NAS Noob - Silly Questions Alert!

TubeLight on 12/08/2024 - 06:39
Last edited 12/08/2024 - 10:25 by 1 other user

I’m a hobby photographer and occasionally make videos. I’ve been relying on ssds so far for my data hoarding needs. But it might be time to get a new system in place for managing data.

I’ve seen the term NAS being used but have no idea what it is and by extension have no idea where to start if I plan to get one.

I have a few questions that I’m hoping some of the more experienced people here can respond to. Please forgive me if you think these are silly questions.

  1. Is a NAS like a separate computer attached to my existing one through a network cable or is it attached to the modem and the data can be accessed via Wi-Fi?

  2. Can the NAS be connected to my Mac with a USB-C? I have one of those Macs which only has USB-C ports.

  3. Is there an optimal sort of config for a NAS i.e. good value for money. I’m not into the latest and greatest tech. So don’t really need top tier stuff.

  4. SSD vs Sata drives? Does it matter in a NAS?

  5. To have a backup, do I have to have one drive as my primary drive and one as a drive with all the backup I.e. a mirror of the first drive. Does that mean I can only use half the number of drives on a NAS with the other half being for data backups.

Warned you about stupid questions.

I was just about to buy another SSD - my 5th one and thought it might we worth diverting that money towards a better and maybe more reliable option.

Computing NAS

Comments

  • geekcohen on 12/08/2024 - 07:41
    +4

    How often are you accessing this data? and what is your internet speed?

    Depending on that you might be better to look at a cloud storage service if it isn't for frequent data access.

    Is nas like a seperate computer attached to my existing one through a network cable?
    Or
    Is it attached to the modem and the data can be accessed via wifi

    It is a seperate little (sometimes) black box that connects to your network via Network Cable. Often sits with your router is the easiest things. Then you can access it via WiFi/LAN or via online remotely if you are away from home (depending on the solution).

    Can the nas be connected to my Mac with a usbc? I have one of those Macs which only has usbc ports.

    Some can, yes, if you got a USB A to USB C cable, but most of the time you connect to the NAS via network. Most people connect it up as a Network Drive and then access it that way.

    Is there an optimal sort of config for a nas I.e. good value for money. I’m not into the latest and greatest tech. So don’t really need top tier stuff.

    All depends on usage and budget. You can get 2 Drive Bay NAS units, up to something like 16. Most people got for 4 and there are various brands which offer different solutions.

    SSD vs Sata drives? Does it matter in a NAS?

    It'll be NAS rated SATA Drives.

    To have a backup, do I have to have one drive as my primary drive and one as a drive with all the backup I.e. a mirror of the first drive. Does that mean I can only use half the number of drives on a nas with the other half being for data backups.

    Most NAS configurations are setup in RAID which is all drives are mirrored. So if one fails, you pull it out, add a new one in and in syncs up. However, if you might want to consider offsite storage like a sync to an S3 solution like Wasabi or Backblaze for disaster recover.

    • TubeLight on 12/08/2024 - 09:27

      Thanks heaps for your detailed response mate.

      So it looks like a 4 eBay nas would be the way to go. I would like to have access to the files and so at this stage I’m not too keen for the cloud option.

      Question, is data on a nas accessible like an external drive? Example, if I have video files or images can I just use them straight from the nas in a video project in resolve or premiere?

      • jv on 12/08/2024 - 09:59

        Question, is data on a nas accessible like an external drive?

        Yes, you use it just like a USB drive except that it's not physically attached to your computer, it is 'storage' 'attached' to your 'network'.

  • Tinqer on 12/08/2024 - 09:09
    +5

    I see geekcohen's answered all your questions, but I'll add a little more.

    I've had a QNAP NAS in the past and this year I made my own NAS, running Unraid. The potential of these things is so good if you work with a lot of data. You can do a basic setup to start with, and keep expanding the functionality over time (if you want).

    As glad as I am that I've now built my own NAS — there's nothing wrong with the Synology or QNAP ones, and I'd recommend a 4 bay one if it's within your budget.

    I have the most important data on my NAS getting automatically backed up to the cloud. But in the future I'm thinking of setting up a 2nd NAS at my friend's place and making the automatic backups go there (cheaper in the long run).

    • TubeLight on 12/08/2024 - 09:29

      The idea of having a backup nas at a diff location sounds good.

      Given my lack of knowledge and experience, I’ll stick to an off the shelf solution. Looks like synology 4 bay system is the popular choice.

      • jv on 12/08/2024 - 10:00

        Looks like synology 4 bay system is the popular choice.

        I prefer QNAP.

        • TubeLight on 12/08/2024 - 10:20

          Cheers. Good to have options when researching.

          • jv on 12/08/2024 - 10:55

            @TubeLight: The biggest difference will be the user interface… Research that to find out which you prefer…

  • jv on 12/08/2024 - 09:16
    +7

    I see Tinqer's answered all your questions, but I'll add a little more.

    NAS is Network Attached Storage.

  • TightLikeThisx on 12/08/2024 - 09:28

    1. Yes and Yes. It depends how you set it up. NAS stands for Networked Attached Storage. They are typically used in environments where there are multiple PC's so they typically have a whole host of features for safeguarding user files due to the centralization of these files. They typically reside on your local network are connected to your modem/router and can be accessed via ethernet cable or Wi-Fi. If you have a spare ethernet port on your computer you can choose to hook it directly up to the NAS however if you do this you will not be able to access the files from other computers on your network.

    2. Yes and NO. Yes because some NAS devices offer this as an option. No because what you are referring to is a DAS which stands for Direct Attached Storage. Not all NAS devices can operate as a DAS.

    3. It depends what you want. Ideally you would want a multi drive setup to protect your files against drive failure and file corruption. If you are not very computer savvy I would look at getting something like a Synology NAS. If you are more savvy or just cheap and willing to learn I would get an old PC with low power consumption and install TrueNAS Scale on it.

    4. It's a trade off of speed vs storage. Keep in mind that depending how you have the disks set up can affect read and write speeds. Also power consumption comes into play here. Hard drives typically use more power than SSD's. Also if you are using a NAS the network speed comes into play. Depending how you have your disks set up sometimes there is no real advantage of using SSDs over hard drives. Also keep in mind whether you are using hard drive or SSDs you will have to make sure they are compatibe with being used in a NAS. Files can be lost or corrupted due to the way NAS devices handle disks so be careful.

    5. There's no set number of disks a NAS should use. Don't think of mirroring disks as being backups. Mirroring disks just protects you against file loss or file corruption as a result of some hardware failures (e.g. hard drive dies or a sector on one drive becomes unreadable.). You still need backups. The more economical alternative to using a mirror setup is to use parity disks but these come with the disadvantage of long rebuild times if a drive fails. Basically depending on the size of your storage you will have to wait hours or days before it becomes usable again once a drive or drives fail.

    In my setup I have a 4 disk mirror. If I say loose 2 disks my files is still available. At this point if a file becomes corrupted on one of these two remaining drives I can repair it from it's mirror so my files and file integrity are still preserved after loosing 2 disks. Now if one of these mirrored disks fails I still have access to my files however if a file get's corrupted at this point on the last remaining drive the NAS can tell me it is corrupted but it cannot repair it.

    For this reason I would suggest a 2 or 3 disk mirror as standard combined with archive quality cloud backups for any NAS.

  • Bruceflix on 12/08/2024 - 09:33
    +1

    I see JV's answered all your questions, but I'll add a little more.

    1. As a NAS is network attached storage it's transfer speeds will be limited by your network bandwidth, which in home settings is predominately 1000BASE-T. However RAID can allow for some amazing speeds, especially NVME storage in RAID. Opens up a rabbithole in what you'll want to do with your LAN if you are moving around large files.
    • bazingaa on 12/08/2024 - 11:26

      I have a DIY NAS with 2 HDD (not in RAID) and it kinda saturates 2.5GbE port with Seagate X16.

  • CyberMurning on 12/08/2024 - 09:34
    +1

    all has been answered but i just want to add becareful owning NAS can be expensive and very addictive so many you can do with it

    • TubeLight on 12/08/2024 - 10:19

      Yeah. Seems like a bit of a rabbit hole. Lol.

  • Bruceflix on 12/08/2024 - 09:37
    +3

    I see TightLikeThisx answered all your questions, but I'll add a little more.

    1. RAID is not a backup. It is redundancy. I suggest researching the 3-2-1 Rule for data backups.
      https://www.seagate.com/au/en/blog/what-is-a-3-2-1-backup-st…
    • TubeLight on 12/08/2024 - 10:18

      Thanks for the link mate. Appreciated.

    • TightLikeThisx on 12/08/2024 - 10:19
      +2

      Yes and the reason it is not considered a backup is because although you are copying the data when using a mirror there are still plenty of ways you can loose your files due to the centralized risks:

      • fire
      • faulty PSU which can kill drives
      • tendency of drives to fail at the same time
      • a hacker or malicious user can deliberately deletes the files
      • a user can still accidentally delete the files without snapshotting first or forget the encryption keys needed to access the files on the mirror.

      Also with parity drives due to the intensive nature of the rebuild drives can fail in this process and lead to all files becoming unreadable.

      Therefore mirrors or parity drives should be used for availability and/or integrity reasons only.

      It's probably also worth mentioning when figuring out your 3-2-1 backup plan work out how long it would take to restore backups in the event of loosing all your data and how you are going to test your backups. In addition Google drive, one drive etc. are not archive quality since it's not unheard of for files to go missing on these services.

    • Chandler on 12/08/2024 - 10:39
      +2

      5.
      a) https://www.raidisnotabackup.com
      b) 3-2-1-1-0 Golden Backup Rule

      b) TL;DR:

      • 3 copies
      • 2 formats
      • 1 off site
      • 1 air-gapped (not connected to internet - either itself or a connected device)
      • 0 errors - check your backups!

      The last point is especially important. Many people setup good backup practices but then never ensure that they are functioning or that the backup data is correct/usable.

      • TubeLight on 13/08/2024 - 06:13

        Thanks mate. Appreciate the time you took to respond. I've always found it to be hard to keep the backups updated…like you pointed out. Hoping to do a better job in the future.

  • boomramada on 12/08/2024 - 09:37

    I was just about to buy another ssd - my 5th one and thought it might we worth diverting that money towards a better and maybe more reliable option.

    So you have five copies of the same content?

    You don't need a NAS, get two or three SSDs and keep at least two/three copies of each content, update them once a month, and keep them in two different locations if possible.

    • TubeLight on 12/08/2024 - 09:42

      Nope. Individual copies only. Yes…. I don’t have backups and I need to be grilled on that. Guilty as charged. Partly the reason I’m here.

      • TightLikeThisx on 12/08/2024 - 10:27

        Be aware that you want to plug in your SSDs to a computer at least once every year. Unlike hard drives your data will not be preserved if you leaved them disconnected for long periods of time.

        • TubeLight on 12/08/2024 - 11:17

          Thanks mate. Have been doing that. Pull them out every now and then and fire them up.

      • CyberMurning on 12/08/2024 - 10:53

        thats not good. imagine you need to look for something and not sure where, so you plug in and out 5 ssds and maybe you overlook then have to repeat plug in and out 5 more times hahaha
        with NAS you see all drives as one big drive
        and yes as per above i heard normal sata is better for backup. ssd is if you need to access regularly, at fast transfer speed.

        • TubeLight on 12/08/2024 - 11:18

          Cheers mate. One thing is for sure, I need to have backups. And nas is perhaps not the backup option. It’s great for data management, but I should still rely on hdds for backups.

      • boomramada on 12/08/2024 - 10:54

        Just get a big A$$ SSD/external HD (for example WD 16T external HD) then copy every SSD into it? keep it updated once in a while (every week/month?). Always keep a copy offsite.

        hobby photographer and occasionally make videos

        Also, you could use Google Drive.

        I also have a small NAS but for media sharing within devices rather than backing up stuff. Doesn't matter if you have a RAID 10 setup, if the house burns down all gonna go bye bye. The key is multiple copies in different locations.

        • TubeLight on 12/08/2024 - 11:16

          Actually, this is sounding like the most appealing option to be honest. Have an external hdd backup off site. And have multiple backups. This seems to be the least complicated, yet the most appealing option.

          • TightLikeThisx on 12/08/2024 - 18:14

            @TubeLight: It's a step up from what you have already but there is an issue with this.

            Say you store 3 copies of the files. One on PC. One on USB Drive A and one on USB Drive B which is stored remotely.

            Then say one file on your PC gets corrupted. You backup your PC to USB Drive A. Now without knowing you only have 1 uncorrupted copy of the files.

            Now say you decide it is time to update the files in the remote location and swap the USB drives over. You then go on to back up the files on USB Drive B form the PC. Now all 3 drives have the corrupted version of the file.

            A NAS is better in this regard because you can snapshot files regularly and then restore deleted or corrupted files from previously snapshots. The only space these snapshots take up is the difference in size of the files. Also the mirror or parity drives will repair corrupted files periodically as scheduled.

            You may use software that does this as well. I know of free command line tools to do this but if you decide to use USB Hard drives to backup I would do some research about what software you are going to use to backup the files. Check to make sure that you can:

            1. Check the integrity of your files and the backups being created.
            2. Perform snapshots of your backups periodically.
  • Caped Baldy on 12/08/2024 - 10:46

    I highly recommend buying a good NAS with good software.

    I stuffed around with a Terramaster NAS and installing TrueNAS and then eventually Xpenology. It wasn't worth the time stuffing around and next time I'll just get a Synology.

    If your budget allows and have other data to hoard, get a couple big HDDs from East Digital for the NAS and an external Seagate HDD for off-site backup.

    I use a program called freefilesync to copy files from my PC to NAS. There's more seamless options for backing up files but I do this so it's a bit manual and for checking.

    Btw, you can get a USB to ethernet adapter for faster transfers.

    • CyberMurning on 12/08/2024 - 10:55

      hey i am the opposite im with syno for 13 years but now thinking to get terra.

      • Caped Baldy on 12/08/2024 - 11:10

        I got the F5-221 and a 8gb stick and it was a bit too underpowered for proper decoding. It streams well to the Nvidia Shield but struggled to my google nest as it needed to downscale the resolution.

        Are you going to try the stock software? I never bothered and just went with TrueNAS but wanted an easy way to backup my phone photos.

        • CyberMurning on 12/08/2024 - 11:23
          +1

          my nas usage is simple: backup, download, and watch movies. but current syno too old to run dockers and i want to automate the download part. yes i want to try terra stock software. syno can do automated backup photo from phone to nas very easy.

        • CyberMurning on 12/08/2024 - 13:44
          +1

          If i get terra i will buy f4-424. I heard intel n95 on that one is good

  • greatlamp on 12/08/2024 - 12:11
    +1

    Consider if a NAS is really the best option for you.

    As an alternative, a couple of 16tb external HDDs and a backblaze plan will give you 3x copies of your data.

    If you are set on not using cloud backup, I recommend an off the shelf solution (QNAP or Synology), stay away from unraid. My unraid box is now inaccessible since the usb drive that hosts the OS failed (something that will keep happening since USB drives are inherently unreliable), and I can't even load my backup to another USB as the unraid people enforce their licenses by keeping a log of USB serial numbers - apparently all 4 USB drives I tried are 'blacklisted' as they have been used by other people before.

    A backup needs to be reliable and unraid is not.

    For long term storage the best option is burning a copy to a 25gb blu-ray disk.

    • CyberMurning on 12/08/2024 - 13:46

      Yeah i always wonder bout nas with usb stick as o/s i mean that is sound so wrong. Can we not select to install os to internal ssd/sata? Just like synology. The os is spread on eqch disk so one dies doesnt matter

    • riff.79 on 12/08/2024 - 15:26
      +1

      Your Unraid disks are readable still. Unraid is reliable. Been using Unraid since 2012 and I have never had an issue with dead USB drives. Head over to the unraid forums for help perhaps.

      Regarding a NAS - OS can fail on the drives with improper shutdown etc - and the disks being an raid array - are not readable without some work mounting in a linux distro, making backup super important.

      Nas's however a simple, with a good backup strategy (3-2-1), an UPS and sensible security, they are easy as to maintain. However, any nas published to the internet - be wary.

      • greatlamp on 12/08/2024 - 16:55
        +1

        Thanks for the tip. I was using a Samsung BAR plus usb drive and it's become corrupted. This experience has put me right off unraid, I use the NAS at most once a month and my setup is simple as possible, I don't even have docker enabled. It's recoverable but a huge waste of time and it wouldn't be an issue if I could run unraid from an ssd

    • TubeLight on 13/08/2024 - 06:07

      The more I'm reading these comments, the more I'm thinking that NAS is perhaps not the best solution for me. Leaning towards getting external drives. Or maybe thats just me trying to kick a problem down the road and go for the option thats easier and one that I can handle better.

      • aub on 14/08/2024 - 18:47

        I'm going to refer to @geekcohen and ask:
        - How much data do you have; and
        - How fast is your internet connection?

        For a lot of use-cases, it's a lot simpler and cheaper to use a cloud storage solution. Even a minimal 4-drive NAS setup will easily set you back over $1200. And it still doesn't protect you if your house burns down.

  • riff.79 on 12/08/2024 - 15:19

    Ok, I'll bite. Nas will most likely be slower that your direct attached SSD as those drives are spinning rust. How big are the files are you working with?

    • TubeLight on 13/08/2024 - 06:11
      +1

      So my idea is to still keep working on the ssds. Just use nas to back files up once an ssd is full.

      The more I'm reading, the more I'm starting to think that just and external drive may be the right option for me.

      The longest vidoe I've made so far is like under 4 mins, Individual clips that I shot are longer though and can go up to 10 mins. I then use parts of such vidoes to put one final one together.

      https://youtu.be/s6gTuSDfcZ0?si=NpgZ_oTXax8MQHjU

      • riff.79 on 15/08/2024 - 12:26

        I have a similar setup. I have a Nas for storage and seperate attached drives, which I backup before and after I make changes to the Nas using versioning backup, just incase something goes very wrong. Or I torch a drive.

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