha, somehow I still am! One of them is QNAP QDA-A2AR, maybe they have other models as well, but this one I know of that definitely works :)
How I enjoy, "give me about 15 min" great info Gerald.
I’m Gerald Undone: and 2019 tried to warn us, but we didn’t listen
2020 is warning you for what is coming. It will get worse and worse up until probably 2033... then we either evolve or become complete slaves.
@@jamesj4998 You wouldn't say that if you knew what was planned... although, we aren't evolving at the moment we are de-volving due to the majority of the population not having a positive mind-pattern.
Right in time when I'm thinking to finally throw in a NAS! 👍 As usual, huuuge thumbs up for the job done!
Sold on the QNAP 672XT. The level of thoroughness on this has my interest peaked as something to add as part of a setup for backing up.
The quality of this content is unparalleled in this field, well done!
Oh boy almost 150,000 subscribers congratulations well deserved now... let's get undone!!!
Solid video. This is why I just keep 50TB in my system rather than using a NAS. I get all the speed I need, it's accessible to other computers, and I can still have external & cloud backups for a fraction of the total cost.
Right time,through video,nice segmented video titles.Was thinking to purchase a NAS system,watched a bunch of distracted videos,but you nailed it Gerald. Salute from London,ON.
Something I read on the internet: SSD RAID makes more sense if you're using similar spec drives of different models from different manufacturers. If you buy a bunch of drives from the same manufacturer and retailer, they're quite likely to die around the same time, unlike a HDD, which has a much more random lifespan.
This was incredibly dense and concise. I watched it the whole way through and all information was pertinent but clearly explained. Excellent video. Thank you for this.
Loved this review!!! QNAP also makes add in cards to add both 10gbe and M.2 cache drives on the same card. So you could probably swap out the dual thunderbolt for a dual M.2. Also on a side note these cards can be used in a PC as an Add in card. So 10gbe & an M.2 on the same card.
You voice and breakdown made me subscribe. Your in-depth knowledge for a beginner made me hit the bell.
Freakin' freekishly fast and efficient breakdown of these devices. Nice job guy.
Gerald - I wonder if the thing to do would be to go back to the 672, swap the dual Thunderbolt for the 10 Gb/s Ethernet. Then an interesting experiment would be to add (2) NVMe drives in a RAID 1 as the front-end cache to the storage. That might allow you to saturate the network since the NVMe's would be faster than SATA SSD's and the RAID 1 algorithm is even simpler than the RAID 10. Just some thoughts. Thanks for the video!
I want to figure out how to say "dirty danglers" more often.
Just drop trau towards any full length mirror
Say that instead of your name.
I would substitute all third parties with "dirty danglers." Friends, family, children, postal workers, best buy employees, babysitters, let your imagination soar...
Watch a couple seasons of Letterkenny and you'll be top sniping Sallys with your dirty danglers in no time.
I'm Gerald Undone and I've finally finished this video! ;)
How cone after so many years on YT Just now I found the best reviewer!? 🤷♂️ Last week I picked up a new DS920+ and I love it despite still having 1gb port.
18:13 Yes please! That sounds interesting!
yes pls
Did he just use “dirty danglers” and “orifice” in the same sentence 😂
I'm guessing he stores other videos on those boxes.
"What's up everybody, I'm Gerald Undone and converting your camera to full spectrum is how you bust ghosts."
hhahahahahahaha!!!!
@@StreetsOfVancouverChannel What is funny, man? I was being serious. Full Spectrum allows you to see two extra wavelengths that the human eye cannot see... infrared and UV. Cameras block these frequencies by default with the hot mirror filter.
loved that "back to the future" style intro. Time dilation really makes a video pop. hahahaha
Gerald’s videos are the only one in youtube that i have to slow down to watch
Great video Gerald. I’ve been a QNAP user for 10+ years now. They have got better and better for multipurpose video editing. Tech support is also fantastic. Now I have 6 of the buggers. Haha. Keep up the good work. Pete.
GU, how are you this effortlessly smart? Seriously, how? My brain simultaneously hurts and feels better listening to your wisdom.
"I'm not really interested in storing all that nerd talk perpetually" haha. As always, even a few years later, excellent content from Gerald Undone. Thanks for all that you do. TJ
I set this up at the beginning of the year. DS1618, three 6TB spinners (for now), maxed out the ram, put in an SFP+ PCIe card (Mellanox connect-x2 in the NAS and the 2 computers) , and ran fiber to the PCs. Edit 6k video off it without issue in Davinci Resolve. Using a ramdisk on the DS1618, got 1.08GB/sec file transfer. I didn't go with the QNAP because I read about the security / malware issues they've had scared me away.
Looking into getting myself a NAS. This is very helpful. Actually the most helpful I've watched! Why have I not stumbled upon your channel before? No idea. But I've already subscribed! Thanks for this 👌
Gerald: I don't keep files forever...
Here I am staring at my 7TB HDDs full of unedited files
I feel you. 8TB NAS and another 14TB in archive drives.
i think i have +2000 old movie rips that come in a 700mb taking a big chunk of my server and i just can't let'em go
wow what a great reviewer this guy is. so thorough. Great Job Gerald.
I don’t even have a computer 😢. But it’s still great 👍 to watch. So when I’m ready to buy. I will know what to buy 😊. Education in Tech is always great 👍.
As an infrequent amateur my needs aren't intense, but I have definitely found my Synology 918+ to be sufficiently fast for light timeline work in Resolve.
Also, I just discovered Backblaze B2 and am over the moon!
Great video. It was good to have my own experience confirmed
I've been using the Synology Diskstation for 5 years now and have accumulated 5 of them across 3 sites for redundancy and sheer lunacy. In fact I've had the 1618+ for year plus now and am really happy with it. I picked up a QNAP TS-251+ today and was pleasantly surprised to see your video comparing the two companies offerings. My reason for buying the TS-251+ is to offload some operations off my 1618+ so that I can get back to editing off of it. I may make a video explaining all of that but it will probably be 3 hours long and not as entertaining as I hope. Will probably be some high level nerd stuff. Thanks for your video.
The definitive guide on NAS is here!
Good timing. I was just looking for this.
I've been waiting for this exact video and I'm so glad that YOU made it.
I started with Synology diskstations but this year I upgraded to a RS1619xs+ with four 4TB Samsung Evos in RAID F1 and then a RS2818RP+ with over 100tb for bulk storage. You definitely would have to keep these in a server closet with sound dampening and ventilation but this setup is rock solid if you prefer performance and reliability over noise levels (about 60 dba eek). NVME caching on the 1619xs+ actually had a performance penalty but it’s plenty fast enough without it. For the Synology disk stations you can swap the 40mm fans for quieter noctua fans.
Love it, I have pulled fans before, I have even rewired two fans from parallel to serial so they run slower and quieter. Great review, thanks.
Thanks for doing your videos in my own bespoke order. I literally bought a Synology RS2418 and a QNAP TS-1635 in the last 2 days! The QNAP is replacing the LOUD Synology (which is a rack unit, granted). Would be easier if you made the videos right *before* instead of right after my purchases though :-)
The good news is I can play back a clip in Final Cut with four 4K camera angles and the angle viewer AND the main clip visible and it just rocks along at 10G.
Please do a continuation to this video. I was in a similar situation with storage and simply upgraded to 13tb but a long term solution is needed for me.
Wow...I made it to the four minute mark before getting a bit glassy eyed. That is not bad for a landlord.
Great video! tHanks for all the info. I have a super Triple Drive backup system - but this is next level stuff!
Hey. Amazing video! This is kind of exactly what I was planning to build for editing from 2 or 3 PCs. Awesome to see a great video about it. What about using regular HDs in the NAS, though? Too slow? Does anybody know if regular HDs and 1GBit network would be enough to edit from (mainly 1080p footage/video though)?
I have a QNAP TS-932X with 10 GB SPF+ connection. I have 4 4 TB Iron Wolf drives set-up in a RAID-5 array, and 2 256 MB SSD drives set up as a read cache. I edit 5.9K directly off of the NAS.
I've been using Synology for years. Purchased for a resilient place to store my photos, but now using it for much more. I like the little Intel Atom CPU on this, as its quite capable, while overall power draw on the server is extremely low.
Awesome review. Very professional and well delivered. And entertaining, too.
You've given everyone enough info to know whether or not this tech will work for them and their use case.
Well done, sir! I've been looking at the QNAPs with envy, but I think I'll stick with my Synology for now.
Crystal Clear Explanation Build one at End Of The Year . Awesome
thank you for this video, def the topic I've been searching for in a long time :)
I went with a QNAP unit. With any of those pre-fab storage solutions (QNAP or Synology), I would recommend ONLY using the drives that are fully compatible with the specific storage unit.
I believe this is a more expensive route, but less headache in terms of troubleshooting & maintaining.
Missing out on a lot of good stuff on both those boxes by just using them as file storage, for that a custom setup will come in significantly cheaper and with significantly higher spec. I personally use the Synology kit and once you bump the RAM and start adding a few virtual machines, automated remote encrypted backups, surveillance station etc it really shines.
Hey Gerald, just to be on the safe side with the unplugged fan on the network card, maybe put a 40mm Noctua fan on top the heatsink? They're only like 20 bucks and SUPER quiet.
We have a QNAP 1282 T3 and it's a vast improvement over an earlier unit - why? Processor i7 v. i3. The I7 make a huge difference. Boot times, transfers and so on. Quiet as well. We configured completely differently with two 2TB M.2 NVME drives and 4 12TB hard drives in raid 1 pairs. for backup. It's been flawless, but I know what you mean about interface. It's not very easy or intuitive. But how often do you need to look at it, not very.... Great video.
Storage is an expensive but interesting topic. I do try to save my video projects and it does add up fast... I recently picked up a QNAP TR-004 and filled it with 10TB drives. I'm happy with it so far for my use case. Using it in RAID 10 with the software configuration option instead of dip switches on the unit to select RAID level. I'm getting around 200mb/s writes which isn't great, but I'm using it for backup rather than trying to edit off of it. I might convert it to RAID 5 eventually to get more storage. At least until it makes sense to change out the drives. It sounds like you will benefit from a custom solution, but saturating a pair of 10 gbit ethernet ports would be a (fun) challenge to build a compact storage focused system around. I wonder if there are speed limitations related to the network gear rather than the NAS to consider as well.
He's using SSDs. Just two will saturate a single controller or 10gb port.
@@MiaogisTeas 2.5 gigabytes a second over the two connections that do 10 gigabit. I haven't watched this video in 3 years so no idea what specific SSDs he was using but if they were SATA they will be limited to that interface and it's not 2.5 gigabytes/sec, more like a maximum of 500 MB/sec but with my older SATA SSDs it's a bit slower. You also don't get 1:1 transfer speeds in RAID situations.
Almost went this route but have a setup now with a internal SAS card and windows storage spaces. 8x 2tb drives 12.7tb internal
"Micromachines, just like the real thing, only smaller."🤣 Great review. Wow. not sure how I missed this one. I am still no better off in deciding. LOL
I'd never thought about just getting rid of all the non used files. My issue is I don't publish 99% of what I film so it's often not edited into something nice. Maybe I should spend more time doing that so I can delete the old stuff.
First time I’m actually hearing your breaths between sentences. Also the first time listening thru headphones
If it ain't broke then why fix it? Looks like either of these will work fine for someone needing 10Gbe. Good review and thank you.
Gerald Undone is the guy that ask brands to send their product without giving them the review they want to have :P
I would like to see how a custom build that achieves your goals and compares to these NAS boxes. I have recently been considering building a NAS so I'm glad to see these videos. Thanks Gerald.
Gerald great review mate, i'm in the RAID zone right now so timing couldn't have been better.
Great review - always wondered if anyone else had edited over a network. I only use the NAS for backups these days, and edit a working copy off of local drives. I've found a few network hiccups that led to corrupted premiere pro project files and a tonne of re-work. There was no advantage to editing via network. (exporting to network has some advantages)
Thanks for putting the time into this.
Good job on the review. Network anything is hard to review and talk about so its hard to find good information about differences and uses.
I ended up with going with Synology DS918+ with 2 10T Drives at the start for budget reasons. Synology allows you to add drives in over time and I have since added another drive with no problems.
I've been using the Synology DS418play, and I couldn't be happier (disks not SSD), but throughput has been great.
hey Gerald, can we get an update on this topic for 2021? maybe there is a budget solution, faster, efficient etc currently? thank you!
Thank you for the insight. My current solution is to keep the files on my iPad (I edit on it) until finished editing, then upload to an external drive. Hdd may not be optimal for editing, but I just use them for storage 😂 keep up the good work Gerald I enjoy your videos 💚💙💜
Thank you ! Very good infos and reviews about NAS are so rare to find
Am I the only one who spent the majority of this video watching the reflection of Gerald's hands, from his monitor, in the glass of the QNAP?
QNAP has a feature that makes them the winner. Hybrid drives. QNAP can be a Thunderbolt 3 direct connected drive and a network drive at the same time.
"... and in today's episode Gerald Undone discusses computer orifice challenges... because HE'S CRAZZZZY!"
Definitely would be fun to see what kind of crazy custom setup you could rig up. Check out all of the used enterprise server hardware on Ebay... Massive supply combined with very little demand. I bought an HP proliant rack server with dual 8 core xeons, 128gb ram, 8x2.5" drive bays, 3x dual sfp+ 20g cards, and redundant power supplies for $300! Overkill for storage? Sure, but I set it up to automatically transcode all of our offloaded camera footage to a better mezzanine codec as well as small, web-friendly versions that we often use.
I'm sure you could think of some more creative ways to put cheap compute horsepower to good use!
Perfect timing, I was searching on a storage solution for 4k videos and plex server.
This is a blast from the past! I went out and bought the i5 version of the QNAP in August of 2022 (the same 672xt-i5-8gb. It cost right around $1700 w/tax. The processor says 1.7ghz with turbo up to 3.1ghz. I did the i5 because it is a 6-core processor.
Anyone know if this was a dumb choice versus the newer version with the i3 that runs at a solid 3.1ghz but with 4 cores?
I am going to plug this directly into an 8k tv for streaming 4K/8k home video projects. A lot of thought went into the correct model/features but would I have been better off with just buying the newer one with the i3?
This is an oldie but goodie video so I don’t know if anyone is reading these (including the G-Man but feel free to share ANY thoughts on this unit).
Thanks all & Gerald. These videos hold up years later! ;)
Also synology has an auto ingest mode. right when you plugin a USB / ESATA drive you can have it pull the data and place it chronologically in the synology system.
Awesome video, Gerald! I would love to see a video of a regular day of filming and editing workflow, as well as the time it takes you. Thank you for the knowledge here my friend!
Gerald, the performance of single threaded reads/writes will with few exceptions be the speed of the slowest drive. This is because a single threaded write isn't spread out to all of the drives, you would need multiple writes which could be distributed. This is why you always see the performance go up with threading/queuing. It's also the reason why you won't functionally notice a speed difference between all of the boxes you tested. The reason why your 10Gb ethernet was never saturated is because your slowest drive is constrained by it's 6Gb path over SATA. If you really want the ultimate in performance you will need a box that has extreme caching (it helps with read performance) and a very fast staging area to write synchronous writes to. Many that really understand storage like the freenas group will build a fairly powerful PC with lots of memory, spinning drives, and a very fast NVME drive that acts as a write cache using ZFS. The topology is this: The network always reads from the memory based cache first, then goes to disk. After a little bit, the cache gets enough data and makes this very fast. For writes, it will write to the NVME drive as well as the cache. Because the data was committed to NVME, it is stored safely and quickly, but we never bother to read it again unless we have a failure, instead we read from the cache. In other words, the NVME is only there to say we actually wrote the data to no volatile storage. There is so much more to explain so if you want more, shoot me an email at schu@schu.net, otherwise just know that you really aren't going to get more than 1 SSD drive's worth of performance out of any of the boxes you are looking at. If you want a great test to confirm that, put one of the SSD drives in your desktop and do all of the same tests again, you will notice, it's not really any faster (maybe a little due to overhead). Matt
I should also note that storage is harder than it looks because much of it isn't obvious. The experts that understand the bottle necks can get amazing performance, but non-experts like Linus Tech Tips just keep swapping nas distros in order to find one that works the best and hopefully get lucky. I recommend reading through the ZFS articles at arstechnica by Jim Salter, he really does understand what's going on: arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/05/zfs-101-understanding-zfs-storage-and-performance/ Keep in mind that the article is from a ZFS perspective, but all raid systems will have similar issues to overcome.
Careful with those Aquantia cards. Everywhere Ive worked they tend to fail from load and heat when frequently in use. The Intel’s are ROCK solid. x550 cards. Well worth it.
Great video! I would love to see the actual work flow of your team video editing process using the NAS solution.
I'm right at the line needing to upgrade to a NAS. I have, like a zillion portable SSD plugged in everywhere. And archive past footage? Guilty as charged.
NAS is great for video editing. He also spits some awesome rhymes.
I was looking for cloud services and decided on B2 as well since I am on linux. I like the pay what you use and the pricing is very fair.
I swapped out the fans on my Synology unit for high quality Silent Wings 4 fans from BeQuiet. Much quieter. Something to consider if you are in the market for a NAS and near-silent operation is important to you.
Get yourself a tiny little Noctua fan to replace the one on the 10Gb NIC. They even come with a low-noise adapter which will lower the maximum RPM of the fan and keep the noise down. The NF-A4x10 FLX is a tiny fan that should fit.
If you don't want to cut and solder the 3 pin DC fan plug to that 2 pin VGA fan plug, get something like a Kolink fan adapter on Amazon and it's all plug and play!
I would feel MUCH more comfortable knowing that there was active cooling on a component that was intended to have it!
It's not every day you hear someone say that Synology is the cheaper solution. To be fair, this is like comparing a $750 camera from one vendor with a $1.5k camera from another. For the amount that QNAP costs you could get the Synology FileStation FS1018 with support for 12 SSD drives and expand with with a dual 10 GbE NIC. Anyway, I have a QNAP box, my brother uses Synology... both are good. The most important part is understanding your need and matching it to the correct hardware.