Favorite NAS for audio

[Snarl 12/8]

Hi,

I guess the subject says it all. I'm wondering from both a music production and music consumption standpoint. Where should I store my wavs and my mp3's.

Thanks,

ck

[jimjazzdad]

"Network Attached Storage" - I had to look that one up. I guess that's a thing in bigger studios? Never had the need in my little world. I just have a couple of 1Tb storage drives in my audio computer (a total of 5 drives in that PC tower, including 2x 750 Gb USB3 drives, where I can offload projects and the SSD C: drive for OS and programs). I also keep a 2 Tb emergency back up HDD in a friend's house, in case of disaster...

[A.David.MacKinnon]

Same for me here. I've got three 1tb drives in the studio computer plus some usb ones for mobile and off site back up.
I like to treat projects the same as I did in my tape days though. The data belongs to the client and they get a copy of everything. They're responsible for archiving not me. I hang onto things for a long time but after a few years it may get wiped.

MP3 are something I stopped thinking about a few years ago. For anything digital I'm purely in the streaming world now.

[alexdingley]

I've done a few networked things here in my home (where I have a bunch of media consumption systems + my home studio), and I think the whole exercise was a little wasteful.

Here's the real question I think one might wanna ask before focusing on a NAS: Why do you think you need one?

• Do you have multiple computers that all need to backup + need to access common media content to maintain a fast workflow, and it's easier to manage that as a network location instead of direct-attached-storage?
• Are you trying to reduce whirring HDD sounds in your music space?
• Is it just something you keep hearing about and you think it's neat & wanna give it a try?
• Or is it something else?

A little shared experience that might help you think about this:
I have been trying to solve for a combo of the first, second, & third bullets — and my two solutions have been:

• 2009 8-core Mac Pro tower with RAID-0'd drives as a Time Machine backup for multiple macs + a circa 2010 1GB video card some other drives as a Plex Media Server (and that ran like a champ without issue for years)
• more-recently (because a client wanted me to learn enough about QNAPs to help with his QNAP NAS setup) I bought a 9-bay QNAP and set it up as a Plex server + a Time Machine backup location. It's performance was "meh" for media but fine for backup.

In the end, I've come to realize... If I have a studio computer that's good enough to rock 40+ tracks of 24/96K, and it's got an even half-way decent GPU in it, then it's also good enough to fling blu-ray rips to my living room AppleTV. And if I think about it further... if I'm in the living room watching my media... i'm NOT in the studio, so the Plexing isn't going to slow-down my studio workflows / impact my plug-in count in Pro Tools. So... One computer with attached-storage is the right move unless I'm in a multi-room facility where files need to be accessed by multiple people simultaneously & the computers need to be backed up to some safe location centrally.
Also... Backblaze is crazy-cheap for backing up infinite amounts of data from a single computer & all of it's attached storage.

[digitaldrummer]

don't try to use a NAS for audio files that you are processing. it will be fine for storing backups, but the latency (essentially how much time it takes to go across the network) will be too much for your DAW. A local drive will always be better for primary storage (meaning you are actively working on those files). local SSDs can be measured in sub-millisecond (i.e., microseconds) these days while network storage will still be in the 100's or 1000's of milliseconds. it might sound fast, but it's not to your computer.

Personally I use 2.5" SSDs with one of these type of dongles (https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-SAT ... 00HJZJI84/) when I want to do quick daily backups. It usually takes < 20 min to complete (sometimes much faster). Then maybe weekly (or monthly depending on how busy I've been) I make a backup to a 3.5"spinning drive that is 4TB and sitting in a USB "dock". I also rotate drives occasionally and bring them into my house (in case of disaster at the studio).

For "active" (or primary storage or "hot" files) I have 2 SSDs in my PC. One is for boot and my active projects (it is no longer necessary to split the boot files when using a modern SSD - they are so fast it's a non-issue) and the second drive is where I move "warm" files such as reference files (songs that I might reference mixes) or projects that I was working on but the artist took a 2 week hiatus, etc. My second drive could be a spinning drive but copying back and forth is SO much faster when using SSDs. then my "cold" storage goes onto additional drives. There I will put completed projects, installation files for plugins, DAW, sample packs, etc. I usually make at least 2 copies of those so I don't have to backup them up every time I do a backup (they don't change).

one word of caution on SSDs is that Flash memory is not designed to be a long-term archive and has the possibility of losing data over time if it is offline (i.e. powered off) but that 's a much longer story.

[Nick Sevilla]

I use my older 2008 Mac Pro tower. Bought a faster 10TB drive, and turn it on to backup via the network.

At some point I'll be installing Apple Server on it, and moving it into my storage room. This year most likely.

[alexdingley]

At some point I'll be installing Apple Server on it

What is drawing towards using MacOS Server? It was discontinued last year, and pretty badly reduced in scope over the last 10yrs.

[Nick Sevilla]

At some point I'll be installing Apple Server on it

What is drawing towards using MacOS Server? It was discontinued last year, and pretty badly reduced in scope over the last 10yrs.

That I did not know... thanks. Well, back to the drawing board LOL.

[digitaldrummer]

if you want a network storage server, then get a cheap PC (doesn't have to be the fastest CPU) with a reasonable amount of RAM and some storage, load Linux on it and setup up NFS server and then you should be able to backup to it as well. That's pretty much all these little pre-packaged NAS servers are doing.

[Snarl 12/8]

I just upgraded my linux server and it still doesn't do everything I want as easily as I want. I will probably still use Linux as a LAMP server. I know Linux could do all the things, but my last one ran trouble free for maybe 10 years and I've forgotten all my linux. I don't want to configure a bunch of different packages and maintain the updates, etc., etc. if an appliance can do this job. I feel like my needs are fairly prosumer. I have bit of money to throw at this problem and I was hoping the NAS's had gotten to a point where they could do the things I said above. I wouldn't try to use it as a record drive.

[Randyman...]

Look into TrueNAS as a free OS/GUI to turn your spare hardware into a NAS. It's very capable and stable, and also a commercial product (free for personal/home use). Can run plugins and all kind of crap from Plex to UniFi controllers and such... Runs ZFS, and I use a RAID Z2 array (basically RAID-6 with a bullet-proof filesystem). Once installed, it is headless and managed via Web GUI from any browser.

https://www.truenas.com/download-truenas-core/

[Snarl 12/8]

I'm giving Plex a whirl on my Ubuntu install. I've already got ubuntu set up as a file server and web server. So far plex is an endless "progress" circle animation, but if it is cataloging all the media on the server it is on, it has its work cut out for it. Thanks for mentioning it.