What NAS do you use?

Curious what folks are using for NAS? Are you happy with the performance? I have been trying to get a few flavors going and can’t seem to find a good solution. Maybe it is SMB with MacOS issue?

I have a QNAP TS-h973AX ZFS on an 8 port 10G Switch with connections to my Studio Max and my Threadripper PC. I have 5 Seagate Ironwolf 8T drives in RAID 5. Very fast connection to both PC's. Not my intention, but fast enough for either PC to edit from same source.

I previously had a NAS from QNAP so I can share files between the PC computers but I find it slow for editing so I used SyncThing to sync up between the NAS and local drives so I can edit locally and still share the files. The NAS was underutilized and ended up just for backup. More recently I decided to just go with a DAS, which I have connected to a Mac and still share/sync files using SyncThing with the other computers and as a backup as well. I use a TerraMaster D8-Hybrid. In the first 2-Slots I have it set to RAID 1 mirror so I can archive my finished projects to it and have 2 copies. The 3rd and 4th drives are 2 24Tb HDD for nightly backup setup as JBOD giving a total of 48Tb. This is sync to the old QNAP that is now used as a dedicated RAID 5 weekly backup system (so as I said it is pretty underutilized). The 4 NVMe slots is 4 sticks of 4TB (16Tb total) that is software RAID JBOD and I use this like a dropbox for clients to login using NextCloud software to have access to the very latest cut of the day for them to download and view the progress or the final delivery (of course with watermark until project is paid). So really the DAS gives me performance since everything is connected through USB3.2 that’s connected to a TB3 port. So far it’s much much faster to access than what it was with the QNAP and I have the flexibility of a cage with hardware RAID 0/1/JBOD or Singles, and 4 fast NVMe drives.

Yes a 1 or even 2.5G Ethernet connection is not fast enough but the 10G can transfer files fast enough for most things. I too have a QNAP TR-004 DAS that transfers at about 200MBps much like direct from a hard drive. I had used a USB C SSD to house the source files so I could go between the Studio Max and the PC easily but the NAS now is faster. I upgraded the PC with 10G Ethernet PCI card and the Studio Max comes with 10G interface. The NAS, PC and Studio max are connected with a 10G switch . It also connects to the old 1G Ethernet switch to connect to the rest of the network and internet as needed. I did this upgrade a month ago and would now certainly recommend going 10G in similar situation. Still have the older Synology NAS used for boot drive backups on the 1G network.

I have a Synology DS923+ w/ the compatible 5-bay extension attached.

1-drive fault tolerance for each drive pool running several Seagate IronWolf Pros (not technically approved by Synology as their drive brand of choice, but most people ignore the warning).

I maxed out the NVMe SSD-Cache with two mirrored 2TB sticks.

I think I have 90TB usable space and I still have 2 bays that are empty, so easy expansion in the future (I have 20TB left to use, so that time is coming).

I use "Synology Hybrid RAID" (SHR), for this very reason. When bigger drives start being manufactured, I can mix and match sizes. If I leave one bay free for swaps, I can eventually replace each drive one by one in the array with a bigger drive, and the array will rebuild accordingly as long as one bay is free.

Super super quiet, it's right next to my desk.

For speed, you HAVE to buy 3 things that enable 10G Ethernet (the only speed worth having for video editors) across the whole signal path:

1.
10Gbe adapter for the NAS model (if it doesn't already come with one; ≈$100)

2.
10Gbe PCIe adapter for your computer (≈$100)

3.
10Gbe switch (I have a TP Link unmanaged switch that was around $200, not bad at all); and make sure your Ethernet cables are the fastest (I have CAT 8, I think, which is overkill, but I don't have to worry about it)

If one of those points doesn't have 10Gbe speed, you WON'T get that speed no matter if every other point has it.

All in all, I'm very happy (I set all this up in February this year, so it's still relatively new).

Synology's OS is amazing to work with, and it comes with a bunch of little nice apps which you can utilize. For example, I recently cancelled my overpriced Evernote subscription because they literally have a very similar notes app that I now use instead.

Performance-wise:

Writing to the NAS is around 250 MB/s
Reading from the NAS is close to SSD speeds.

I think I spent around $5–6K to get everything set up and working.


Sent from my motorola razr 2023 using Tapatalk

I have a Synology DiskStation DS1821+. Loaded with the optional RAM and m.2 SSDs. 80TB worth of drives, about 67TB formatted in RAID5. Also the optional 10G ethernet card.

I love it, easy to setup for us non IT pros. Speeds are great, I edit off of it when projects are too big for my local storage.

I also use the cloud storage options. Anything I drag and drop to the NAS goes to my Dropbox automatically. Making backups a little simpler.

Hi

Just for general information

I did some testing using TrueNAS CORE, and the HyperDecks can record there.

I also did some testing using a shared folder on Windows (PC), and it seems to work too.


.....

I have having the following issue:

I made an archive of a rather large project (lots of 4k dpx files around 4-6TB). When I try to import the archive, or open the project or import the project, I get the following error: Unable to import Project. Failed to open archive. Now Resolve WAS able to back the project up to the NAS, but somehow it can't seem to access the archive. I edit on SSDs and would like to reclaim the space but NOT before making sure I can open the archive again.

I have an m3 MacBook Pro with 128gigs of ram, 2tb SSD and a Synology NAS 1821+ over 100tb.
Running Resolve 19.1.4 (build 11) and MacOS: 15.4.1 (24E263). I have a 10GB connection via a Sonnet 10GB Twin adapter running into an unmanaged 10GB switch.

Any idea why this is happening? I tried using the MacOS to give PostgreSQL access, but it fails. What am I missing?

Do you mean a .dra? Is that a folder with media files and a .drp or is it a flat file? If the latter, try using zip and see if it can access the file. If a folder, try importing just the .drp and see if that succeeds.

Synology DS1621+
6x Seagate IronWolf (14TB x 6 = 12.7TB x 6 installed)
Synology Hybrid RAID (SHR) (With data protection for 2-drive fault tolerance)
Total storage pool size of 50.9 TB
2x Samsung 980 1TB (SSD read+write cache)
Synology E10G18-T1 10GBASE-T PCIe card

BMD Disk Speed Test report:
Upload: ~108 MB/s
Download: ~925 MB/s
(copy/paste not available)


CrystalDiskMark 8.0.6 x64 report (copy/paste)
Profile: Peak
Test: 1 GiB (x5)
Time: Measure 5 sec / Interval 5 sec
Date: 2025/04/30 23:51:33
OS: Windows 11 Pro 23H2 [10.0 Build 22631] (x64)

* MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes/s [SATA/600 = 600,000,000 bytes/s]
* KB = 1000 bytes, KiB = 1024 bytes

[Read]
SEQ 1MiB (Q= 8, T= 1): 1072.099 MB/s [ 1022.4 IOPS] < 7813.48 us>
RND 4KiB (Q= 32, T= 1): 243.315 MB/s [ 59403.1 IOPS] < 528.48 us>

[Write]
SEQ 1MiB (Q= 8, T= 1): 111.090 MB/s [ 105.9 IOPS] < 74797.57 us>
RND 4KiB (Q= 32, T= 1): 108.008 MB/s [ 26369.1 IOPS] < 1211.54 us>

[Mix] Read 50%/Write 50%
SEQ 1MiB (Q= 8, T= 1): 210.935 MB/s [ 201.2 IOPS] < 39557.07 us>
RND 4KiB (Q= 32, T= 1): 140.481 MB/s [ 34297.1 IOPS] < 925.65 us>