Beginner's Guide to NAS for Music Production | The Ultimate Backup Strategy

Hey comments; can anyone recommend the most affordable NAS that still has fast enough speeds to make music production viable?

Honestly, I've been really bad at backups so far. I've encountered situations where I almost lost data, but was able to recover it, created a backup immediately and swore to do regular backups from then on only for me to not act and for the situation to ultimately repeat. Until watching this video, I was only aware of paid software services that take care of backups for you and you have to have a drive connected and so on, but it always intimidated me so the occasional backups I did create did not adhereto the 3-2-1 rule. I now know that NAS can also be used for this purpose and this feels like a great solution to me. I also previously didn't know that you could access the NAS in your home network from anywhere and I think I'll implement this when I have my own household. Something I thought about aside from the whole back up thing is that I'd like to use my pc and laptop once my pc is set up and have not so many files on the laptop, which this does as well! I'm also planning on talking to my coworkers about implementing this kind of system there because the back up system at work has been really bad as well. Thanks!

Good video. When it comes to backups and redundancies everyone has their own setup that works for them. NAS systems are awesome and yes having offsite is also important to. When it comes to sharing files with others I use google drive lol. Thanks for the video.

I had an external hard drive that unfortunately got corrupted because of a faulty cable when my brother (film director) was trying to upload some music video files for my other brother (artist). I didn't worry too much because I still had everything on my computer. I procrastinated with getting another drive, and it cost me later on. A couple of months later, I went to a campus tour at Full Sail (AMAZING and super inspiring) but when I came back from my trip, my computer wouldn't turn on. The logic board had short circuited and I didn't have enough money to do a disk recovery so when I got my free repair, I lost tons of music for clients (including my brothers) and I was heartbroken. We had so many gems and were preparing for a new album and its super discouraging to think about. Never again! You live and you learn.

It’s a little bit of topic but can you share some tips how to recover files from dead external hard-drive? :)

There is an option to give it to some specialised shops but it’s very expensive (and imo overvalued).

Perhaps the revealed/recovered list of the folder-files structure for the start?

I wanna learn audio production what options are ther for working in real life

I lost all my work in 2011 after a hard drive failure. Thankfully I was still a kid with not much good stuff, but it was so traumatic that I use the 3-2-1 method religiously ever since

for those reading my comments and thinking paranoid much? the answer is yes! you need to be nowadays. my router and computer both have security software that automatically updates. thats at least 2 AV's and firewalls and also browser protection. your only as safe as your weakest link

"i can access my file from anywhere with internet" big risk and big exposure. anything exposed to the net is exposed to hacking. do you really thin your IT and security skills are better than T-Mobile, PayPal, LastPass or Dropbox? trust no one and keep access to an absolute minimum. change passwords regularly or after life events (breakup/fight with gf/bf, friends phone gets hacked/lost) anyone/thing that might have had access to your network (stored passwords) can be used against you. it can take less than a hour for a connected device to be found and hacked

"store off site' doesnt mean your neighbor or buddy. floods, fires or earthquakes can destroy whole neighborhoods. store it far offsite. a lot of financial institutes were almost wiped out after 9/11 as they kept their backups on a different floor and lost everything

Hello. I know I am deviating from the topic, but I would like you to show correctly how to use an iRIG 1 Adapter on an android phone and soundcraft efx8 mixer to get a very good sound. Thank you very much.

That is a good topic. In January I bought a NAS for a lab in our workplace and after that I took the decision to purchase one for my home, but I kept using an online service too. I synchronized a lot of files, including music and video projects. I use the NAS not only for backup, but as for media center. A concern still is the security, I still must learn how to to protect it from intrusions.

Then power cut.

An $800 file backup system is a big ask when that costs more than the computer I make the music on

A Blu-ray burner or even a DVD burner can be a short term solution for backing up a single project. I wouldn't plan on these being a viable restore option for more than about 5 years. Mailing or sneakernet disc's to a friend or family member is cheap insurance in addition to the 3-2-1 plan.

please make a video about Latency. Not recording Latency but computer settings for Latency. I have latency spikes (probably some driver fault) i'm trying like for a year to find a tutorial so i can fix it but gave up after experimenting with tons of settings and 7 clean windows installs... (Win 10, i7 9750H, RTX 2070, 16GB 2666Mhz, 2TB 970 Evo Plus)

I use Synology myself. When compared to Qnap, Synology always has the edge. I use NAS spinning hard drives in mine as SSD's are far t0o expensive and have a shorter life span and slow down when full compared to spinners.

Since around three years ago, I pay a monthly subscription for Google One. I get 2TB of google drive cloud storage, and a program on my mac that automatically backups my files almost simultaneously as I work on them, so I don't have to think about making backups manually, it all just works.

Am the fourth to comment here 😂❤❤❤❤ love the content keep it coming

Thanks, this is a critical topic to address. Having data-backup discipline is a must.

Hopefully, you use a VPN connection rather than expose your NAS directly to the Internet...

I think that what might be a game changer for some is the ability to have an access to a folder from all machines that you are using simultaneously (your example with co-worker/guest coming in the studio was well chosen).

Could Benefit #2 be also possibly managed by accessing your files remotely (think VNC)?

I think that 3-2-1 rule is crucial and is paramount for all data storage, period. Although I’m still not sure about letting the system do it automatically for you (so you can forget about it ‘completely’). For instance, I do it manually ‘when the time is right’ (even I’m aware of the risk of losing the newest projects). It has worked this way just fine.

Oh, and not into cloud.

I'm currently working on a DIY NAS myself, and I was thinking on storing VSTs there as well, so I don't need to make sure all Plugins are available on all machines multiple times. This might be more of a CS question, but what are your thoughts on this?