NAS (Network-Attached Storage) Options for Creators

We’re an in-house video production studio, which means Tony is in the office with me and edits everything on-site.

To handle our storage needs and make things more efficient, we edit directly off of a NAS (Network-Attached Storage) unit.

I got a 45Drives Storinator Q30 Enhanced, which is a smaller version of what Linus Tech Tips uses. I basically just tried to recreate what they do.

Storinator™ Q30 – Compact and Wisper Quiet
Huge amount of storage that’s whisper-quiet and ultra-efficient. Perfect in video production studios and offices.
www.45drives.com

With drives, two 10gb NICs, and the redundant PSU, it cost me $17,000. I bought 15 drives (16tb each), so I have 15 more slots if we ever need more space as the Q30 has 30 slots.

We got around 170tb of usable storage space from that IIRC, after setting up RAID 6.

RAID 6 essentially “stripes” your data across ALL the drives, which makes read speeds insanely fast. One video file doesn’t exist on a single drive; instead, bits and pieces of it are on all the drives.

So you go from a single 7200 RPM platter drive serving up read speeds of 160MB/s, which sucks, to 15 drives essentially 15x’ing that. And you 10gb NIC means the ethernet cord can handle 10,000mbps, meaning it’s not a bottleneck.

The other thing about RAID 6 is it sets up two “parity blocks”, which you don’t need to know the details of. But they mean you can lose up to two drives (to hardware failure) before you’ll have any data loss.

Linus has a great video on this:

Gerald does as well:

About the Author

My name is Thomas Frank, and I'm a Notion-certified writer, YouTuber, and template creator. I've been using Notion since 2018 to organize my personal life and to run my business and YouTube channel. In addition to this formula reference, I've created a free Notion course for beginners and several productivity-focused Notion templates. If you'd like to connect, follow me on Twitter.

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