Home NAS Solution

[Eric]

I know I posted about this a long time ago but thought I would start a new thread, since storage has become the biggest hurdle in my business I have to address it. As it stands I have several 4TB SSD drives hooked up to my Mac Studio M4, taking up every slot I have and it's no way to manage data storage on the leve I need it, plus it's not properly backed up and has no redundancy.

I already also have a Synology NAS with two 5.5 TB drives but it's not enough and considering I only have two bays I figure I would just leave it and buy an additional one (also with 2 bays) with two 18 GB drives which should keep me good for a while.

Everything for this solution is also connected via Cat5 and pretty fast.

 

[rdrr]

I know I posted about this a long time ago but thought I would start a new thread, since storage has become the biggest hurdle in my business I have to address it. As it stands I have several 4TB SSD drives hooked up to my Mac Studio M4, taking up every slot I have and it's no way to manage data storage on the leve I need it, plus it's not properly backed up and has no redundancy.

I already also have a Synology NAS with two 5.5 TB drives but it's not enough and considering I only have two bays I figure I would just leave it and buy an additional one (also with 2 bays) with two 18 GB drives which should keep me good for a while.

Everything for this solution is also connected via Cat5 and pretty fast.

Have you looked into QNAP NAS? I know that we recommended them to our center for the digital innovation and learning department. They have a lot of 4k raw videos that don't compress very well and are large. Depending on how big things are growing, you may want to start to look into NAS devices that can dedup and compress, but those "enterprise" functions start to get a little costly. One thing you probably want to invest in is 10Gb networking. Cat 6 minimum, but you probably want to run with Cat 6A, and I know there are third-party thunderbolt to 10 GbE network adapters out there for Macs, but I don't remember what the folks at CDIL use on their Macs.

 

[Eric]

Have you looked into QNAP NAS? I know that we recommended them to our center for the digital innovation and learning department. They have a lot of 4k raw videos that don't compress very well and are large. Depending on how big things are growing, you may want to start to look into NAS devices that can dedup and compress, but those "enterprise" functions start to get a little costly. One thing you probably want to invest in is 10Gb networking. Cat 6 minimum, but you probably want to run with Cat 6A, and I know there are third-party thunderbolt to 10 GbE network adapters out there for Macs, but I don't remember what the folks at CDIL use on their Macs.

Appreciate the tips. Cost vs benefit is always the consideration and I've had to make considerable investments into upgrades over the last several months. Sometimes just a single shoot can be half a TB so it adds up really fast, I may actually be on Cat 6 (the person who wired it didn't say) but it's extremely fast, at least fast enough for my needs. I also have a 10 GB connection from my drone directly into the USB-C on my Mac which makes transferring nice and fast.

 

[rdrr]

Appreciate the tips. Cost vs benefit is always the consideration and I've had to make considerable investments into upgrades over the last several months. Sometimes just a single shoot can be half a TB so it adds up really fast, I may actually be on Cat 6 (the person who wired it didn't say) but it's extremely fast, at least fast enough for my needs. I also have a 10 GB connection from my drone directly into the USB-C on my Mac which makes transferring nice and fast.

You know there will probably be a day soon, when 1/2 a TB of storage will be nothing.

 

[Eric]

You know there will probably be a day soon, when 1/2 a TB of storage will be nothing.


View attachment 36626

When I first started working with PCs way back in the 90s as a hardware tech I remember we had to install Windows 95 on each new build and it was 22 3.5' floppy disks, each 1.44 MB. Next disk, enter > next disk, enter > next disk, enter >... Good times! You can imagine the excitement once it was all done with CDs.

 

[rdrr]

Ah... Those were the days, especially when floppy 19 out of 22 errored out.

Now you really got me feeling old! **shakes fist in the air** "Damn you, kids, get off of my network! With your new-fangled apps and videos."

 

[Eric]

Ah... Those were the days, especially when floppy 19 out of 22 errored out.

Now you really got me feeling old! **shakes fist in the air** "Damn you, kids, get off of my network! With your new-fangled apps and videos."

Especially when upgrading from Windows 3.11 (not 3.1, that was for chumps, do you even network bro?) and going through the whole startup routine.

Seriously, you had to deal with hardware conflicts and a whole host of other issues back then and had to know your shit before and during plug and play as it was still in its infancy. Our shop was always busy with repairs.

 

[DT]

You know there will probably be a day soon, when 1/2 a TB of storage will be nothing.

Absolutely, anything less than 6 to 10 drives at 18-24TB capacity each, are rookie numbers ...

 

[Herdfan]

Seriously, you had to deal with hardware conflicts and a whole host of other issues back then and had to know your shit before and during plug and play as it was still in its infancy. Our shop was always busy with repairs.

Remember SCSI? Talk about issues.

 

[cbum]

You might check out Promise Technologies' Pegasus series (https://www.promise.com/)

 

[Cmaier]

Ubiquiti just launched a couple new “desktop” NAS’s.

Ubiquiti Launches UniFi UNAS 2 and 4 Desktop NAS Systems

Ubiquiti has broadened its storage hardware portfolio by entering the desktop NAS segment with the UniFi UNAS 2 and UniFi UNAS 4.These models differ from the previously released UniFi UNAS Pro, which came only in rack-mount form factors designed for datacenter and enterprise environments.

www.guru3d.com

Synology is increasingly playing games where they try to force you to use their overpriced drives, so if I need to replace my NAS’s I will probably go with qnap.

 

[Eric]

Ubiquiti just launched a couple new “desktop” NAS’s.

Ubiquiti Launches UniFi UNAS 2 and 4 Desktop NAS Systems

Ubiquiti has broadened its storage hardware portfolio by entering the desktop NAS segment with the UniFi UNAS 2 and UniFi UNAS 4.These models differ from the previously released UniFi UNAS Pro, which came only in rack-mount form factors designed for datacenter and enterprise environments.

www.guru3d.com

Synology is increasingly playing games where they try to force you to use their overpriced drives, so if I need to replace my NAS’s I will probably go with qnap.

Interesting, I'm buying two Seagate IronWolf Pro 18TB drives for it, they claim it will accept any SATA drives. If that's not the case now is a good time to know because I'm about to pull the trigger.

 

[Cmaier]

Interesting, I'm buying two Seagate IronWolf Pro 18TB drives for it, they claim it will accept any SATA drives. If that's not the case now is a good time to know because I'm about to pull the trigger.

The synology boxes with smaller numbers of bays still work fine with 3rd party drives, I think, but you should check the compatibility page.

Compatibility List | Synology Inc.

Centralize data storage and backup, streamline file collaboration, optimize video management, and secure network deployment to facilitate data management.

www.synology.com

 

[Eric]

The synology boxes with smaller numbers of bays still work fine with 3rd party drives, I think, but you should check the compatibility page.

Compatibility List | Synology Inc.

Centralize data storage and backup, streamline file collaboration, optimize video management, and secure network deployment to facilitate data management.

www.synology.com

Every one of their compatibility pages only list Synology as the drive manufacturer, yet they are compatible with any SATA drive as I understand it. It appears that they will only support it if you use their drives.

Edit:
A deeper look at this is disturbing, I'm glad you brought it up. Not a fan of being forced into proprietary systems like this, I want to choose my drives. I'll likely pass on this and look for another solution.

 

[Cmaier]

Every one of their compatibility pages only list Synology as the drive manufacturer, yet they are compatible with any SATA drive as I understand it. It appears that they will only support it if you use their drives.

Edit:
A deeper look at this is disturbing, I'm glad you brought it up. Not a fan of being forced into proprietary systems like this, I want to choose my drives. I'll likely pass on this and look for another solution.

My (somewhat dated) understanding is that you lose things like drive monitoring if you don’t use their drives. It’s ridiculous.

 

[Eric]

Looking at this now and it's compatible with any drive I want...

https://www.amazon.com/Asustor-Lockerstor-Gen2-AS6702T-Quad-Core/dp/B09VXCSLR4?th=1

 

[Cmaier]

Looking at this now and it's compatible with any drive I want...

https://www.amazon.com/Asustor-Lockerstor-Gen2-AS6702T-Quad-Core/dp/B09VXCSLR4?th=1

I’ve heard ugreen NAS’s are pretty good too. No personal experience with them, though.

 

[Eric]

I’ve heard ugreen NAS’s are pretty good too. No personal experience with them, though.

I'm also wondering if just exchanging out my two existing 5.5GB drives with the 18GB in my current Synology NAS (which accepts it all) is a good option. The only issue is I then lose those smaller drives as I really have no other home for them.

 

[Citysnaps]

A few years ago I was dead set on going the NAS route for backups (mostly of many thousands of image files going back 20 years). After thinking about it more, and learning about Synology's move to their branded disks (while in the middle of researching their NAS, which really pissed me off), I put pause on that to more think through what I really needed.

And eventually went with a five slot Sabrent desktop docking station. It more than meets my modest needs using Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner,and the price was reasonable. Every so often I take a walk to the bank and trade out disks I store in their vault. And have a few disks laying around as a third back up. If our house were to burn down, or burgled, I can always recover with what's in the bank vault.

It's more manual than a NAS, and not 100% perfect, but works for my modest needs.

 

[Eric]

A few years ago I was dead set on going the NAS route for backups (mostly of many thousands of image files going back 20 years). After thinking about it more, and learning about Synology's move to their branded disks (while in the middle of researching their NAS, which really pissed me off), I put pause on that to more think through what I really needed.

And eventually went with a five slot Sabrent desktop docking station. It more than meets my modest needs using Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner,and the price was reasonable. Every so often I take a walk to the bank and trade out disks I store in their vault. And have a few disks laying around as a third back up. If our house were to burn down, or burgled, I can always recover with what's in the bank vault.

It's more manual than a NAS, and not 100% perfect, but works for my modest needs.

Interesting so this is essentially a mass storage device for SATA drives, without NAS? If so that’s a great solution for me to deal with all my other drives.