YOU DO NOT NEED A NAS - And Here is Why...

Video Chapters
00:00 Introduction: Why Discuss Not Buying a NAS?
00:51 Cloud Services Are Convenient and Easy
02:24 Single-User Workflows and Direct-Attached Storage
03:38 Power Consumption Concerns
05:19 Durability and Offline Backup Advantages
06:29 Lock-In with NAS Ecosystems
07:32 High Cost of NAS Compared to Alternatives
08:44 NAS as a Multi-Purpose Device vs. Storage-Only Solutions
09:20 Final Thoughts: Assessing Your Storage Needs Before Buying
09:48 Conclusion: NAS Isn’t for Everyone

Best 4-Bay NAS of the Year 2023

The NAScompares Podcast - Let's Talk Data

[WhoDeanyUnchained]

Thanks for all you do. 7 years ago I thought I didn't need a NAS, but thanks to help from the website I took contol of my data and even more with my NAS. No regrets!😄

[bewildurd]

For all of the people dumping their NAS gear now, if you send it this way, I'll dispose of it for you 🙂

[StenIsaksson]

Well, if you leave a hard drive on the shelf for 30 years it will have lost data because it have magnetic platters.
The magnetic "field" will loose it's power over the years and eventually your data will be corrupted.
That's why you have a thing called scrubbing where the data is moved around and re-written again so it wont get corrupted.
Same thing with SSD's. The electric charge in the cells will slowly disappear.

[GogoVictoria]

As a video editor, I did tinker with the idea of only using cloud storage for files but it's just so prohibitive. If I were just doing office paperwork then cloud is more than enough

[eyesleo]

Some statements are pretty provocative :) For example, "you write data to a drive, you place it in your friend's home, and after 20 years you still have that data"... Not necessarily. A friend put a lot of data on 5 2.5 inch 500Gb hard drives and put them on a shelf. After 7 years only 2 of them worked as new, from 2 drives I rescued the data, and I didn't succeed to rescue any data from the last one. Now the data from 4 disks are stored on one NAS, backed up to another and one copy lies in AWS Deep Glacier storage. That's what is called peace of mind.

[IamShopping]

Great video. Exactly my case. One moment I thought about just backing up my files and media and the next moment I'm deep in YT videos about different 4 bay NAS options. Maybe just an external USB drive is quite enough. And cheaper.

[jtd]

I've got a 10yo 2-bay Syno on my home network. I don't keep anything locally on any of my 4 home PCs that I can't afford to lose. All my "production" files are kept on the NAS or on the work server if I occasionally work from home, and I periodically do incremental backup to a standalone USB drive which I keep on my desk so I can grab it to go in case of emergency. I'd like to replace the Syno with a DIY build and maybe with a flash cache for higher local transfer speeds.

[hottroddinn]

For someone who has just started to think that I don't need a NAS and tinkering with the cloud storage solution, I can tell you. It's suddenly become a pain in the hass! The first 2-3 hours was a BREEZE! Copying data from my local desktops and laptops to the mapped drive on my linux distro. It was blazing fast upload. Now, it simply doesn't budge when I try to copy/move data. I'm well within the quote and there are no data limits, but suddenly there is a bottleneck in my own VM which has all the space and power? It's now choking on cache pool and it's been inconsistent. This has been a good experiment but definitely not letting go of my NAS.

[joemccall]

Maybe I'm an edge case but living in an area without broadband and hating subscriptions are two huge reasons to have local storage. Couple that with cloud companies getting in bed with fascists (yes, I'm a Yank) makes me want to avoid their services completely. I like local, open-source, DIY and complete control of my data, thank you very much.

[johnnycaps]

Nice honest, complete analysis of the upside and also the downside of using a NAS vs. some of the other alternatives. Thank you.

[TheDotBot]

A NAS in a home office setup used to make sense when SSDs larger than 256 GB were prohibitively expensive, now I don't see the point when it's probably cheaper to use an old PC repurposed as a home theatre PC hooked up to the TV and/or a used laptop as backup if the main PC fails, and keep them synced up with the work PC. At least they're doing more than just NAS.

Also... looking at Amazon reviews, especially budget NAS units fail and if that happens, the data is GONE. Especially in cheap RAID solutions, which are notorious for failing.

[Bob_Smith]

YES I DO! You will never convince me a subscription service is better than local.

[VitePapa]

So I like experimenting in the sence on reviving an old laptop and converting it to a "home lab".

Running it 24/7 would cost me around 20 - 25 bucks a month.

For work purposes both my wife and I need the Ms office suite as well as my kids for school.

So for around 10 bucks a month I get 6 Tb (unsure if it'd TB or Tb) of storage split across 6 accounts.

For office related work and personal pictures/videow we've accumulated a combined 2.5 give or take terras of data without being conservative.

A Nas to hold 6 Tb would run USD 500 - 700 and cost 20 - 30 usd to operate.

[gaaldornick]

I have 2 NAS and 1 DAS at home....very, very happy 😊....no cloud forever

[rufus_mcdufus]

I remember years ago the idea of having a network-attached disk. A simpler device than a NAS, just a disk that sits on the network. If it could talk to other disks then it could form an aggregated device like a RAID. With network speeds now getting capable enough and potentially not far-off the ball park even of USB/Thunderbolt, this idea becomes more appealing.

[KevinR]

I guess one of the votes for local storage would be the continued cost/availability of fast upload speeds. Even in the broadband improving UK they do love to sell you fast download with a limited upload. And for some/many (especially in the US? Or in rural UK) there's still only ADSL, or very expensive fibre if they are lucky. I recall the experiment a few years ago with an sd card strapped to a homing pigeon.

A related video you guys could do, would be the easiest & cheapest ways to get to a reliable 3-2-1 backup depth. There are plenty who forget to *maintain* one level of backup, or at least an on NAS copy - the additional layer is even less likely to get done!

Lots now doing their work straight off the NAS/DAS these days too, so that's only a 1+ level of data protection. [I taking the definition that "1 copy" is the live file with no raid].

Let alone the risk that all 3 copies are in the same room.

[stevenqirkle]

I think the "single user workflow and direct-attached storage" point is a very good one that applies to me. I considered getting a NAS recently, but ended up with a Thunderbolt 4 NVMe enclosure attached to my Mac Mini. It's inexpensive, supports very fast transfer rates, and there are plenty of options for file sharing on the Mac. I can also combine with Backblaze's unlimited backup plan for offsite backups, whereas they don't support Linux/NAS boxes (at least not without some workarounds).

[justbob]

At best a subscription service should only be a off site backup. Subscription services always raise prices even as technology gets cheaper every year.

[psychic]

Use Tailscale and all of the connectivity issues melt. It's game changing especially now you can gen your own certs. I also keep 10Tb in the cloud for DR but hey its under $50USD for the year.

[marcel_max]

We have a NAS at the recording studio. Here we do mostly audio recordings but we also have a few video editing jobs once in a while. Clients are mostly around us but we have a few clients around the world, which are old friends I met when I lived in Shanghai. For some reason they like to stick with me. The network system here is good enough to store everything in a DS423+ and do the audio mixing and video editing directly from the NAS. Each client has its own account and can download/upload files anytime they want. Oh, we also have only one basic 15Gb google account just in case but rarely use it.