You've been requesting
that I talk about how I store my files
for quite some time now, and I've mostly
been avoiding that topic because my previous
file management strategy was not something
I'd recommend to others as it was pretty careless
and convoluted. So, today I'm going
to show you the new scheme I came up with
and provide mini-reviews for some of the stuff I tried
implementing along the way. Let's get undone. [offbeat music] ♪ Gerald Undone ♪ ♪ He's crazy ♪ What's happening, everybody?
I'm Gerald Undone and I didn't choose the purple
life, the purple life chose me. So, I'm not going to be able
to finish this video today because I still have
another NAS unit to try out, but that won't
matter too much to you because by the time
you're watching this, I would have already
tested that other NAS unit and include it
in this very video, but that's Future Gerald's
problem and he'll have his time in the sun
in a few minutes. But, let me, Past Gerald,
tell you what I've learned so far. So, my old
way of doing things was to record my footage to SSDs
and then connect them to my editing rig
via USB adapters and edit right off the drives,
but for multi-camera shoots, this would require me
to have several dirty danglers
hanging down every orifice of my computer.
In terms of performance, it's actually worked fine.
Although, there was the odd time
where I'd get USB conflicts and I'd have to remove
and replug in the drive, but mostly no big deal.
The real issue was the lack of redundancy
and the fact that these drives were out of commission
until the edit was done. I couldn't transfer over
all the footage because my internal drive
wasn't big enough to contain
the multiple terabytes of data contained in all the USB drives,
and it's certainly not good practice to
fill up all of your USB system drive if you plan
to use it for operations. Actually, it's just
not good practice in general to completely fill an a SSD,
but what's worse is if one of these drives
fail during the edit process, that footage
would be lost forever. Now, I know that some people
are already gasping at this because they
archive their footage. I do not. I'm not a keeper of past,
unprocessed footage unless it's
something really special, but considering that I record
a few terabytes of my silly face yammering on every week,
I'm not really interested in storing all
that nerd talk perpetually, so I just keep
the final exported videos. I'm okay with that
and that's not going to change, but what is going
to change is building in some redundancy
for the footage I'm using before the video
is finished so that my work can't be lost mid-project.
That's goal number one. The other limitation
to my current configuration is that co-working on
a project requires the passing back and forth
of those dangling drives, which is just not efficient,
so goal number two is to make
the project shareable over my studio's network.
Finally, for the stuff I do keep like the finished videos,
thumbnails, personal files, et cetera, I want to revamp
my persistent storage. Right now, they're stored
on a mechanical drive on my computer,
then backed up to this old D-320 Share Center,
which actually required custom third party firmware
just to keep using it since it has serious security
flaws in its original state that the latest
updates in Windows 10 rightfully prevent you
from accessing, but after that, I send those files off
to OneDrive for cloud backup. Now, I like OneDrive
and I get the storage I have for free as part of the
Microsoft Suite, but I'm limited to 1TB per user
and you can only add an additional 1TB maximum
at $10 per month, which isn't a great price.
So, I've been using Backblaze B2 for the
last few weeks as a test to replace my OneDrive.
So far, I've been liking it. You only get charged
for what you store, which is at a rate of half a cent per
gigabyte, so $5 per terabyte, plus some transaction fees
if you download a lot, but if all you do is store
your files, you can bank on pretty close to $5 per terabyte,
calculated daily. So, if your storage
increases dramatically for a few days, you only
pay extra for those days. This video isn't
sponsored by Backblaze, but I've been finding it
pretty perfect for what I need, and when I compare
the similar services from Amazon and Microsoft,
Backblaze turned out to be much cheaper.
For example, to backup and store my personal files
and all my finished videos, for the month of May
only cost me $2.95. And the per day
calculations would be great if I want to also
backup my project files mid-edit because then
they'll have a third location for redundancy and I'll
only pay for the days I use since as I already said,
I don't keep my footage forever. So, that brings me to
the last thing I'll need from the NAS that's gonna
fit this job. I'll need it to support backups
to Backblaze B2 so that I can just store everything on there
in a redundant RAID array and then have
the NAS send it off to Backblaze on
a schedule automatically. And, since this NAS is going
to be used as a replacement for my direct attached SSDs,
I want it to be as fast as my SSDs, which
means a few more requirements. I'm gonna be setting up
10GB Ethernet and I'm going to be
making a compact array of only 2.5 inch SATA SSDs. For the 10GB network cards
for my computers, I went with the Aquantia 107s. I was able to get
their AQtion 10G Gaming Cards for $125 CAD,
which is under $100 USD. They installed fine
and Windows 10 recognized them and installed the latest
drivers automatically. I calculated
my total storage needs to be about 4 to 5 TB.
The most I ever need for my video editing projects
is about 3TB, and I need about 1TB
for personal files and finished videos.
So, I decided to go with six 2TB drives
in a RAID 10 array. I chose RAID 10
over RAID 5 or 6 so that I could better saturate
the read and write speeds of two computers simultaneously
accessing 10GB connections and RAID 10 is also
simpler and generally more successful and easier
rebuilding if I lost a drive. And RAID 10 would
still leave me with 6TB, which should be
plenty for my needs. I ended up getting
Crucial MX500 drives because there was
a good deal on them at the time, and the 2TB version
provides a decent life span of about 700TB written. Now, typically speaking
for this purpose, you'd want to go with
Enterprise drives or SSDs specifically designed for NAS, but they're priced much,
much higher, and I was getting such
a good deal on the MX500s where even the Samsung EVOs, which do offer a better TBW
are almost double the price. So, I was in
a position where economically it was better
to buy more spare drives than it was
to buy longer lasting ones. But, if you plan on
doing this yourself, look for the most TBW
you can get for the money and buy quality drives. I figure 700TB
written should be fine with my usage,
since I'll probably only cycle 10, 15TB per month,
so I should be able to get at least four years
of constant use out of these. Now, I just needed
somewhere to stick them, so I reached out to the players
I knew in this space, Synology and QNAP, to send me
a NAS fitting the bill, and here's what they sent. Synology sent their DS1618+ and QNAP
sent their TVS-672XT. These are both
six bay boxes that accept 3.5 inch or 2.5 inch drives, but the QNAP also has
slots for 2 NVME drives, so eight drives total, but the Synology
can be expanded in that way with PCI Express.
However, I needed to use the PCI Express slot
in the Synology to install their dual port
10GB network card so that I could connect
the two computers that I needed to have co-operative
video editing capabilities. Now, this QNAP
already has one 10GB port built in and
then two Thunderbolt ports. Now, for me,
this wasn't ideal which is why Future Gerald will
have to come in and take over when I get the replacement
unit for this device because I'm going
to be swapping this box out for their TVS-882ST3,
which not only has two 10GB ports built in,
but it's also smaller because it's 2.5 inch
form factor only, meaning it can take
eight SSDs in an overall smaller package.
But, in the meantime, I had the chance to compare
these two units for my needs and here are my findings.
Overall, the QNAP is the better unit, but it's
also quite a bit more expensive. The Synology offers a pretty
compelling value though, at less than
half the price, but there's a couple things to consider.
As I mentioned earlier, if you need two 10GB ports,
then you'll have to get Synology's
expansion card, which at $269, will take this $750 NAS
and make it $1,019, only $580 less than
the QNAP. But, if you're on a computer that can't
use Thunderbolt like me, then you'll also need
to get a Thunderbolt 10GB adapter for the QNAP
if you need two 10GB ports, which will cost you $184,
bringing the more comparable prices
to $1,783 for the QNAP and $1,019 for the Synology,
without drives of course. The QNAP has more RAM,
8GB versus the 4GB in the Synology,
but I didn't find this had a major impact
on my use case. Perhaps if you need
to run more complex operations on the device,
this might be more important, but from my simple
storage, video editing and a cloud backup,
I never even used the 4GB on the Synology.
I even tried upgrading the RAM to a dual channel
16GB kit from Crucial, and I saw absolutely
no performance in the UI or in transfer speeds,
so I wouldn't recommend upgrading the RAM
if you're using the Synology in the way that I am,
but I can recommend that particular RAM kit
if you need to upgrade it as the kit
worked perfectly fine for me and the install was a breeze.
But, jumping back to those transfer speeds,
the QNAP did outperform the Synology in my disk
speed tests, but that must be dependent on the CPU
and not the RAM. The QNAP is using
a 3.1GHz quad-core Intel i3-8100T,
where the Synology has a 2.1GHz quad-core
Intel Atom C3538. The large sequential
reads were similar, which is all that some people
might care about, but I figure since I had a bunch
of SSDs to test, I might as well RAID 0 them and
see which device is faster when everything else
is the same. I also found the QNAP to be more stable
and more consistent with the tests.
Each time I tested the Synology, I got different sequential
writes and drastically different random reads
and writes, but the QNAP was steady and consistently
three to four times faster in the randoms,
as well as 10% better in the sequential writes
most of the time. The same was true
for RAID 5 and RAID 10 configurations,
and I tested the Synology using the EXT4 file system
to match the QNAP and use very similar settings.
Now, speaking of RAIDing SSDs,
I also found that Synology was much more picky
about which drives and which configurations
would allow for TRIM to be activated.
I could only activate TRIM on the Synology in RAID 10,
where I could do it in pretty much every
combination I try on the QNAP. Since I wanted
RAID 10 anyway, this isn't
that big of a problem, but it's something
you should consider if you're a RAID 5 or 6 user and you plan to use SSDs and you want
to use TRIM commands. I do prefer
the Synology's UI though. I find it cleaner
and more modern-looking and a bit more intuitive to use, and the Synology
also boots up, shuts down and restarts
much faster than the QNAP. We're talking
20 seconds vs. 2-3 minutes. This isn't a big deal
once you get it up and running, but those minutes did
add up during initial setup. The QNAP's UI is
quite similar in many ways, but I found I was
constantly being bombarded by notifications and pop-ups, and it was just generally
a little more difficult to navigate during my first use. The QNAP
is also noticeably bigger and heavier than the Synology,
but it is a bit quieter. That's something I forgot
to mention that I wanted to fix about my previous setup.
The noise. This little D-Link box
creates way too much noise, even when idle.
I often have to unplug it to shoot my videos,
which is something I'd like to avoid in the future.
I tested the idle volume of all three of these boxes
in their permanent home and here's what I got.
With everything turned off in the studio,
the room measures 33.2 dBA. Then, I turned on
the D-Link 320 and it jumped to 42.7 dBA, measured
from about three feet or one meter away. And it's also
a higher pitched noise, so it's easier to hear
over the noise floor of the room and my mics
pick it up really well. The Synology was
a lot quieter at 39.2 dBA and the pitch was lower
as well, which helped. And I'd say you
could safely record in a room with this running, as
long you're not right beside it. Give yourself about
six feet or two meters and you should be fine.
The QNAP, though, was the quietest at
37.6 dBA and it had the lowest frequency which is
the easiest to clean up and the hardest
to hear amongst the room tone. That test, by the way,
was done with all the devices set to their
respective quiet modes. Now, with that said,
I'll be updating you in a moment when
I get the new QNAP to test, but to summarize
what I've learned so far, both of these devices
were able to do exactly what I needed them
to do once I installed the required 10GB cards
and adapters. I could transfer
my footage onto them, have two computers
editing off of them and have them backed up to
Backblaze B2 on a schedule, and with a six drive
RAID 10 array of SSDs, I was able to easily saturate
two 10GB connections. I tested simultaneous
file transfers on both computers and both
of these NASs could handle the throughput.
Time performance was about the same on both,
which is very snappy and indistinguishable
from editing off of my internal SSD and
they both exported my videos at exactly the same
amount of time. And, they both allow for a drive to fail
and prompt for it to be replaced. I have
a couple of cold spares here of the SSDs and I
tested a drive swap to rebuild the RAID and both succeeded.
So again, they both accomplished my goal,
but the QNAP was faster. It rebuilt faster, it has
faster random reads and writes and it more stable
during the file transfers. The Synology would hit
the same max speed and would hover around
the same extended transfer rate, but would fluctuate
a lot more than the QNAP. And, although I like
the UI better on the Synology, the QNAP appears
to receive updates more frequently during
the short time I've had them and it gave me fewer issues
that required a system reboot, where I had
a couple disconnects and hangs on the Synology. I also like that the QNAP has
an easy access port on the front to allow me to quickly
offload my footage and this device also includes
10GB USB ports including Type-C, where the Synology
only has USB Type-A and only 5GB.
The QNAP is slightly quieter, which is important to me.
The QNAP also provides a little bit more in the box,
including Cat 6a cables for the 10GB connections alongside the Cat 5e cables
for the 1GB, where the Synology only comes
with the 1GB Ethernet cables, so QNAP does save you
a little bit of money there. Now, none of
these difference are huge, but the experience
is overall smoother on the QNAP, but at several hundred
dollars more, it might be hard to convince
you that those somewhat nuanced
improvements are worth it. I'd say both are good choices
if you're planning to do something similar to me,
and if you're looking for the best value,
the Synology is probably your pick, but if
you'd rather get the most you can get for your money,
regardless of the price, I think the QNAP is the winner. Now, if you've got
even more money to spend, let's take a look
at the TVS-882ST3 and see how it stacks up, because on paper,
that unit seems like the ultimate version
of what I'm looking for. But QNAP won't
let me borrow that unit until I give them this one back. So, I'm gonna go do that now. Gimme about 15 minutes. [dramatic music] ♪ ♪ Okay, so it's
about six weeks later, and I've had
an opportunity to use each unit for a while and edit a couple
of videos with each of them and I'd like to update you
on my thoughts. But first, I'd like to
thank Storyblocks for hooking me up with that hang glider.
Luckily for me, this isn't Far Cry
and I don't have to take a hang glider places
to pick up packages. They just come in the mail,
but that's not as exciting or as entertaining
as stock footage, and when I need stock footage,
Storyblocks is my go to solution with their
impressive selection of clips covering a wide range
of subjects with unlimited downloads and 4K video.
They're also amply supplied with
backgrounds, overlays and After Effects templates,
and the interface is easy to use and navigate and
the clips are royalty-free for both commercial
and personal use, so you can use them
as much as you want, wherever you want.
So, if you think you can take advantage of
a fantastic library of quality stock footage and effects,
check out Storyblocks using the link
in the description below. Alright, so the workflow's
been great and everything worked out as planned.
The cloud backup to Backblaze worked
extremely well with each unit, and I'm really happy
with Backblaze B2. My last two
monthly bills have only been around $5 each.
The Aquantia network cards haven't given me
any problems and everything's been really stable.
And six weeks later, I'd say my previous
conclusions still hold up. Now, comparing
this new unit from QNAP, the TVS-882ST3,
this is the upgraded version with the i7-6700HQ
and 16GB of RAM and it costs around $2,800, which is quite expensive
for a box of its size and as good as it is
for what I'm doing, that price definitely
gives me some mixed feelings. First of all, to the positive,
it does have two 10GB RJ45 ports,
which solves the problem
I had with the other QNAP, and it still keeps the two
Thunderbolt 3 ports as well. Now, I assumed
this level of connectivity and using the Intel X550-T2
definitely contributed to the cost increase,
but for what I'm doing, I'd be happy if
there was a cheaper version of this without
the Thunderbolt card. It also has two 1GB RJ45s, two USB 5GB Type-A ports, and two more USB 10GB ports, one Type-A on the back and one Type-C quick copy
on the front. So, connectivity is great, but a quick note about
the dual 10GB NIC. The one that they installed
on here has a very noisy fan. I was disappointed when
I first started using this NAS because it was supposed to be
the smallest and quietest of the bunch, but it was actually
louder than the other two, but all that noise
was being generated from the tiny fan
on the network card, 'cause the rest of
the box was very quiet. So, I unplugged that fan
and the sound level dropped to the same level as my room, so that is exactly what
I was looking for, a silent NAS. I did some
stress testing to see if unplugging that fan
would cause instability or network throttling
and it doesn't seem to. The hottest it got
was around the 50s to low 60s Celsius,
which I think should probably be fine for that component
and the speeds never dipped. Just keep in mind
that I'm not officially endorsing this action
and it probably violates your warranty with QNAP.
Now, the build quality of the 882 is fantastic.
Solid metal construction. I especially like the SSD trays.
They're obviously a lot smaller because they're
only for 2.5 inch drives, but they're very rigid,
made of metal and have very strong,
satisfying locks and releases. Lastly, this unit is loaded
with media features as well, including an HDMI port
and a remote control, so you could
use it as your media PC at the same time to
make your money go further. I have no intention
on doing this, so for me, those are wasted features
which probably could have been removed to save
some money, but they're there if you can leverage them.
Now, as far as actual performance goes,
it's not as simple as the more
expensive unit is the best. First of all, real world
performance felt pretty much identical to the 672
from QNAP with the same reliability
I complimented in the first part of this video.
But, the benchmarks showed mixed
results comparatively. Against the Synology,
the QNAP 882 shows nothing but improvement,
with noticeable gains in the random reads
and writes, but against the cheaper QNAP 672,
the multi-threaded random performance
was nearly cut in half. Now, I'm not really
sure what to attribute this to other than the CPU.
It would appear that the i3-8100T
that's in the 672 is better suited
for those types of tasks. The sequential reads
are best on the 882, but they're close enough
that you can't really tell the difference
in the real world, and that's fair to say about
the Synology as well when it comes to
video editing. The biggest
disappointment though is that I still
wasn't able to fully saturate the 10GB connection
with sequential writes while using RAID 10.
I can only achieve it with RAID 0,
and adding more drives from 6 to 8 seems to only
incur more of a penalty, dropping the write speed
from 1,000MB/s on six drives to 980MB/s
with eight drives. It's possible the controller
or the way the RAID 10 is handled in the software
is just incapable of hitting that 1,200MB/s that my connection can handle
for the write speed, but this is a limitation
that you can't solve by just throwing more money
at the problem because each of the three devices
I tested at very different price points have this issue.
So, if fully saturating 10GB reads and writes
on two computers is your goal, you might have
to look at a custom solution because I don't think boxes
like these will do it. Let me know
if you'd be interested in a follow-up video
down the road building out a custom
solution and comparing price to performance
against these types of boxes. But all that being said,
based on my purpose, the write speeds
I'm getting are perfectly fine for any of these
and are generally faster than the media
I'm dumping onto the NAS anyway, so the bottleneck
is usually USB or my reader or my card, and they're all
plenty fast for video editing read speeds,
but then that brings us back to the pricing.
Synology is still the best value of the lot, and if
we don't count media features and Thunderbolt ports
because I'm not using them anyway, all that
I'm getting by throwing more money at the problem
is quieter operation, more reliability, steadier
transfers and TRIM support. And, in the case
of the TVS-882, higher capacity since it's an
eight bay option instead of six. I really do love
the silent operation and more efficient size of the 882,
but I can't help but think the 672 is probably
a better use of money considering it
even benchmarked better and it's quiet enough.
And, after using the Synology for
nearly a month, I can also say that I don't really
have any big problems with either other than the
fact that it is a bit noisier and a few more limitations
and quirks regarding loading SSDs in there. So overall,
I'm pleasantly surprised. Normally when
I compare products, I expect to find one of
them severely lacking, especially when there's
a $2,000 price disparity between the cheapest
and most expensive unit, but I'd be okay
with recommending any of these units for my use case
and it really just comes down to
your budget and the amount of refinement you want
to pay for in your hardware. But that's gonna be it for me.
I hope you found this video entertaining,
or at least helpful, and if you did, make sure
to leave it the ol' thumbs up and consider subscribing
if you haven't already, but if you did not
find this video helpful or entertaining, try setting
the playback speed to 75%. Alright...I'm done.
