Editing Storage Guide: Best Setup for 2023

In this guide we'll help you choose the best editing storage solution for your workflow — and we'll let you know which one we use over here at FEP.

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0:00 Introduction
0:49 Our workflow
1:50 Storage 101
5:53 Storage options
9:06 Our choice
9:42 Network connectivity
10:43 Is 2.5GB fast enough?
10:56 Diskstation upgrades
11:32 HDD choice
12:44 SSD cache
13:57 UPS
14:48 Setup
15:46 How fast is it?
17:02 Mini Review
19:01 Cost
20:38 Who pays for it?
21:54 Conclusion

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Film Editing Pro is an online learning resource that provides detailed, step-by-step creative editing training.

Our mission is to teach you the art of creative editing – not only how to use a piece of software. Our contributing team of professional Hollywood editors has 120+ years of combined editing experience.

Students are able to learn professional editing techniques through in-depth tutorial videos, illustrated guides and hands-on editing lessons that walk you through the world of film, tv and trailer editing.

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[videotechieakd]

Hi Chris and Leon, you are my teacher, hats off to your sequence of information you give, clarity and everything.. loads of ovation to you

[KMediaSg]

THIS IS BY FAR THE BEST VIDEO ON YOUTUBE ABOUT NAS OR PARTICULARLY STORAGE!

[Rheis.C.Setter]

Pausing half way through to say this video is amazing, I have been researching for days trying to find the right large storage system and this video has answered every one of my questions bueatifuly. Was so hard to get quality info on this topic thank you!

[BiodegradableYTP]

One of the biggest lessons I've learnt in my 4 years of freelance editing is you can *NEVER* have enough storage space.

[nadamuchu]

Thank you for the captions! Im a deaf editor and deeply appreciate it!

[wearethefirehouse]

Another thorough yet accessible video gents. I am a commercial editor working off a DS1821+ w 10gbe (ditched QNAP TS-H886) & this will be the video I send people asking for advice now!

[herrpriller]

Thats exactly the video I needed! Please do more hardware videos likes this. Love it!

[karvinfernando]

I love how this is put together! Great work team!
One critic I would add on SSD Cache- Through the last year, I have seen negligible benefit in using NVMEs for caching (at least for video workflows) because all most all files required are larger than what is eligible to be cached (per symbology's latest update). I had less that 10gig written to my cache on my 1TB NVME. Caching is more beneficial for docker containers and VMs.

[PepeMyers]

Really helpful! What I would love to see from you guys is a video about how you organize your projects on hardrives. Which folders for which files ? your workflow when it comes to ad sounds, do you duplicate them in your folder ? how do you stay organise to be able to share an entire project on hardrive ? Do you use project manager in adobe premiere when your project is done ? Hope I gave you some ideas :)

[AlexAntohe]

The best video on youtube that properly explains the topic, amazing job guys!

[STONJAUS_FILMS]

I think the DIY option is a touch cheaper than calculated if you consider you might already have some of the HDDs and hardware that otherwise would sit somewhere doing nothing ... I turned all those individual HDDs, each containing a single project into a massive NAS... yes I bought the 10 GB ethernet cards and switch, but I can scale up massively compared to the bay limitation of other NAS.

I struggle deleting finished projects, (I don't know why) but recently decided to start using davinci proxy generator to give me a 10 bit HD h265 version of the RAW files, so when the project is finished I only keep a way smaller version of the files and use the extra space and HDD to add it to my homemade TRUENAS SCALE.

they way my projects roughly work, the client pays for 2 HDDs for the project. one goes to them and one stays with me for post production, most times after the project is finished they prefer to leave the second back up with me, if so, I can use those HDDs to add it to my ever growing home made NAS.

Yes those are not NAS drives, and they fail after some years or months, but since I started using RAIDZ2 I had no issues or downtime.

a BIG problem for me is that even after completely reinstalling truenas, the file's permissions and written in the filesystem itself so some bad configuration of permissions that I did when I was starting are still present until today and I cant seem to find a way to fix them ...

some files written from one user cannot be deleted by other user, even tho both have full read write access rights. ... and managing my huge nas with now more than 20 drives on a consumer motherboard and consumer casing is getting way out of hand.

Quick tip, since I'm impressed with the quality of those 10 bit h265 proxies, I have been "forcing" my clients to give me access to a cloud storage of their preference to store the proxies (under their expense), so even in the worst case scenario of both offices (mine and the client's) burning from a nuclear bomb or an accidental deletion, those files are still on the cloud (hopefully underground in another country). and with modern video enhance tools using AI you can literally save any project using those tiny proxy files even if your final output needs to be 4k.

[denver_video]

I've loved the "editing rig storage setup / strategy" topic since 2006 when I saved up for my first RAID to cut HD woohoo! Thanks for the details about NAS setup in 2023. I'm daydreaming lately about how cool it is that proxy workflows are still the backbone of remote collaboration and speed. Great video with TONS of value and detail. Thank you so much for taking the time to craft a Masterclass! TJ

[peterallen]

As an IT professional, I would like to correct a bit of knowledge you presented at the beginning of your video. You mentioned the 3, 2, 1 rule. Here you said that you should have 3 copies, in 2 places at any 1 time. That is partially correct. It should be 3 Copies of Data, 2 Types of Media, and 1 Copy Off Site.

[karimshaker]

This is a blast of a video, guys! Thank you very much. I'm working with a Lacie Big 2 RAID 0 of 2x10TBs connected to another drive (20 TBs) in constant back up, and I get capacity, some redundance and speed via thunderbolt 3, but only 1 machine is able to work at a time. The next step will be this kind of NAS solution :)

[christophrcolon]

This is such an amazing video! Thank you guys so much for this. I'd be curious to see what you're day-to-day storage is like. From shooting raw footage to SSD to SSD back-up to the raid, etc. Thanks!

[Ride_XP]

Thanks for this! So helpful. All killer no filler, thanks for the one of the most informative, concise, and engagingly-edited videos on any technical video-related topic I’ve watched. Appreciate your hard work!

[Butterflyfilmstudio]

This video couldn't have come at a better time. I'm in the middle of creating a pitch deck for the company I'm working for, and I'm looking into cloud storage and NAS systems. For cloud I'm looking at Lucid Link, and for NAS, I'm looking at synology. If you guys can show how you archive your projects after they're done or how you have other freelance editors from a large team send you finished whole project folders for you to archive, that would be awesome! Is there a workflow that you like to use, or are there other types that you've tried and that might work for specific industries? I work for a retail corporation with 6 clothing brands under it, and we create the content in-house, with about 40 or so creatives (photographers, video editors, video shooters, photo editors, and graphic designers)

[thegoldenhours]

Great point on having a UPS, power failure is the most likely reason for a serious failure.

[joshkny]

This is one of the best video's I've seen on this topic for non-IT pros. My only criticism is that a UPS is absolutely necessary.

[tchnicolor]

The lighting in these videos is so good 👌