I rarely comment on any video here on TH-cam but that was insane. Super informative. It answered all the questions in my mind about how I should setup a NAS system of my own. Thank you Alex 🙏
Hi Alex. Following your advice relating to this NAS, I did a lot of research which confirmed that this unit it still up to date in the market despite all the announcements which have been made in the past year. It is definitely not cheap once loaded with 9 drives, but I decided to buy one because your were so enthusiastic about it. I do not have any regrets at all. Using a 10GbE switch from QNAP to connect a 2019 MacBook Pro to it with a OWC Thunderbolt 3 adapter, I get very fast connection and the unit performs very well. It is so snappy ! Thanks for making such a good and truthful review. I am using it with QuTS Hero 5 and I set up all the necessary security measures to avoid being hacked. I am so happy 😊
"Get into TH-cam" they said, "it will be fun and easy"...... So I had a second hand laptop 2 years ago. Now I have an Intel i9 with RTX 3070, Davinci Resolve 17 Studio.... Upgraded my broadband from 60gb to 300gb. and now you come along and blow my mind!! Thanks.
Since you are a professed Newbee to NAS I commend you for going full speed (after proper research) ahead to resolving your storage needs first then realizing that you have a new work horse at your finger tips. I am a retired IT pro and shoot mainly photography (dancers) with some instructional and demo videos. I bought a QNAP dual drive in 2020 (8TB total) and shut down my (aging out) 2014 WD MyCloud Drive 2TB system. I utilize 2 external drives (4TB & 2TB) attached to the USB port via a Hub to provide backup vs RAID 0 or 1. Rock on and get that 10GB network online.
I really hope you enjoyed this NAS video! If you did, check out Part 2, which looks at installing a 10 Gigabit home nework for the QNAP NAS, for fully maximise it's speeds: th-cam.com/video/58VrDiKyvmU/w-d-xo.html :)
Can you use SSD for the upper drives? I know it’s probably a bigger expense, but isn’t there less of a chance of HD failure with SSD over the mechanical drives, or am I wrong about that?
@@jnap47 Yep, you could create a completely SSD based NAS, which would also give you faster read/write speeds too. As you say, it would be more expensive, but less likely to have drive failures with SSD's!
EXACTLY what I was looking for!!! Liked & Subscribed!!! Great Job!!! DEFINITELY want to see you do a remote editing session with your NAS. I’m SURE I’ll be emailing you to help me set mine up!!!
@@alex_nemo_ Depends how much storage you want? You can’t really get affordable high capacity SSDs. I think an 8TB NAS SATA SSD is about 2 to 3 times the price of a mechanical hard drive, and that’s about the largest off the shelf capacity you can get. An 8TB NVMe drive is about twice as much again, but they don’t fot regular slots.
Good video..so as you have 60 terabytes of storage in mechanical drives, don't beleive anyone who tells you that mechanical drives will become obsolete soon. This really demonstrate that it still will be with us for a very long time.
Hey Alex, thank you so much for this video!! You basically first described all the problems our new found production company is facing right now and then solved them. With a team of 4 Editors and normally 2 people working on the same project, this seems to be exactly what we need. I also watched the other video about upgrading your network to 10Gbit and that's also what we gonna do. You just saved my day since Ive been looking into this stuff for over a week now without proper results. Im also definitely not an IT Freak but you explained everything so well. Thank you so much man and keep up the great work! All Love from Berlin!
Saved it in what way? Im just starting out my company here in the U.S but it's not like im going to have that many employees from the get go, and I don't have a big budget so I was looking for cheaper NAS options, do you think that's a bad idea? What exactly will I be missing out on? I just wanted to use it for storage.
I've had a 120tb 12bay nas qnap for 3 years and a 80tb synology 12bay for 7. After ask that time I just bought a new Synology to move all the drives from the qnap over. The qnap has been a HUGE pain. Horrible support, massive issues, ip problems slow downs and security issues. The synology has been solid and way more reliable. Not as fast but so much better AND actually has support that will help when you loose your array. Qnap I have 2 backup drives attatched for safety and I'm still scared I'll lose it all some day.
If you use the QNAP QDA-U2MP eclosure you can accommodate two M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe SSDs per each eclosure, basically transforming the NAS from 9 to 11 bays. This will allow having BOTH the QNAP OS and the SSD cache in each own RAID PCIe NVMe SSDs. The SATA SSDs can just be used for just another volume.
It’s not just the SSD caching. When you have a RAID array as opposed to JBOD, you’re also treating the mechanical drives like a parallel connection. So if each mechanical drive would hit 120MB/s, you’re going to get around 450MB/s (it also has to write parity data or overhead which is why it’s not 600MB/s). If you go beyond the amount of SSD cache in a single transfer you’ll be able to see the speed of your mechanical drives.
not in a raid 5 while writing to the array. There is no Write speed gained, you are limited to single drive speeds, so the cache acceleration with write cache is very helpful. (Quts Hero OS uses ram ZIL caching for write cache so in this case his SSD's aren't directly helping, it's the ZFS file system)
@@Rocman76 Incorrect ZFS RAID-Z1 (which should NEVER be used with 5 12TB disks), has a sequential write of Aprox n-p, so 4*120MB/s= 460MB/s. In practice however, this would be closer to about n-(p*2), taking some bottlenecks into account, so closter to about 350MB/s. You are, however, limited to single-disk iops.
Please take into consideration that you have no Backup with this setup at all! A RAID-System is not meant to be a backup, it is a failover solution if one harddisk fails. To protect your important data, you still need a second device, ideally physicaly separated from your nas, for example in another building. There are many scenarios where your data is still lost if you have no second backup device. Think about all the malware and trojans like emotet which will encrypt your data and many other scenarios where your data is gone.
In essence it is a back- up, but is not a disaster recovery plan. I work in healthcare and was around when it was a thing. Most of what I store is interesting but not irreplaceable. That stuff I back up to a 2T thumb-drive. MyCloud has a usb jack on the back made for copying files from the raid-drives. I suppose a person could pop one of the raid drives and put a new drive in. It will auto-populate, keep the other drive somewhere else, rotate them every now and then.
Some RAIDS are redundant, it just depends on which RAID level you choose. There is a RAID level that mirrors and also one that provides a parity function that allows for rebuilding the dead drive by removal and inserting a new one. But you do still need a 1 or 2 backups for failsafe.
The thing I like about your QNAP that I haven’t seen on any Synology device is the three different options for storage types - rotating media, SATA SSD, and NVME SSD, and the ability to specify different purposes for each of those storage pools.
@@g.s.3389 - there is that risk, yes. But I think it makes a lot of sense. You could use them as separate pools, for example the NVME pair could be set up in RAID-1 mirroring for those cases where you need maximum speed and reliability, and the SATA pair could be used as write-back caching for the 3.5” hard drive pool. If you can’t think of enough ways to use the different classes of drives, then yes - this might be a bit of a waste for you. But I can think of plenty of uses for the different classes of drives.
@@shubinternet that's not the point, you do not get all your eggs in a basket. at least that's not professionals do. I tell you my story, I just save on my nas family videos and photos, I had only 1 and in raid 1 (synology), but when the internal power supply broke, I was close to lose everything, I found on ebay the replacement and immediately after I bought a second, cheaper nas so to have a second backup.
@@g.s.3389 - I was a technical reviewer for the books “Backup and Recovery”, as well as “Using SANs and NAS”, both from the late 90s. I am well acquainted with the 3-2-1 strategy of doing backups (have at least three backups for your data, two on-site and one remote). If you don’t have additional backups of your data, then you really only have yourself to blame. And I confess, that even after all this time, I do fall into this trap myself.
@@shubinternet i also think this setup is perfect for editing files, the SSD caching should only be attached to the HDD, while the NVMe SSD’s is where to store your current editing projects on. I would use the NVMe SSD in raid 0 for more useable space. Of course there needs to be separate backup’s, i would backup for sure but from an editing viewpoint this setup is really nice. I don’t see a downside except that its extremely expensive.
Nice looking setup, I like that the NVME is accessible from the front. I edit slow motion video for birds in flight and such directly from the NAS as well as photos. I chose Synology DS1819+ and I now have a second NAS a DS1821+. I had a HDD failure on my 1819+ and needed to restore files to a separate storage array to avoid data loss. When the HDD failure occurred, it wrote corrupted files to my NAS recycle bin and when I tried to restore my main folder from the recycle bin my files ended up being 0 Bytes, so it was my fault. The hot swap of the corrupted drive originally worked fine it was my extra step that messed it up. I found some NAS software where was able to recover the majority of my RAW files without file names. It's still restoring 31TB of data now. I reached out to a restore company and they wanted 5K - 25K to restore my files. Synology couldn't assist with it, so having a NAS doesn't fully protect you from data loss & at these sizes a cloud backup solution is not affordable for most unless you want another car or house payment. A second NAS for me was the cheaper option.
Two other notes: It's gonna overheat in a closet; drives toss out a *lot* of British Thermal Units. And I wouldn't use the U.2 for the boot drives; I'd mirror the 2.5 SATAs and use those. You need the speed for data a lot more than for the programs.
I remember you from the days of Periscope. A pioneer, really, in that genre. So glad I found your channel! Excellent video! Wishing you the Best on TH-cam and seeing your future projects. -Kat
Thanks for the excellent overview I picked one up on ebay open box unused for $ 500 and Populated it with refurbished Western Digital 14TB Ultrastar DC HC530 SATA HDD - 7200 RPM Class, SATA OEM drives for $150. because they're actually Hitachi server drives that last forever and for me it's better to have the drives last than the warranty I also I also got 1.2 TB the Mvne SSD drives used for half price and Cheaper SSDs that test out with better performance specs than the red ones just because. I''m upgrading the memory to 16GB. Waiting for my switch next, Other than that I'm Basically mirrioring Alex's setup though I use a PC not a Mac so we'll see how it all goes. Thanks Again.
Alex, I’m new but now subscribe. The information you’ve imparted here is impressive, but not only that, you’re very clear and concise in a educative way. Just wanted to say thanks. watching this video was a big help and just what i’ve been looking for. 👏👍
That’s awesome. Looks like this setup would run around $4600 in the US as of 2/14/22 based off your affiliate links. Now just have to convince my partner that it’s a good investment
I actually came across this video because of looking at my own setup. I like to make some compositions of my travels. Mostly video's of hikes or other explorations. So it mostly get big files. After a trip or vacation I always upload everything to my laptop and NAS. My PC to work with the files for editing (should give the fastest/safest responses, and least rendering time). And my NAS for having it backed up (mostly also make another backup on an external HDD to keep it extra safe). But after finishing editing I mostly remove it from my laptop to preserve space (and to work on other video's or projects). And also use my laptop not only for video editing, so other apps also need it's space. I had to re-edit a few video's lately, and I first was thinking about transfering the needed dirs to my laptop again before starting re-editing. But removing files to copy new ones just to re-edit some premade projects is quite a hustle. especially because it are already finished projects and I only need to re-render/export again after a few little modifications. So I actually just started to work straight from my NAS (wired), since the files are already locally stored there. It just seems to work fine, and maybe the render times are a bit longer instead of working directly with the files from my laptop. But I don't seem to see noteworthy problems (also only using 1080p files wit a bitrate of 25K, so it's not a massive dataload neither). But now I was reading the manual of my editing software again, and they strongly recommend not to work from network drives (NAS). But I actually don't seem to notice quality problems, drastic speed drops, errors etc. in the exported/rendered projects/video's. So I went searching Google "why". To find out why they strongly recommend not to use NAS servers etc. Can't find much about it though. And besides transfers speeds or connection drops I could not think about much other possible problems. Especially not since I'm also pre-rendering all the clips because of my system specs. So everything should be rendered locally to my laptop before playback or export. But good to see that editing/ working from network drives/ NAS is more common.
Thank you, I’ll definitely consider set up one of these since I’m so fed up with dozens hard drives all around and every time wasting time to look for some old projects when old customers show up…
Excellent valuable intel. I have older Drobo NAS devices that I use just for backup. Never got good performance. I am just recreational video geek and going in different direction for now. Am getting new 16” MacBook M1 Max with 4 TB. Then offload to external SSD and Drobo and then to IDrive for offsite storage 10 TBs which is not expensive. Will keep your NAS solution in mind.
@@stuart_gill - both, actually. As you get more drives in a RAID array, your chances go up that you will have a second drive failure while trying to recover from t(e first one. And a second drive failure with RAID-5 is catastrophic. You have a similar problem with capacity, because it takes longer and longer to recover from a single drive failure, as your capacity goes up. Hard drive speeds have not kept pace with hard drive capacities. So, it might be a 20TB drive, but how fast can you fill that 20TB drive during the recovery process? Again, as your capacities go up, you increase the chances that you’ll have a second drive failure while trying to recover from the first one. And a second drive failure with RAID-5 is catastrophic.
@@stuart_gill RAID-5 supports a single drive failure. So if you have big disk, said, above 4TB during the time the raid is rebuilding another drive could fail. You will think this is very unlikely, but since you are buying all the drives the same day, from the same manufacturer and probably the same batch it's not as rare as expected (noncommon either). Remember that if you have your drives at 50% with a 12TB drive that means moving 6TB around. 4TB is, in this case, the capacity of each drive not of the array. I hope this helps.
@Alex Pettitt, As mentioned in other comments, get yourself a proper backup for the NAS before you (potentially) lose everything. I had a QNAP NAS and the backplate (for the drive ports) started playing up at about 2 years old. It would “eject” drives from the NAS, initially the third drive would go, then the 4th, 5th and 6th shortly afterwards. It worked intermittently, I swapped drives and ran disk checks on them too. Haven’t used it for a while and looking to build my own. The contents of my NAS are currently on external drives which were direct backups, and also in the cloud.
Yep, I have now implemented a 10tb backup drive to backup my most precious files.... just incase. Shame to hear about the issues you've had.... mine has been rock solid so far :)
@@AlexPettitt Mine was great when it wasn't ejecting drives. It was going to cost north of £200 to get the backplate replaced by QNAP! There is a possible fix posted on a forum where a soldering iron is required but I haven't looked into it properly, mainly because I've got limited experience with that type of thing. I would also look into cloud backups of your data too, some of the archival cloud servicess are very affordable for long term storage of large data. Edit - I was in two minds about building my own originally, and in hindsight, it would have been the better option. At the moment I'm looking for the right kit for a self build.
@@stuart_gill Cloud services have a huge list of negatives, some of which Alex already covered in the video. Better to just buy extra hard drives and keep them off site or in a fireproof container.
I have a very similar setup. TS-H9743AX with 32 GB and SSD caching. But I am also using the QSW-M408-4C QNAP 10G switch for my 10G network. Also, I'm using RAID 1 on two 10G Red drives, to allow me to expand storage as larger capacity drives become available down the line. I added this setup to my TVS-463 that I was using before. I added the 10G upgrade to the 463. I've had good performance, but not without problems. First, the boot speed on the TS-H9743AX is slow. Also, unlike the 463, there is no HDMI interface. Also, I have worked with both Premiere and Final Cut, and your mounts have to be SMB/CIFS for Final Cut Pro. It sometimes drops this (not sure why honestly), but this is never a problem in Premiere. And yes, I have used Resolve. However, the early "growth" reliability problems on early versions, made me write them off. I understand the that "database corruption" problems have long since been resolved.
EXACTLY what I was looking for!!! Liked & Subscribed!!! Great Job!!! DEFINITELY want to see you do a remote editing session with your NAS. I’m SURE I’ll be emailing you to help me set mine up!!!
New to editing and trying to do everything right. This is sooo overwhelming and I dont even know how to ask the right questions here. I shall keep researching, but thanks for all the information.
But to backup a NAS to Backblaze or Azure Storage costs an arm and a leg. The workaround I did was to use a 16 bay 2.5 SSD ICY Dock + a RocketRAID 3740C. It recognizes the drives as local. Can be configured as RAID and it costs $7 a month to backup my 48TB (3TB x 16). Also, the 4K files are local and does not have to traverse the network.
Well explained - thanks Alex! Would love to see a more detailed view on your file/ structure and Davinci workflow using the NAS storage if that's possible and worth sharing for you (?)
That's Amazing. My main concern was the editing from the NAS in Da Vinci Resolve, but I believe that's covered with the SSDs. That's phenomenal. I haven't worked with 4K content yet, but I'm planning on upgrading my storage solution. I'm tired of going drive to drive.
Awesome to hear Eddy! Glad the video was useful :) Yeah so far, it’s been an absolute breeze editing in DaVinci directly off of the NAS! I love it and sure you will too.
Alex, ...great video! Super helpful. I'm not ready to drop $3.5K on one of these, Is there something a bit more affordable or maybe you could describe what you were using prior to acquiring the QNAP.
I bought a low-level Qnap for $300. No 10gig port or SSD caching or NVME slots. Another $400 for four 4TB drives gives me 12TB usable space. You can also start with fewer drives and slowly add more over time. (But the qnap interface isn’t great for disk admin.)
@@DougPipersr I got the TS-431k and would not buy again. It has a weak CPU and the memory is not expandable. I use it as a PLEX server and it lacks the power to do real-time transcoding, so some videos won't play on some TVs. It basically does the job I need now, so I won't replace it for another 3 years. When I do I would aim for 6+ bays instead of 4.
@@tracyt7319 That's super helpful! In your opinion, do you think the QNAP TS-932PX-4G with its AnnapurnaLabs Alpine AL324 ARM Cortex-A57 quad-core 1.7GHz processor, be a better investment?
Thank you for this amazing video. I was looking this for long time. I am going to build my NAS coming month when I will get my Mac Studio Computer I need the solid NAS for video Editing. Do you have any suggestions today's date? anything new arrive? are you happy with your NAS System?
Glad you’ve found the video useful! I’m still incredibly happy with my NAS setup so far! It handles whatever I throw at it! My advice would definitely be to look for a NAS that has either a 10GBE connection or Thunderbolt included, you still need those fast data speeds for video editing :]
As an IT Systems guy, I'll be searching for pure SSD arrays now, not HD. Why? The up front savings in storage cost will be far less than the power costs over time. Unless a person only turns it on for each time it's needed, the power needed is very significant. It's a good device for those who don't mind.
I’m not a professional and that’s exactly what I thought. And to be putting drives of every model in the market (HDD, SSD, NVME) better to inverts already in the best technology ssd and that’s it.
It's interesting that you nailed my comment, right in the lede: I just noticed, like, *today*, in QNAP's marketing that *they do not quote the size of the parity drive* in their sizing: That unit you have there, with 5 12TB drives? They'd call that a "48TB NAS". I think that's admirable, myself.
Except even that is incorrect as a 12TB drive doesn't have 12TB of space on it. Take another roughly 10% off the 48TB and you get a more accurate storage size.
I am a QNAP bigot. I have a TS-879 Pro and a TS-432-PXU. Both are fast, reliable and highly compatible with just about any PC or Server. Both run at 10gbs. I would highly recommend QNAP NAS storage devices.
Hey William, this is awesome to hear ad that's for sharing your experience! I've got to say, no matter what I've thrown at my QNAP so far, it's handled it all brilliantly :) I've been so impressed!
@@AlexPettitt so I have two MACs with network access to both devices and two Supermicro servers running ESXi 7.0 that access 14 vms on these devices as well.
Great video as usual, I'm going for a 6 bay NAS just to have a hot spare and be extra sure that I'm covered. The content creation makes us extra paranoid! 🤣
Kind of like a MyCloud Home. We have a 6T Raid drive that is accessible remotely and all my families phones and laptops automatically back up to it, as well as Dropbox and social media.
I'm a NAS fan (especially the speed of archiving and retrieving large data vs cloud) but I disagree with your statement about savings on cloud storage. NAS is premise based so if you have theft, fire or flood you loose EVERYTHING unless you have some kind of cloud backup. Thus, you'll still have some monthly cost for cloud storage.
Amazing video! Super helpful. Does running the System Storage Pool off the SSDs take up 1tb of space? Also would love a more detailed breakdown video of how you set up your pools and settings for video editing. Also would love to see your workflow. I've got the 1288x and am excited to get the most out of it for video work! Thanks for the info!
Greatly done and many tips help demistify things a bit. Quick questions: Why didn't you opt for the nvme drives for ssd caching? Aren't these the ones that are supposed to be the fastest drives in order to avoid bottlenecks? Active project could possibly be on your macbook pro drive too? And after a considerable amount of time, from your experience is this NAS still a good buy today, or is the low end (by today's standards) processor a limiting factor that could create bottlenecks for 4K editing? Thanks a lot for your kind replies. I 'm considering this NAS too, since the QNAP TVS-h874X is significantly pricier.
This is an excellent video I have also been finding it very difficult to find information about my Nas. I ended up getting a Hugh Green 6-bay Pro.. to my threw with two NVMEs for cashing and upgraded the RAM to 64 GB. It's not my Naz has two thunderbolt 4 ports but they failed to tell us in the Kickstarter that you cannot use them for networking. However it also has two 10 GB ethernet ports but my computer did not have any. I'm trying to figure out the best way to get 10 GB ports on my PC. I ended up finding out my computer's PCIe slots are not working at all. Only the first one which is very strange.
This video was exactly what I was looking for. It answered all my questions about a NAS setup. I figured, all I had to do was to use the exact same setup and be done with it. However, I then "remembered" that I have a Dell PowerEdge T620 server "sitting around", so why not "convert" that into a NAS!? I then thought about it a little bit and realized, "Wait a minute, my T620 is already setup and running great. Why not just share a drive (make it a network drive) and be done!? Any ideas??? Thanks.
Finally! Thanks so much for making this video! I’ve wanted to add a NAS to our home network for years, but the information out there has either not been relevant to my use case, or has felt like I need to get a degree in computer science to understand. Now that we’re about to undertake a full retrofit of our new home, the place will be wired with Cat6a throughout for up to 10Gb/s, but mostly running AVB between a music teaching space and a garden studio over 1Gb network. So I can see a similar NAS setup to this, in an under-stairs switch cupboard, working perfectly for our backup, sample libraries and media sharing 😀 Btw, browsing your other videos, are you in south Essex? If you are, howdy neighbour! Hope you’re enjoying Christmas and have great New Year!
Any idea if using FCP rather than Resolve would affect this configuration for live editing off a NAS? I’m very impressed with your setup and your skill explaining it. Well done and thank you for sharing it.
Results should be exactly the same with Final Cut and Adobe Premiere :) Thanks so much for the compliment about the video… I do always try and make it as informative but understandable as possible :)
Great video, very useful. I have a few questions, I am on 1Gbps internet here, I am thinking of using a NAS to access my videos for editing, although much lighter 4K drone H.265/HEVC videos. So if you can safely scrub through BRAW footage I figure I can get away with my 1Gb connection here? As my PC is connected via ethernet, will my internet speed suffer when I want to video edit?
I just splashed loads of cash on buying the same system, I set everything up properly, the system and video files are on the NVMEs, cache acceleration is enabled, and I am using the new fully maxed out MacBook pro max but I can't play back an HD file on an HD timeline from the NAS
Great video and all the information!! thank you! One question, did you need something else to connect the QNA-T310G1T "The Multi-Gig NBase-T" or it goes strait to the computer? Thank you
Alex, thank you for sharing your experience with your NAS setup for video editing. So well done!!! I have few questions though. 1. You had to use a QNAP 10gb adapter to connect your MBP. Doesn't your MBP have 10GB built in, not understanding why you needed the adapter. 2. Are you concerned at all about using a QNAP branded NAS vs Synology given the problems with ransomeware problems with QNAP. Perhaps you dont have any external access to your NAS via the internet? Thanks again for this video, so much good information!!!
The macbook does not have a rj45 port at all. To use this setup you would require a hub or adapter with 10G rj45 port that connects to the Nas on one end and the usb-c on the mac on the other end. Also, I get the sense that you have overlooked that the speed of transfer is depedent on the storage, in this case the NAS. The transfer out is 10G but can be scaled to 1G, 2.5G, 10G depending on the configuration of the adapter, hub or switcher.
Amazing Nas, but keep in mind that if the mainboard or internal power supply breaks you lose everything, I would get less terrabytes but a second Nas. double caching looks a bit like a waste of resources. In any case, get a much smaller NAS were to have at least once a daay incremental backup.
Hi. I'm not sure that you get much real speed advantage by having the OS and the Apps on the very fast drives. In use the software is loaded into even much faster Random Access Memory and run from there - and you did get the upgraded version. Probably not taking up much room on the NVME so it's not the wrong thing to do. There is some debate about using Raid 5 configuration which you might like to look at online. Also, careful with the cupboard - make sure you have good ventilation into it or the NAS will run hotter than otherwise. The cooler electronics are the longer they last. Thank you very much for publishing this, the planning is very helpful. I've got a significant problem with data volumes using Canon Raw Light - about half a terabyte per hour just from one camera. Liked and subd.
WD has had some issues which may not have been too well know at the time of your posting this video. Still while I was doing research for my synology NAS 3 years ago I found that Seagate HDs were the better choice even back then. You may want to keep that in mind when it comes time to replace drives in your QNAP.
Freaking show off. 😂 great video as usual. This is a great solution for my office with the project drawings and project documents. Can you come set this up? 😂
Haha, I know you only come here for me to show off my new tech really ;) Ohh dude, a NAS would definitely do you wonders in the office as it would allow everyone to have access to the files all in one place! Book a flight, and I'll come set it up for you 😉
Thanks so much for the super thanks! Really appreciate it :) So I handle backups in a couple of ways currently! Firstly I have a 10TB WD External Hard drives plugged into the USB of my NAS, and I use the Backup and Sync app to backup my most vital and important files to that. I'm selective with that as it's only a 10TB drive. Secondly, I've also experimented a bit with backup up to the cloud using backblaze. Although I haven't settled on a final workflow for this yet :) Hope this helps and thanks again for your support of my content!
@@AlexPettitt my concern in my environment is off-site backups. The trouble for me is that my upload speed is very slow with my ISP. I am considering using Amazon's Snowball service at least to get started.
Great video alex, i just have one doubt, for the ssd's and the nvme's disk that you use for SSD caching, the qnap OS and to edit, can you use more storage than what you bought?? like for the ssd's you have 500gb's and for the nvme's you have 960's gb's, is that because they have a limit in storage or could you use drives with even more storage for those??? cause I just know that the main hard drives are the ones that have an storage limit in all the nas' but I'm not sure about the ssd's and the nvme's
for the 10 GB connection, I only have access to 1 GB internet from my provider. Does that make the 10 gb port useless? Or does using the 10 gb port into a 10 gb adaptor on my macbook make the local transfer speeds better, too? I really am just looking for a storage solution for high speed, local project workflow as a video editor. The network attachments is really just an bonus in my case
For a nas you typically don't ever even connect it to your internet, that's how it gets easily hacked and you lose everything unless you are extremely careful. 10gbe refers to your home Lan, local network, one home device talking to another and the speed of data transfer available through it, your bandwidth. You can get a converter in the case of a laptop or controller/nic in the case of a pc or nas that doesn't have a 10gbe port but does have a pcie Gen 2 x 2 or higher slot, and some cabling to get data transfer speeds like this. Just be sure to ensure things r compatible. Others will say you need a switch, and that would be for if you wanted to route 10gbe networking to more than just your nas and one device (e.g. multiple editor PCs). Those can still be quite expensive so it depends on your needs whether you get one or not.
GReat video, really well explained and sod etailed. REally, thank you so much. Now, is there a reason you only use Western Digital drives? Are they providing some sort of sponsorship or you find them to be the most reliable for this system?
Excellent video and I understood everything to the point. I have a scenario if you can help me. I have a small studio with 5 iMac (old + new) and my Macbook Pro M1. We now use traditional hard disk via usb 3.0. I want to totally go NAS route like you. How do I connect my older iMac to get good speed? 1Gig networking is fine here but we do multiple machine editing. So is there any way to connect all and get good results?
Nice NAS! Now you have to work on your backup strategy. You'll need another NAS synched to mirror your NAS, then a third NAS to back up monthly, one you can store off site like at your mom's house! 🤣
Great video. I pulled the trigger on this system. Excited to replace my failed Drobo. I CANNOT FIND THESE Ultrastar DC SN640 2.5" 960GB PCI Express 3.0 x4 NVMe Solid State DriveS ANYWHERE. I do not want to buy the wrong drives and there are so many points of difference. Can you advise where to get compatible NVMe drives? Much appreciated.
This is a great video, and it's amazing to see a NAS using the kind of setup that was once confined to datacenters (e.g. ZFS pools w/ SSD and NVMe). Two questions: are you using the JBOD strictly as a daisy-chained NAS extender? I saw that QNAP offers the option of single-disk mode which could be useful for swapping in drives and using it as a big standalone external enclosure, but the formatting options to do that and also extend the NAS seem more limited, especially for Mac users. Also, what filesystem are you using for your storage pools?
Been talking with some network guys, and they really want to know why you setup mulple storage pools for your use case on video editing? I just bought this and I'm second guessing your storage pool setup.
Yeah, it’s definitely a beast! What’s your workflow at the moment Mink? And total cost of everything is around £3.5K in the U.K. The choice of drive will be what dictate the bulk of the cost :) Hope this helps
@@AlexPettitt that's actually quite a good price. Now I work with two very noisy raid-0 drives, and I use carbon copy cloner to do my backups, a lot of manually tasks.
@@AlexPettitt I bought the complete set:) Except for the WD HDD I bought some Seagate IronWolf Pro 16TB. But I was wondering, do you also use a Raid5 for the system SSD pool?
@@MinkPinster for me personally I believe I set up the system SSDs as RAID 1 instead of RAID 0. I’m actually away so not able to check, but I’m 99% sure that’s what I did :)
Alex - Great video! Are you using a newer MBP? I can not find a driver to support Xfer speeds faster than 1GB for most of the Thunderbolt to Ethernet adapters. Does the QNAP adapter have a functioning driver for the M1? Any suggestions? Thanks
Thanks you, Alex. Excellent video. (As always!) Do you know of any M1 issues with your NAS? I have been working off of Caldigit Raid 5 drives for years but when I switched to a new iMac M1 machines, I'm unable to use the drives. I assume it's because these are "software" Raids and there are issues with the cache set up. I've been looking for a replacement Raid 5 setup but yours it the first I've seen. Your setup looks like it might be the perfect solution for me if it works with the M1.
Hi Steef, thanks strange about the M1 issues you’ve been seeing. I haven’t heard of any issues with M1 and QNAP… you could pop an email with support to double check. I don’t have an M1 Mac yet, so can’t test this out. But I have no reason to believe it wouldn’t work perfectly fine :) Alex
A Nas is a Nas, it will work from an M1 or anything else as long as the supported protocols are present (SMB, NFS...). Pretty sure the Caldigit Raid 5 you are referring to is a DAS, thus requiring drivers, so it is a different can of worms.
This is great to see, thanks Alex. I've been running a TS-453BT3 over 10GBe for a few years, but it's not really been up to video editing. Adding an M.2 nvme cache has helped a lot, but as I now need to expand storage further, I'd been looking at the TVS-672XT. However, I hadn't seen the TS-h973AX and think it suits my need better. Nice one 👍 I really like that it has SATA SSD and nvme slots. Are you setting your SSDs in a RAID 1 for the operating system I wonder? On my current set up (RAID 5) the OS is so sluggish on the TS-453BT3, I really want something that's snappy.
I rarely comment on any video here on TH-cam but that was insane. Super informative. It answered all the questions in my mind about how I should setup a NAS system of my own. Thank you Alex 🙏
Hi Alex. Following your advice relating to this NAS, I did a lot of research which confirmed that this unit it still up to date in the market despite all the announcements which have been made in the past year. It is definitely not cheap once loaded with 9 drives, but I decided to buy one because your were so enthusiastic about it. I do not have any regrets at all. Using a 10GbE switch from QNAP to connect a 2019 MacBook Pro to it with a OWC Thunderbolt 3 adapter, I get very fast connection and the unit performs very well. It is so snappy ! Thanks for making such a good and truthful review.
I am using it with QuTS Hero 5 and I set up all the necessary security measures to avoid being hacked.
I am so happy 😊
"Get into TH-cam" they said, "it will be fun and easy"...... So I had a second hand laptop 2 years ago. Now I have an Intel i9 with RTX 3070, Davinci Resolve 17 Studio.... Upgraded my broadband from 60gb to 300gb. and now you come along and blow my mind!! Thanks.
Since you are a professed Newbee to NAS I commend you for going full speed (after proper research) ahead to resolving your storage needs first then realizing that you have a new work horse at your finger tips. I am a retired IT pro and shoot mainly photography (dancers) with some instructional and demo videos. I bought a QNAP dual drive in 2020 (8TB total) and shut down my (aging out) 2014 WD MyCloud Drive 2TB system. I utilize 2 external drives (4TB & 2TB) attached to the USB port via a Hub to provide backup vs RAID 0 or 1. Rock on and get that 10GB network online.
I really hope you enjoyed this NAS video! If you did, check out Part 2, which looks at installing a 10 Gigabit home nework for the QNAP NAS, for fully maximise it's speeds: th-cam.com/video/58VrDiKyvmU/w-d-xo.html :)
Can you use SSD for the upper drives? I know it’s probably a bigger expense, but isn’t there less of a chance of HD failure with SSD over the mechanical drives, or am I wrong about that?
@@jnap47 Yep, you could create a completely SSD based NAS, which would also give you faster read/write speeds too. As you say, it would be more expensive, but less likely to have drive failures with SSD's!
How much total?
EXACTLY what I was looking for!!! Liked & Subscribed!!! Great Job!!!
DEFINITELY want to see you do a remote editing session with your NAS.
I’m SURE I’ll be emailing you to help me set mine up!!!
@@alex_nemo_ Depends how much storage you want? You can’t really get affordable high capacity SSDs. I think an 8TB NAS SATA SSD is about 2 to 3 times the price of a mechanical hard drive, and that’s about the largest off the shelf capacity you can get. An 8TB NVMe drive is about twice as much again, but they don’t fot regular slots.
Good video..so as you have 60 terabytes of storage in mechanical drives, don't beleive anyone who tells you that mechanical drives will become obsolete soon. This really demonstrate that it still will be with us for a very long time.
Hey Alex, thank you so much for this video!! You basically first described all the problems our new found production company is facing right now and then solved them. With a team of 4 Editors and normally 2 people working on the same project, this seems to be exactly what we need. I also watched the other video about upgrading your network to 10Gbit and that's also what we gonna do. You just saved my day since Ive been looking into this stuff for over a week now without proper results. Im also definitely not an IT Freak but you explained everything so well.
Thank you so much man and keep up the great work!
All Love from Berlin!
Saved it in what way? Im just starting out my company here in the U.S but it's not like im going to have that many employees from the get go, and I don't have a big budget so I was looking for cheaper NAS options, do you think that's a bad idea? What exactly will I be missing out on? I just wanted to use it for storage.
I've had a 120tb 12bay nas qnap for 3 years and a 80tb synology 12bay for 7. After ask that time I just bought a new Synology to move all the drives from the qnap over. The qnap has been a HUGE pain. Horrible support, massive issues, ip problems slow downs and security issues. The synology has been solid and way more reliable. Not as fast but so much better AND actually has support that will help when you loose your array.
Qnap I have 2 backup drives attatched for safety and I'm still scared I'll lose it all some day.
If you use the QNAP QDA-U2MP eclosure you can accommodate two M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe SSDs per each eclosure, basically transforming the NAS from 9 to 11 bays. This will allow having BOTH the QNAP OS and the SSD cache in each own RAID PCIe NVMe SSDs. The SATA SSDs can just be used for just another volume.
This is what I am planning on doing with mine. Thanks for the recommendation.
It’s not just the SSD caching. When you have a RAID array as opposed to JBOD, you’re also treating the mechanical drives like a parallel connection. So if each mechanical drive would hit 120MB/s, you’re going to get around 450MB/s (it also has to write parity data or overhead which is why it’s not 600MB/s). If you go beyond the amount of SSD cache in a single transfer you’ll be able to see the speed of your mechanical drives.
not in a raid 5 while writing to the array. There is no Write speed gained, you are limited to single drive speeds, so the cache acceleration with write cache is very helpful. (Quts Hero OS uses ram ZIL caching for write cache so in this case his SSD's aren't directly helping, it's the ZFS file system)
@@Rocman76 Incorrect ZFS RAID-Z1 (which should NEVER be used with 5 12TB disks), has a sequential write of Aprox n-p, so 4*120MB/s= 460MB/s. In practice however, this would be closer to about n-(p*2), taking some bottlenecks into account, so closter to about 350MB/s.
You are, however, limited to single-disk iops.
Please take into consideration that you have no Backup with this setup at all! A RAID-System is not meant to be a backup, it is a failover solution if one harddisk fails. To protect your important data, you still need a second device, ideally physicaly separated from your nas, for example in another building. There are many scenarios where your data is still lost if you have no second backup device. Think about all the malware and trojans like emotet which will encrypt your data and many other scenarios where your data is gone.
In essence it is a back- up, but is not a disaster recovery plan. I work in healthcare and was around when it was a thing. Most of what I store is interesting but not irreplaceable. That stuff I back up to a 2T thumb-drive. MyCloud has a usb jack on the back made for copying files from the raid-drives. I suppose a person could pop one of the raid drives and put a new drive in. It will auto-populate, keep the other drive somewhere else, rotate them every now and then.
@@rickgividen4318 oh man, that's an absolute garbage.
Some RAIDS are redundant, it just depends on which RAID level you choose. There is a RAID level that mirrors and also one that provides a parity function that allows for rebuilding the dead drive by removal and inserting a new one. But you do still need a 1 or 2 backups for failsafe.
@@pxlmvr7redundant is not backup.
If you get hit with ransomware you will just have 2 copies of your corrupted data.
And power company frying your connection by transferring service to a new
Subdivision
The thing I like about your QNAP that I haven’t seen on any Synology device is the three different options for storage types - rotating media, SATA SSD, and NVME SSD, and the ability to specify different purposes for each of those storage pools.
well to me seems a quite wastet of resources.
@@g.s.3389 - there is that risk, yes. But I think it makes a lot of sense. You could use them as separate pools, for example the NVME pair could be set up in RAID-1 mirroring for those cases where you need maximum speed and reliability, and the SATA pair could be used as write-back caching for the 3.5” hard drive pool.
If you can’t think of enough ways to use the different classes of drives, then yes - this might be a bit of a waste for you. But I can think of plenty of uses for the different classes of drives.
@@shubinternet that's not the point, you do not get all your eggs in a basket. at least that's not professionals do. I tell you my story, I just save on my nas family videos and photos, I had only 1 and in raid 1 (synology), but when the internal power supply broke, I was close to lose everything, I found on ebay the replacement and immediately after I bought a second, cheaper nas so to have a second backup.
@@g.s.3389 - I was a technical reviewer for the books “Backup and Recovery”, as well as “Using SANs and NAS”, both from the late 90s. I am well acquainted with the 3-2-1 strategy of doing backups (have at least three backups for your data, two on-site and one remote).
If you don’t have additional backups of your data, then you really only have yourself to blame. And I confess, that even after all this time, I do fall into this trap myself.
@@shubinternet i also think this setup is perfect for editing files, the SSD caching should only be attached to the HDD, while the NVMe SSD’s is where to store your current editing projects on. I would use the NVMe SSD in raid 0 for more useable space.
Of course there needs to be separate backup’s, i would backup for sure but from an editing viewpoint this setup is really nice. I don’t see a downside except that its extremely expensive.
Nice looking setup, I like that the NVME is accessible from the front. I edit slow motion video for birds in flight and such directly from the NAS as well as photos. I chose Synology DS1819+ and I now have a second NAS a DS1821+. I had a HDD failure on my 1819+ and needed to restore files to a separate storage array to avoid data loss. When the HDD failure occurred, it wrote corrupted files to my NAS recycle bin and when I tried to restore my main folder from the recycle bin my files ended up being 0 Bytes, so it was my fault. The hot swap of the corrupted drive originally worked fine it was my extra step that messed it up. I found some NAS software where was able to recover the majority of my RAW files without file names. It's still restoring 31TB of data now. I reached out to a restore company and they wanted 5K - 25K to restore my files. Synology couldn't assist with it, so having a NAS doesn't fully protect you from data loss & at these sizes a cloud backup solution is not affordable for most unless you want another car or house payment. A second NAS for me was the cheaper option.
This is the best review of this NAS model.
Amazing video my man! Really informative, thanks for your effort!
Thanks very much. glad you enjoyed it!
English, Data! I have no idea what you just said and yet I understand. Thanks! It was very informative.
EXCELLENT information! Would you still buy the same Qnap NAS today in january 2023? Or is there a newer version?
Two other notes:
It's gonna overheat in a closet; drives toss out a *lot* of British Thermal Units.
And I wouldn't use the U.2 for the boot drives; I'd mirror the 2.5 SATAs and use those. You need the speed for data a lot more than for the programs.
I remember you from the days of Periscope. A pioneer, really, in that genre. So glad I found your channel! Excellent video! Wishing you the Best on TH-cam and seeing your future projects. -Kat
Now that is a trip down memory lane!! Thanks so much for the lovely comment Kat!
Thanks for the excellent overview I picked one up on ebay open box unused for $ 500 and Populated it with refurbished Western Digital 14TB Ultrastar DC HC530 SATA HDD - 7200 RPM Class, SATA OEM drives for $150. because they're actually Hitachi server drives that last forever and for me it's better to have the drives last than the warranty I also I also got 1.2 TB the Mvne SSD drives used for half price and Cheaper SSDs that test out with better performance specs than the red ones just because. I''m upgrading the memory to 16GB. Waiting for my switch next, Other than that I'm Basically mirrioring Alex's setup though I use a PC not a Mac so we'll see how it all goes. Thanks Again.
Thank you. I am definitely looking forward to more NAS and 10 Gig switch content. For video workflows!!
Awesome to hear! More coming soon for sure :)
Awesome video. Exactly what I needed to know. Unfortunately, everything is sold out.
Great video. Looking forward to seeing your upgraded system video.
Alex, I’m new but now subscribe. The information you’ve imparted here is impressive, but not only that, you’re very clear and concise in a educative way. Just wanted to say thanks. watching this video was a big help and just what i’ve been looking for. 👏👍
Hey Andrew, Thank you so much for the kind words! It really means a lot to me that you found the video helpful. Thank you for your support!
That’s awesome. Looks like this setup would run around $4600 in the US as of 2/14/22 based off your affiliate links. Now just have to convince my partner that it’s a good investment
Well done, Sir!
I thoroughly enjoyed the video. You did a great job with your presentation.
Class video mate, really informative!
I actually came across this video because of looking at my own setup. I like to make some compositions of my travels. Mostly video's of hikes or other explorations. So it mostly get big files.
After a trip or vacation I always upload everything to my laptop and NAS. My PC to work with the files for editing (should give the fastest/safest responses, and least rendering time). And my NAS for having it backed up (mostly also make another backup on an external HDD to keep it extra safe).
But after finishing editing I mostly remove it from my laptop to preserve space (and to work on other video's or projects). And also use my laptop not only for video editing, so other apps also need it's space.
I had to re-edit a few video's lately, and I first was thinking about transfering the needed dirs to my laptop again before starting re-editing. But removing files to copy new ones just to re-edit some premade projects is quite a hustle. especially because it are already finished projects and I only need to re-render/export again after a few little modifications.
So I actually just started to work straight from my NAS (wired), since the files are already locally stored there. It just seems to work fine, and maybe the render times are a bit longer instead of working directly with the files from my laptop. But I don't seem to see noteworthy problems (also only using 1080p files wit a bitrate of 25K, so it's not a massive dataload neither).
But now I was reading the manual of my editing software again, and they strongly recommend not to work from network drives (NAS). But I actually don't seem to notice quality problems, drastic speed drops, errors etc. in the exported/rendered projects/video's.
So I went searching Google "why". To find out why they strongly recommend not to use NAS servers etc. Can't find much about it though. And besides transfers speeds or connection drops I could not think about much other possible problems. Especially not since I'm also pre-rendering all the clips because of my system specs. So everything should be rendered locally to my laptop before playback or export.
But good to see that editing/ working from network drives/ NAS is more common.
Thank you, I’ll definitely consider set up one of these since I’m so fed up with dozens hard drives all around and every time wasting time to look for some old projects when old customers show up…
Excellent valuable intel. I have older Drobo NAS devices that I use just for backup. Never got good performance. I am just recreational video geek and going in different direction for now. Am getting new 16” MacBook M1 Max with 4 TB. Then offload to external SSD and Drobo and then to IDrive for offsite storage 10 TBs which is not expensive. Will keep your NAS solution in mind.
For the storage pools, RAID-5 is okay in smaller capacities, but for larger capacities, you really want RAID-6. And you want a hot spare, if possible.
RAID-6 all the way
@Brad Knowles
Are you talking amount of drives or storage space when you mention capacity?
@@stuart_gill - both, actually. As you get more drives in a RAID array, your chances go up that you will have a second drive failure while trying to recover from t(e first one. And a second drive failure with RAID-5 is catastrophic.
You have a similar problem with capacity, because it takes longer and longer to recover from a single drive failure, as your capacity goes up. Hard drive speeds have not kept pace with hard drive capacities. So, it might be a 20TB drive, but how fast can you fill that 20TB drive during the recovery process? Again, as your capacities go up, you increase the chances that you’ll have a second drive failure while trying to recover from the first one. And a second drive failure with RAID-5 is catastrophic.
@@stuart_gill RAID-5 supports a single drive failure. So if you have big disk, said, above 4TB during the time the raid is rebuilding another drive could fail. You will think this is very unlikely, but since you are buying all the drives the same day, from the same manufacturer and probably the same batch it's not as rare as expected (noncommon either). Remember that if you have your drives at 50% with a 12TB drive that means moving 6TB around. 4TB is, in this case, the capacity of each drive not of the array. I hope this helps.
@Alex Pettitt, As mentioned in other comments, get yourself a proper backup for the NAS before you (potentially) lose everything. I had a QNAP NAS and the backplate (for the drive ports) started playing up at about 2 years old. It would “eject” drives from the NAS, initially the third drive would go, then the 4th, 5th and 6th shortly afterwards. It worked intermittently, I swapped drives and ran disk checks on them too. Haven’t used it for a while and looking to build my own. The contents of my NAS are currently on external drives which were direct backups, and also in the cloud.
Yep, I have now implemented a 10tb backup drive to backup my most precious files.... just incase. Shame to hear about the issues you've had.... mine has been rock solid so far :)
@@AlexPettitt Mine was great when it wasn't ejecting drives. It was going to cost north of £200 to get the backplate replaced by QNAP! There is a possible fix posted on a forum where a soldering iron is required but I haven't looked into it properly, mainly because I've got limited experience with that type of thing.
I would also look into cloud backups of your data too, some of the archival cloud servicess are very affordable for long term storage of large data.
Edit - I was in two minds about building my own originally, and in hindsight, it would have been the better option. At the moment I'm looking for the right kit for a self build.
@@stuart_gill Cloud services have a huge list of negatives, some of which Alex already covered in the video. Better to just buy extra hard drives and keep them off site or in a fireproof container.
Thanks for sharing, it really helps. Very curious to see the Remote access and 10GbE switch ideas!
Best NAS video on TH-cam. Cheers!
Thanks Mat! Appreciate it :)
I have a very similar setup. TS-H9743AX with 32 GB and SSD caching. But I am also using the QSW-M408-4C QNAP 10G switch for my 10G network. Also, I'm using RAID 1 on two 10G Red drives, to allow me to expand storage as larger capacity drives become available down the line. I added this setup to my TVS-463 that I was using before. I added the 10G upgrade to the 463. I've had good performance, but not without problems. First, the boot speed on the TS-H9743AX is slow. Also, unlike the 463, there is no HDMI interface. Also, I have worked with both Premiere and Final Cut, and your mounts have to be SMB/CIFS for Final Cut Pro. It sometimes drops this (not sure why honestly), but this is never a problem in Premiere. And yes, I have used Resolve. However, the early "growth" reliability problems on early versions, made me write them off. I understand the that "database corruption" problems have long since been resolved.
Hi Camelio, I see you have experience use the TS-H9743AX. Would you still recommend it to someone like me who is looking to upgrade to a NAS?
Great video. Hybrid nas.... nice! That seems to be the ticket to editing straight from a NAS.
Thanks Alex that was incredibly informative . Happy new Year and all the best for 2024!
Glad to hear it Stewart! Have a great New Year!
EXACTLY what I was looking for!!! Liked & Subscribed!!! Great Job!!!
DEFINITELY want to see you do a remote editing session with your NAS.
I’m SURE I’ll be emailing you to help me set mine up!!!
New to editing and trying to do everything right. This is sooo overwhelming and I dont even know how to ask the right questions here. I shall keep researching, but thanks for all the information.
But to backup a NAS to Backblaze or Azure Storage costs an arm and a leg.
The workaround I did was to use a 16 bay 2.5 SSD ICY Dock + a RocketRAID 3740C. It recognizes the drives as local. Can be configured as RAID and it costs $7 a month to backup my 48TB (3TB x 16). Also, the 4K files are local and does not have to traverse the network.
If the house burns ?
@@tc_neverstop436 everything is backed up in Backblaze if the house burns :)
Well explained - thanks Alex! Would love to see a more detailed view on your file/ structure and Davinci workflow using the NAS storage if that's possible and worth sharing for you (?)
great video. you showed me exactly what other didn't show what NAS can do.
Great video. I am an amateur and I understood about 60% of this, but this is a great start for me.
The video I've been looking for. Thank you!
That's Amazing. My main concern was the editing from the NAS in Da Vinci Resolve, but I believe that's covered with the SSDs. That's phenomenal. I haven't worked with 4K content yet, but I'm planning on upgrading my storage solution. I'm tired of going drive to drive.
Awesome to hear Eddy! Glad the video was useful :) Yeah so far, it’s been an absolute breeze editing in DaVinci directly off of the NAS! I love it and sure you will too.
It's covered with enough drives in Raid 5/6, which can be faster than SSDs.
Alex, ...great video! Super helpful. I'm not ready to drop $3.5K on one of these, Is there something a bit more affordable or maybe you could describe what you were using prior to acquiring the QNAP.
Yes smaller units are available for less money and more modest capacity.
I bought a low-level Qnap for $300. No 10gig port or SSD caching or NVME slots. Another $400 for four 4TB drives gives me 12TB usable space. You can also start with fewer drives and slowly add more over time. (But the qnap interface isn’t great for disk admin.)
@@tracyt7319 Could you share which model number you bought and if you'd buy it again? If not, what would you buy? Thanks!!!!
@@DougPipersr I got the TS-431k and would not buy again. It has a weak CPU and the memory is not expandable. I use it as a PLEX server and it lacks the power to do real-time transcoding, so some videos won't play on some TVs. It basically does the job I need now, so I won't replace it for another 3 years. When I do I would aim for 6+ bays instead of 4.
@@tracyt7319 That's super helpful! In your opinion, do you think the QNAP TS-932PX-4G with its AnnapurnaLabs Alpine AL324 ARM Cortex-A57 quad-core 1.7GHz processor, be a better investment?
Thank you for this amazing video. I was looking this for long time. I am going to build my NAS coming month when I will get my Mac Studio Computer I need the solid NAS for video Editing.
Do you have any suggestions today's date? anything new arrive? are you happy with your NAS System?
Glad you’ve found the video useful! I’m still incredibly happy with my NAS setup so far! It handles whatever I throw at it! My advice would definitely be to look for a NAS that has either a 10GBE connection or Thunderbolt included, you still need those fast data speeds for video editing :]
As an IT Systems guy, I'll be searching for pure SSD arrays now, not HD. Why? The up front savings in storage cost will be far less than the power costs over time. Unless a person only turns it on for each time it's needed, the power needed is very significant. It's a good device for those who don't mind.
I’m not a professional and that’s exactly what I thought. And to be putting drives of every model in the market (HDD, SSD, NVME) better to inverts already in the best technology ssd and that’s it.
Well done!
Another great edit!
Thanks Loz! Appreciate it mate :) We need to get you one of these with the mountain of hard drives that you have full of footage 😉
It's interesting that you nailed my comment, right in the lede: I just noticed, like, *today*, in QNAP's marketing that *they do not quote the size of the parity drive* in their sizing:
That unit you have there, with 5 12TB drives?
They'd call that a "48TB NAS".
I think that's admirable, myself.
Except even that is incorrect as a 12TB drive doesn't have 12TB of space on it. Take another roughly 10% off the 48TB and you get a more accurate storage size.
I am a QNAP bigot. I have a TS-879 Pro and a TS-432-PXU. Both are fast, reliable and highly compatible with just about any PC or Server. Both run at 10gbs. I would highly recommend QNAP NAS storage devices.
Hey William, this is awesome to hear ad that's for sharing your experience! I've got to say, no matter what I've thrown at my QNAP so far, it's handled it all brilliantly :) I've been so impressed!
@@AlexPettitt so I have two MACs with network access to both devices and two Supermicro servers running ESXi 7.0 that access 14 vms on these devices as well.
Great video as usual, I'm going for a 6 bay NAS just to have a hot spare and be extra sure that I'm covered. The content creation makes us extra paranoid! 🤣
Hey Isaac, totally agreed, the more redundancy you can give yourself, the better 😊 I have nightmares about data loss 😂
@@AlexPettitt working in weddings makes you that way
Alex, is it possible to do a review on Terramster NAS in the future?
Security is important with NAS not just speed or storage size.
Kind of like a MyCloud Home. We have a 6T Raid drive that is accessible remotely and all my families phones and laptops automatically back up to it, as well as Dropbox and social media.
I'm a NAS fan (especially the speed of archiving and retrieving large data vs cloud) but I disagree with your statement about savings on cloud storage. NAS is premise based so if you have theft, fire or flood you loose EVERYTHING unless you have some kind of cloud backup. Thus, you'll still have some monthly cost for cloud storage.
Hi Alex! Great video my friend! Any chance you can point to a video that helped you with setting up the NAS like you have?
Awesome. Do you have an updated version of this review workflow?
Very helpful video, especially filled a few knowledge gaps.
Amazing video! Super helpful. Does running the System Storage Pool off the SSDs take up 1tb of space? Also would love a more detailed breakdown video of how you set up your pools and settings for video editing. Also would love to see your workflow. I've got the 1288x and am excited to get the most out of it for video work! Thanks for the info!
Greatly done and many tips help demistify things a bit.
Quick questions: Why didn't you opt for the nvme drives for ssd caching? Aren't these the ones that are supposed to be the fastest drives in order to avoid bottlenecks? Active project could possibly be on your macbook pro drive too?
And after a considerable amount of time, from your experience is this NAS still a good buy today, or is the low end (by today's standards) processor a limiting factor that could create bottlenecks for 4K editing?
Thanks a lot for your kind replies. I 'm considering this NAS too, since the QNAP TVS-h874X is significantly pricier.
This is an excellent video I have also been finding it very difficult to find information about my Nas. I ended up getting a Hugh Green 6-bay Pro.. to my threw with two NVMEs for cashing and upgraded the RAM to 64 GB. It's not my Naz has two thunderbolt 4 ports but they failed to tell us in the Kickstarter that you cannot use them for networking. However it also has two 10 GB ethernet ports but my computer did not have any. I'm trying to figure out the best way to get 10 GB ports on my PC. I ended up finding out my computer's PCIe slots are not working at all. Only the first one which is very strange.
This video was exactly what I was looking for. It answered all my questions about a NAS setup. I figured, all I had to do was to use the exact same setup and be done with it. However, I then "remembered" that I have a Dell PowerEdge T620 server "sitting around", so why not "convert" that into a NAS!? I then thought about it a little bit and realized, "Wait a minute, my T620 is already setup and running great. Why not just share a drive (make it a network drive) and be done!? Any ideas??? Thanks.
Finally! Thanks so much for making this video! I’ve wanted to add a NAS to our home network for years, but the information out there has either not been relevant to my use case, or has felt like I need to get a degree in computer science to understand.
Now that we’re about to undertake a full retrofit of our new home, the place will be wired with Cat6a throughout for up to 10Gb/s, but mostly running AVB between a music teaching space and a garden studio over 1Gb network. So I can see a similar NAS setup to this, in an under-stairs switch cupboard, working perfectly for our backup, sample libraries and media sharing 😀
Btw, browsing your other videos, are you in south Essex? If you are, howdy neighbour! Hope you’re enjoying Christmas and have great New Year!
Any idea if using FCP rather than Resolve would affect this configuration for live editing off a NAS? I’m very impressed with your setup and your skill explaining it. Well done and thank you for sharing it.
Results should be exactly the same with Final Cut and Adobe Premiere :) Thanks so much for the compliment about the video… I do always try and make it as informative but understandable as possible :)
Great video, very useful. I have a few questions,
I am on 1Gbps internet here, I am thinking of using a NAS to access my videos for editing, although much lighter 4K drone H.265/HEVC videos. So if you can safely scrub through BRAW footage I figure I can get away with my 1Gb connection here?
As my PC is connected via ethernet, will my internet speed suffer when I want to video edit?
I want to see more NAS related videos... Thanks for this
Good to know! Consider it done ;)
I just splashed loads of cash on buying the same system, I set everything up properly, the system and video files are on the NVMEs, cache acceleration is enabled, and I am using the new fully maxed out MacBook pro max but I can't play back an HD file on an HD timeline from the NAS
Great video and all the information!! thank you! One question, did you need something else to connect the QNA-T310G1T "The Multi-Gig NBase-T" or it goes strait to the computer? Thank you
Alex, thank you for sharing your experience with your NAS setup for video editing. So well done!!! I have few questions though. 1. You had to use a QNAP 10gb adapter to connect your MBP. Doesn't your MBP have 10GB built in, not understanding why you needed the adapter. 2. Are you concerned at all about using a QNAP branded NAS vs Synology given the problems with ransomeware problems with QNAP. Perhaps you dont have any external access to your NAS via the internet? Thanks again for this video, so much good information!!!
The macbook does not have a rj45 port at all. To use this setup you would require a hub or adapter with 10G rj45 port that connects to the Nas on one end and the usb-c on the mac on the other end. Also, I get the sense that you have overlooked that the speed of transfer is depedent on the storage, in this case the NAS. The transfer out is 10G but can be scaled to 1G, 2.5G, 10G depending on the configuration of the adapter, hub or switcher.
Which 6 bay brand do you recemond
Somes peoples say raid 6 more safe if 2 drive failure
Thanks a lot for sharing with us
This backup nas
Amazing Nas, but keep in mind that if the mainboard or internal power supply breaks you lose everything, I would get less terrabytes but a second Nas. double caching looks a bit like a waste of resources. In any case, get a much smaller NAS were to have at least once a daay incremental backup.
...great video, all around!
Sub'ed! keepup the good work.
Really well made video.
Hi. I'm not sure that you get much real speed advantage by having the OS and the Apps on the very fast drives. In use the software is loaded into even much faster Random Access Memory and run from there - and you did get the upgraded version. Probably not taking up much room on the NVME so it's not the wrong thing to do. There is some debate about using Raid 5 configuration which you might like to look at online. Also, careful with the cupboard - make sure you have good ventilation into it or the NAS will run hotter than otherwise. The cooler electronics are the longer they last. Thank you very much for publishing this, the planning is very helpful. I've got a significant problem with data volumes using Canon Raw Light - about half a terabyte per hour just from one camera. Liked and subd.
WD has had some issues which may not have been too well know at the time of your posting this video. Still while I was doing research for my synology NAS 3 years ago I found that Seagate HDs were the better choice even back then. You may want to keep that in mind when it comes time to replace drives in your QNAP.
hi~Its a wonderful test for NAS,here is my question ：how to use nvme connect to Linux server while my workflow is “Windows” environment.
Very good explain .. clear and precise thank you
Awesome video, thanks!
Freaking show off. 😂 great video as usual. This is a great solution for my office with the project drawings and project documents. Can you come set this up? 😂
Haha, I know you only come here for me to show off my new tech really ;) Ohh dude, a NAS would definitely do you wonders in the office as it would allow everyone to have access to the files all in one place! Book a flight, and I'll come set it up for you 😉
Super Helpful brother. Thank you!
Glad to hear it Johnny! Thanks for the comment
This is very helpful! Thanks!
Super helpful. Thanks, mate.
Thanks! How are you handling offsite backups? Great video
Thanks so much for the super thanks! Really appreciate it :)
So I handle backups in a couple of ways currently! Firstly I have a 10TB WD External Hard drives plugged into the USB of my NAS, and I use the Backup and Sync app to backup my most vital and important files to that. I'm selective with that as it's only a 10TB drive.
Secondly, I've also experimented a bit with backup up to the cloud using backblaze. Although I haven't settled on a final workflow for this yet :) Hope this helps and thanks again for your support of my content!
@@AlexPettitt my concern in my environment is off-site backups. The trouble for me is that my upload speed is very slow with my ISP. I am considering using Amazon's Snowball service at least to get started.
Great video alex, i just have one doubt, for the ssd's and the nvme's disk that you use for SSD caching, the qnap OS and to edit, can you use more storage than what you bought?? like for the ssd's you have 500gb's and for the nvme's you have 960's gb's, is that because they have a limit in storage or could you use drives with even more storage for those??? cause I just know that the main hard drives are the ones that have an storage limit in all the nas' but I'm not sure about the ssd's and the nvme's
for the 10 GB connection, I only have access to 1 GB internet from my provider. Does that make the 10 gb port useless? Or does using the 10 gb port into a 10 gb adaptor on my macbook make the local transfer speeds better, too? I really am just looking for a storage solution for high speed, local project workflow as a video editor. The network attachments is really just an bonus in my case
For a nas you typically don't ever even connect it to your internet, that's how it gets easily hacked and you lose everything unless you are extremely careful.
10gbe refers to your home Lan, local network, one home device talking to another and the speed of data transfer available through it, your bandwidth.
You can get a converter in the case of a laptop or controller/nic in the case of a pc or nas that doesn't have a 10gbe port but does have a pcie Gen 2 x 2 or higher slot, and some cabling to get data transfer speeds like this. Just be sure to ensure things r compatible.
Others will say you need a switch, and that would be for if you wanted to route 10gbe networking to more than just your nas and one device (e.g. multiple editor PCs). Those can still be quite expensive so it depends on your needs whether you get one or not.
GReat video, really well explained and sod etailed. REally, thank you so much. Now, is there a reason you only use Western Digital drives? Are they providing some sort of sponsorship or you find them to be the most reliable for this system?
so u prefer qnap over synology?
Excellent video and I understood everything to the point. I have a scenario if you can help me. I have a small studio with 5 iMac (old + new) and my Macbook Pro M1. We now use traditional hard disk via usb 3.0. I want to totally go NAS route like you. How do I connect my older iMac to get good speed? 1Gig networking is fine here but we do multiple machine editing. So is there any way to connect all and get good results?
Nice NAS! Now you have to work on your backup strategy. You'll need another NAS synched to mirror your NAS, then a third NAS to back up monthly, one you can store off site like at your mom's house! 🤣
Great video. I pulled the trigger on this system. Excited to replace my failed Drobo. I CANNOT FIND THESE Ultrastar DC SN640 2.5" 960GB PCI Express 3.0 x4 NVMe Solid State DriveS ANYWHERE. I do not want to buy the wrong drives and there are so many points of difference. Can you advise where to get compatible NVMe drives? Much appreciated.
This is a great video, and it's amazing to see a NAS using the kind of setup that was once confined to datacenters (e.g. ZFS pools w/ SSD and NVMe). Two questions: are you using the JBOD strictly as a daisy-chained NAS extender? I saw that QNAP offers the option of single-disk mode which could be useful for swapping in drives and using it as a big standalone external enclosure, but the formatting options to do that and also extend the NAS seem more limited, especially for Mac users. Also, what filesystem are you using for your storage pools?
Been talking with some network guys, and they really want to know why you setup mulple storage pools for your use case on video editing? I just bought this and I'm second guessing your storage pool setup.
Thanks for the video. Is it possible to do Multi-User editing on this one in Avid Media Composer?
Wow, a very impressive machine indeed! Would love to use this as my main storage workflow. How much does everything roughly costs together?
Yeah, it’s definitely a beast! What’s your workflow at the moment Mink? And total cost of everything is around £3.5K in the U.K. The choice of drive will be what dictate the bulk of the cost :) Hope this helps
@@AlexPettitt that's actually quite a good price. Now I work with two very noisy raid-0 drives, and I use carbon copy cloner to do my backups, a lot of manually tasks.
@@AlexPettitt I bought the complete set:) Except for the WD HDD I bought some Seagate IronWolf Pro 16TB. But I was wondering, do you also use a Raid5 for the system SSD pool?
@@MinkPinster for me personally I believe I set up the system SSDs as RAID 1 instead of RAID 0. I’m actually away so not able to check, but I’m 99% sure that’s what I did :)
Alex - Great video! Are you using a newer MBP? I can not find a driver to support Xfer speeds faster than 1GB for most of the Thunderbolt to Ethernet adapters. Does the QNAP adapter have a functioning driver for the M1? Any suggestions? Thanks
Thanks you, Alex. Excellent video. (As always!) Do you know of any M1 issues with your NAS? I have been working off of Caldigit Raid 5 drives for years but when I switched to a new iMac M1 machines, I'm unable to use the drives. I assume it's because these are "software" Raids and there are issues with the cache set up. I've been looking for a replacement Raid 5 setup but yours it the first I've seen. Your setup looks like it might be the perfect solution for me if it works with the M1.
Hi Steef, thanks strange about the M1 issues you’ve been seeing. I haven’t heard of any issues with M1 and QNAP… you could pop an email with support to double check. I don’t have an M1 Mac yet, so can’t test this out. But I have no reason to believe it wouldn’t work perfectly fine :) Alex
A Nas is a Nas, it will work from an M1 or anything else as long as the supported protocols are present (SMB, NFS...). Pretty sure the Caldigit Raid 5 you are referring to is a DAS, thus requiring drivers, so it is a different can of worms.
This is great to see, thanks Alex. I've been running a TS-453BT3 over 10GBe for a few years, but it's not really been up to video editing. Adding an M.2 nvme cache has helped a lot, but as I now need to expand storage further, I'd been looking at the TVS-672XT. However, I hadn't seen the TS-h973AX and think it suits my need better. Nice one 👍
I really like that it has SATA SSD and nvme slots. Are you setting your SSDs in a RAID 1 for the operating system I wonder? On my current set up (RAID 5) the OS is so sluggish on the TS-453BT3, I really want something that's snappy.