I NEEDED to STOP Using Google Drive: Switching to a NAS

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Since I started making YouTube videos I’ve slowly accumulated so many storage devices, with bits and pieces of every content I’ve ever made scattered across so many drives that I don’t know what to do with them. So, I came to the conclusion that I needed something to better manage all of the digital junk I was generating, I needed a NAS.

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Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
0:55 What is a NAS?
3:40 Sponsor: Karma
4:45 Why I need a Nas
6:51 What NAS I Picked
8:36 Setup
10:25 Experience Using it
11:25 Conclusion

A Network Attached Storage device, or NAS for short, is kind of self explanatory, it’s storage that can be accessed over your home network, or even away from home with the right setup. Imagine it like your own personal Google Drive or dropbox. All a nas really is, is a computer with a bunch of hard drives, and a different operating system than your usual windows, or Mac OS. A NAS is much more customizable, than Google Drive or Dropbox. You can control how fast it can potentially be by the connection type between the NAS and your computer, or your wi-fi signal if wireless, you can control how much storage the machine has, by buying a new hdd and slotting it in, and you can do so much more, since a NAS is basically a computer with special software installed. There is a ton of functionality built into these boxes that if I were to go through every little detail it would be a 24-hour long video that I would not be qualified enough to talk about. Downside is, just like everything you own, It’s at your own expense.

So why didn’t I just buy a larger HDD? They can be pretty cheap per TB if you buy some of the larger ones. And that’s 100% true, I could just buy this 20TB hard drive, and use that until it fills up and then buy another one. But my problem isn’t just finding a place to store all of my previous content. I edit off of an external 2TB SSD, because a youtube video project can be 100-200GBs sometimes, and the performance of the SSD is fast. And with the SSD, I can unplug it and connect it to any other computer and continue editing the project. When it fully fills up, I wipe it and start over, losing all of my precious raw footage. The reason this is bad is because, if I want to rely on using old clips I took 30 videos ago, I’d have to use only what’s been kept in the finished video or reshoot that clip all together. A central storage device makes it fast and easy to access old footage that I can reuse in a new video. I also don’t store my video projects on the computers I edit with because our editing machines don’t have 4-5tbs of space.

I decided on the pre-built route and purchased the Synology DiskStation DS1821+. Once you have the NAS, you basically have a computer that’s missing hard drives. So, I bought 4 4tb Seagate Ironwolfs, and 2 WD Red Plus 6TB HDDs later. Basically, these types of hard drives do better in a NAS than regular hard drives doYou can upgrade a NAS just like a PC, I purchased a 16GB stick of ram, and a 10gigabit ethernet card and installed it in the synology NAS to further enhance its capabilities and transfer speeds. For this build I’m using SHR, which is a synology-specific one. It allows me to use drives of different sizes, but the largest one will be used for parity, which in this case, means I lose 6TB of storage. But, if one of my six drives fails, I will still have all my data.

The NAS has now become an important part of my home. I can access everything on it from all my phones, tablets, and computers from home or when I’m away. When I’m at home, it’s stupid fast, SSD-like. This NAS actually has usb ports on it, so I plugged in some external drives into the usb ports, and the Synology NAS treats it like how other computers would treat it. But now, every computer on your network can access it. I use these as backups for specific folders on the NAS. So this NAS fits all of my requirements, and it even satisfied the last one. The NAS has opened up what I can do. I can upload footage from my Macbook, then edit off the iMac, then export from the Mac Studio, for upload from any machine. What the NAS has become, is fast, shared storage across all of my machines.

[_jerieljan]

I hope you have your security set up correctly if you’re planning to use your NAS anywhere. It’s another rabbit hole that takes time to understand for newbies, but it’s essential. Thankfully, Synology’s recommendations are actually pretty OK as long as you follow the practices, port forward responsibly and minimize port openings on your network, but it’s even better if you can complement it with a Wireguard-based VPN.

[ScottCarrPhoto]

Don't forget...a NAS is not backup. It's storage. Remember to backup all your data.

[bothworld]

great choice. I'm using this since 10+ years
2 Bay & 5 Bay Synology
also I've sold 200+ Synology NAS.

Some tips
01. Please don't forget spare hard disk
02. UPS in the event blackout
03. Buy plus series model & extend 2 years Warranty (Total 5 Years Warranty)
04. Don't forget 2FA for security reason (Two Factor Authentication)

[ryanmiller]

Jimmy you bought a DS1821+, the 18 means you can have up to 18 drives. the unit holds 8 drives and you can get 2 more 5 bay addons that plug into your NAS by the eSata plugs in the back.

[Lardzor]

I'm impressed how fluidly you swap between NOZ and NAZ pronunciations of NAS. I normally hear it pronounced NAS as in (nasty).

[captiveimage]

Great intro into the NAS world, Jimmy. Like your style of delivery too. Subscribed! 🙂

I have two Synology NAS drives: A DS412+ that I bought in 2015 and a DS920+ that I bought a couple of weeks ago.

My main reasource hog is my photography. Storing the digital images, initially scanned negatives and more recently the digital RAW files fresh from the camera was becoming problematic, hence the initial purchase.

I've had a NAS box longer then that, but where the Synology DS412+ has proven to be incredibly reliable over the past seven years, my previous no-name brick failed catastrophicaly after only a couple of years and cost me a fortune to have a professional data-recovery firm rebuild the RAID and recover the data.

I bought the second NAS (DS920+) a couple of weeks ago beause I thought my DS420+ was failing, but the actual problem was becasue I inadvertantly 'hot-swapped' a failing drive. DOH!

I didn't loose any data but the NAS was two, three times a day giving me error messages that where similar to the broken drive I swapped out, hence my believing that the NAS itself was broken. Having bought a second device, however, swapping all the data from the old to the new without issue, I subsequently undertook a factory-reset on the the old unit, which fixed the percieved problem. It's now working perfectly again.

The DS412+ is now one of two local backups for the DS920+, where the other is a seperate USB external HDD 'brick'. I use IDrive, an online cloud service dedicated to backup regimes, for my offsite backup.

Ove the last seven years, I've had three drive failures Total losses of info - zero!

Lessons learned: A) Don't cheap-out and buy no-name kit for your pressios data. It's not worth it. If you have precious data then buy decent kit with a reputation. There's two or three key players in this space, so there's alternatives. B) Do invest (time/effort/money) in instigating a proper backup routine. Use the 3-2-1 backup: 3: Create one primary backup and two copies of your data. 2: Save your backups to two different types of media. 1: Keep at least one backup file offsite. C) Don't hot-swap drives in a NAS that's not designed to offer that facility! Mine don't but some NAS units will allow hot-swapping of drives, so check that out if it's an important feature for you.

[sunayama]

So this video was a wake up call. I'm starting up my own YouTube channel fairly soon (3D modeling tutorials). I thought about what I might teach and my target audience. Not once did I think about storage! I already use up a lot of storage space as is. Not sure if I'd need a NAS quite yet, but it's definitely on my radar now. Thanks, Jim!

[Unamatrix]

Great video on the benefits of using a NAS. I have been using a NAS since the first consumer level devices were released in the early 2000s by Ximeta called the Net Disk. I currently use the Synology DS218 Play+, WD PR210 Pro, D-Link DNS 320L and D-Link DNS-340L. Furthermore, I use my NAS servers to store my engineering designs, music collection, movie collection along with photos from my drones and cameras.

[SirRoxo]

Wonderful video explaining it all. I'm new to NAS, just bought a used 2-bay unit and experimenting from there. Pretty excited to see how it'll work out.

[wtf-worldtravelfoodie]

Best explained among all the other channels I've watched. Its like you specifially answered all my questions I had in mind. Earned a new subscriber here!

[ShaneMcGrath.]

You made the same blunder I did with first NAS, NEVER go cheap on HDD capacity, harder to upgrade later on.
I went with 3x8TB and added another 2x8TB a year later to fill 5 bay NAS, Still filled them had the NAS 3 years now.
I should have bit the bullet and gone with 3x 16TB to start with and added the rest later, I would still have a few years of storage rather than now being full.

[gjforeman]

As a lifetime geek and lover of all tech toys, I've wanted a NAS for years. Now at 71, with a few extra bucks from the sale of a family property, I took the leap and got a Synology DS1821+ this week. Still waiting on my 6 10Tb disks, but I set it up in test fashion with a pile of old castoff drives from my hoarding closet. Working as a field service engineer for 40 years, I had some networking experience, but retiring 10 years ago has faded a lot of that knowledge. Currently working my way thru some old Network+ manuals from 15 years back, and plowing thru stone age concepts like NetBEUI, IPX/SPX, etc. But the basics are coming back to me. Planning to use this NAS to store lifetimes of scanned and digital photos, family documents, my CNC and 3D printer files, and my wife's massive hoard of digital sewing, embroidery, and quilting files. Also reserving the two remaining NAS drive bays for Synology's Surveillance Station. Sad commentary on modern life that I plan to outfit my front yard like a video studio. Thanks for a great video. I may just show it to family members who keep asking, "whats that black box on the desk for?"

[m.g]

I have the DS918+. After using it for the past few years I can honestly say it is one of the best purchases that I have made. I use it mainly for streaming movies with plex throughout the house and of course backup for other media. I have it connected directly to the router. With the combination on Nvidia Shield boxes in each room and great gigabit speed there are few things that I can't do. At this time, I am ready for the available expansion bay as I am running out of room. Here is a tip. The NAS will use the smallest capacity hard drive as the largest available. So, if you start off with a 4 terabyte and add a 6 terabyte next the NAS will use the 4 as the maximum space available if you are using Synology default backup option. Now almost 5 years later I am finally replacing the smallest drive to a bigger one to get the space that has been there all these years. In short, I have all 4 bays filled three have the same size drive and one has a smaller one. After replacing the smallest, drive I will finally have the full capacity of the drives I have put in. One last tip. If you are streaming movies over your network, make sure your HDMI cables going from the media box such as Shield are current meaning they are able to stream at least 4K video. Doing this will help fix any problems with streaming and audio/ video voice synchronizations. I thought this was the internet speed for a long time even the TV being super old (plasma), but it was not. Check your cables. Don't go to cheap and you will enjoy your NAS a lot more. Synology has a great website check it out before making any purchases decisions.

[vercolit]

I highly recommend using an old laptop or an unused/cheap one and install debian (or any other distro tbh) if you're starting out. It will teach you a lot, and it will make it obvious that servers are not "basically" computers, they are computers. You can do literally anything you want with it. NAS are great, don't get me wrong, but owning and managing your own little server is extremely rewarding and simpler that it looks like (you have to be open to learning new things though). It's a fun rabbit holw to fall into, as you can always make it more stable, more efficient, more deployable (if you care about that). Also, I highly recommend not installing any graphical environment and managing the server via ssh. But like any computer, you can do exactly what you want, and I find it a very enjoyable exerience

[neutrinolinux]

if your house burns down or floods or gets burglarized, and they take your NAS, so much for that. Always keep an offsite backup!

[Byteable]

Even though i have unlimited storage on Google Drive (grandfather plan), I still use a NAS for daily storage access like video editing because it’s much faster than Google Drive when I’m local. For backup and access outside of my home, I use Google Drive that sync up with my NAS.

[nadtz]

I'm a tinkerer so I built my own and went with Truenas but I have installed Synology/Qnap stuff for clients who don't mind paying extra for the ease of use. I'm a ZFS guy so that was important for me but for the 'average' user these are solid, just don't buy used unless you are willing to forgo warranty.

[PitboyHarmony]

The one thing not mentioned ... a NAS is NOT a backup.
Its a primary file storage and use system, parity is not an actual backup. If something ... anything goes wrong with the unit or the area the unit is sitting in ... you have no other version of your files, which is a complete fail as a definition of a backup.

Many approach this in different ways;

- The front USB (or rear) of most NAS devices are for plugging in an external storage device to back up mission critical files occasionally. It depends on the size of the backup for someone like Jimmys usage. Either a truly massive backup drive (20+Tb) in an external enclosure, so he can backup RAW files, or a smaller drive (4 or 8Tb) in that enclosure to just backup finished video projects. Synology's system has settings just for all this. Or instead of an auto backup function, you can set it up so all you do is plug in this external (once a week or whatever) into the front USB, and it auto copies over any changes to desired folders you want backed up.

- As a further step, truly ultimate critical mission files (agreements, taxes, paperwork ... or even a full copy of that external drive) can further be backed up automatically to Google drive, dropbox or any cloud service from the NAS directly.

NOW you have a true backup system: a NAS for file system parity protection, an external drive on site to protect the NAS in case of complete NAS system loss, and an offsite backup of that, in case of a Satellite crashing into your house or a fire. Just make sure you memorise your cloud server user and password.

People really need to understand that a NAS is NOT a backup.
No real backup can be in the same box all together, the inherent risk is too large. One small glitch and everything is gone, thats not a backup.

[hatuhsawl]

I’ve been toying with getting one of these bad boys, thanks for this!

[carlosrincon]

Right now I find myself in the same situation of you at the beginning of the video. A small army of external drives driving me crazy. Now planning to transition to NAS. The video is very informative and didactic on that issue. Thanks for the advice, liked and subscribed, and btw, your girlfriend is very pretty.