why would i need a nas?

[elexi0s]

so I've heard a lot about nas, "you can store all your media content! your movies, songs and videos!" but why would i not just stream them?

that wasn't a rhetorical question to disparage nas's. seriously explain to me why i don't get it.

 

i've read articles on why every home should own a nas. but personally i just use netflix and youtube for the things i want to watch not blu-rays that i can saver to a nas.

the main storage my pc takes up is games, which i assume would just be too slow to run of fa nas. and i use the free version of google drive for all my college work as well as my job work (as an one man game developer) and this fits fine on google drive. considering its mostly text files or for my dev work 2d art. 

 

am i just not seeing the uses or are the tales of "why every home should have a nas" blown out of proportion for people like me.

would love to hear a, no bud your wrong you could do this this and this which would improve your life but right now i don't get that.

[Sack]

Imagine you are a family of 6 that share a lot of content i.e family photos, a NAS is basically just a really simple home server, like you've said you're a one man guy. If however you were part of a team of 10 people that needed to work and share files etc. Also if you have more than one computer but don't want to load up your HDD on every computer with the same stuff just because you might need it.

[Oshino Shinobu]

Not everyone needs a NAS. For people who only stream content, a NAS isn't all that useful (not useless, though)

I'd say one of the biggest benefits of having a NAS is the ability to use it as a personal and shared cloud storage device at the same time. You can password protect folders, so if you're sharing the NAS with people, you can lock off your content if you want and also have shared folders that all users can access. This works over the local network mainly, but can also be set up to work over the internet (a pre-made NAS box makes this process easier than doing it yourself with VPNs and SSH). It can also be used as a backup for multiple computers, regardless of where they're located.

 

Personally, I store a lot of media locally because it allows me to have the best quality content readily available. I'm building a new NAS soon using an old PC I have lying around, mainly because I've used up more than 4TB on my PC and need more room but don't want to add HDDs to my PC. 

 

EDIT: Once 10GbE (or maybe 2.5/5GbE) becomes affordable for the consumer level, NAS will take off I think. Right now the 1Gbps cap on most networks is holding back network storage and 10GbE is just too expensive for most people. 

[SCHISCHKA]

15 minutes ago, elexi0s said:

so I've heard a lot about nas, "you can store all your media content! your movies, songs and videos!" but why would i not just stream them?

i use a nas to move all my noisy large drives to another room. I also use it as a cache proxy because my internet is capped

[Bwithnewcast]

You can also use a nas to regularly back up your pcs

[elexi0s]

so if i live on my own and don't have downloaded content its not really worth the price of entry then?

i also i don't care about the noise its the least of my current issues.

[elexi0s]

3 minutes ago, Bwithnewcast said:

You can also use a nas to regularly back up your pcs

nothing on my pc but games, as i stated in the post all my files are on google drive and backup external hard drives as i need to be sure i don't loos anything.

[elexi0s]

1 minute ago, L.Lawliet said:

-Emergency backup

-Your own private Cloud.

 

i use multiple pc's external hard drives and cloud storage solutions to back up as i have to do so . and a nas doesn't really stop the possibility of file loss on it, or does it?

and i really don't understand the need  for a private cloud over a service like google drive if you don't have large files

[elexi0s]

1 minute ago, L.Lawliet said:

Well its just in case if ur hdd on ur pc got damaged or ship happened then NAS could save ur life.

Cloud storage will ensure ur data to be safe as they always backup your data.

It doesnt have to be a large file. if u have really important data that u dont want to lose or afraid to lose.

Then cloud storage will do it for you.

But they could see your data unlike NAS.

So if u have a data that u dont want anyone to know it like.. i dont know . it could be anything then u could store it in NAS and download it anywhere anytime.

 

well my files are high value data and i have no use for downloading porn so....

i understand it may help me but i understand now that while it is useful, for me its just not worth the price of entry.

[elexi0s]

1 minute ago, L.Lawliet said:

If u always backup your important data then its fine.

But just in case if ur backup hdd got damaged then NAS is a good option so u can have  2 backup hdd.

as for the price...You can even built a cheap NAS so its depends on ur budget.

 

NAS is not a must. Only built it if u need it.

For a content creator like linus or dmitry from hardwarekanucks NAS is needed.

Because They dont want one of those HDD in their PC that they use for content creation as high speed and reliability is a must. so they use SSD for their SYSTEM and HDD for storages in NAS.

 

okay, i would get one just as it does have benefits over cloud storage. but i'm a 16 year old with £9.50 in my bank and the only money i get is Christmas and birthdays as i quite literally do no have time for a job, as i spend all my free time developing my game (which i doubt ill make much money off of) all the money i do get i'm currently using to upgrade my pc and by the things i need to do my "job"

[elexi0s]

1 minute ago, L.Lawliet said:

As i said before NAS is not a must..u are still young as u can see computer component are expensive and if u dont have money for it then u cant buy them.

What can i say??

Dont bother with NAS. just use those HDD for a while till u have a job at least so u can afford them.

thanks, its just i saw so many people saying it was a must, i simply did not get why that's all.

[geo3]

1 hour ago, elexi0s said:

i use multiple pc's external hard drives and cloud storage solutions to back up as i have to do so . and a nas doesn't really stop the possibility of file loss on it, or does it?

and i really don't understand the need  for a private cloud over a service like google drive if you don't have large files

If you set up a nas that does hourly back ups to it's secondary drive and also does versioning yes, it does significantly reduce the possibility of file loss. I've been running a personal nas since 2001 and it's saved me from drive failure twice in that time and countless times from accidental deletion/overwrite or file corruption. This is long before "cloud" ever became a thing. Even now I have gigabit access to 2TB as opposed the < 1mbps access to only 15GB. Still I use cloud services for extra safety backups and to share stuff off of my home network. Also I hate streaming video because the quality is usually shit with all sorts of compression applied to it. 

[scottyseng]

2 hours ago, elexi0s said:

thanks, its just i saw so many people saying it was a must, i simply did not get why that's all.

Yeah, as stated above, not everyone needs a NAS. Everyone has their own needs / budget where a NAS wouldn't make sense or even be used at all. You have your needs and you don't need a NAS.

 

However, for others like me where I have a lot of content, it is not easy to cram all of my drives into a desktop tower and have it be the main rig as well. Also, with a lot of drives, it takes a lot of time to defrag them. On average, it takes two days to defrag my RAID array. It usually takes 2-3 days to run a consistency check. Allowing a low powered NAS to handle that rather than a power hungry gaming PC would be idea (Not to mention if you have a overclocked PC, it's more stable to have a non overclocked NAS handle the data). It would cost me too much to attempt to have the cloud store my data / take forever to upload my data to a cloud service.

 

Also I respect people that use google cloud and other services to store data, but for me, I would never chance storing critical data like financial info on cloud service. It depends on how much you trust the cloud. I personally just connect to my NAS and use it at college much like you'd use google drive. That being said, google drive is great for college notes or non critical stuff.

 

Finally, as mentioned before, you can have a NAS do version control or shadow copies. I have a second array dedicated to just storing shadow copies and it's saved me several times in the past before...when Quicken and Outlook just went nuts. Or when I deleted something by accident.

 

In the end though, I wouldn't recommend a NAS in your case since you don't need it and you should focus on feeding more parts in your one PC rig.