MY NEW 'EDIT BAE' NAS - Synology DS916+ Review

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enI made the switch to full 4K video - bothfor desktop tutorials and on-camera videos- back at the end of 2016.Between the higher resolution and bitratesand the higher bulk of b-roll being shot withthe increase in production value for the channel,my typical “Store everything locally andarchive to little NAS drives as I go” strategycouldn’t keep up with my storage needs.I needed a solution.A bigger drive?Not enough.A PETABYTE SERVER?I wish.A realistic solution was needed.I needed a DiskStation.I’m EposVox, here to make tech easier andmore fun today reviewing the Synology DiskStationDS916+ - a 4-bay (plus expansion capability)NAS with a quad core Intel Pentium processorand 8GB of RAM.This is a beast of a NAS on its own, and I’vegot mine loaded up with 4 6TB IronWolf harddrives, which were generously donated by Seagateto sponsor this video.Synology has sponsored tutorial content onmy channel in the past, but is not payingfor this review, seeing it before it’s postedor anything like that.This is still a standard review for me.For my configuration, I decided to go withSynology’s hybrid raid system and Btrfs,leaving me with roughly 15TB of usable spaceto store all that sexy b-roll and voiceover.This thing has been serving me well for afew months now.I reviewed a Synology NAS in the past, andthe physical overview is about the same.Great metal chassis, glossy, dust-clingingremoveable front panel, some nice rubber feeton the bottom.The front also features a status indicatorLED, indicator LEDs for each of the 4 drivebays, a USB 3.0 port, and the power buttonand power LED.Over around the back, we’ve got a Kensingtonlock, power input, eSATA connection for theoptional expansion dock, dual gigabit ethernetports, and two more USB 3.0 ports.You can hook up external hard drives or flashdrives to these ports to add additional storageor run backups.This is an important part of my workflow,as my main working video data resides on theinternal drives, and my finished projectsfootage archive gets moved to external drives.The NAS’s “killer feature” is the crazypowerful Synology DSM (or DiskStation Manager)operating system that runs on it.This is like a full-fledged computer operatingsystem with a package manager, control panel,and everything.This lets you install your own line of appsto meet your needs - for media servers, emailservers, wikis, and so on.I love this software, it’s the same setupused to configure my router from Synologythat I reviewed previously.It makes managing the NAS so much easier.Not only can I manage the file system, apps,network traffic, and so on - but there’seven a special health monitoring tool built-injust for these IronWolf and IronWolf Pro harddrives.This lets me view power-on time of the drives,temperatures, SMART status, and so on.Then you can run a dedicated IronWolf healthscan to test each drive, spitting out an outputcode to use to diagnose problems if somethingis wrong with the hard drives.The Seagate IronWolf Pro drives also comewith 2 year complimentary Rescue Data RecoveryService, which is great reassurance that yourdata is safe.One more detail I wanted to mention is thatthis NAS is running a Pentium Processor andisn’t vulnerable to the Atom SOC burnoutissues that some NAS devices started experiencinglast year.I have the DS916+ hooked up with both ethernetjacks to my big Netgear switch in my serverrack from my $15 Server Rack Adventures videosand it acts as my Edit Drive.All of my active footage for ongoing shootsgets stored on here - currently occupying9.1TB.I also store my video resources such as backgroundmusic, sound effects, intros, lower-thirds,and so on here, too.I have folders divided up between “ActiveProjects,” for projects I’m working on,“Finished Projects,” for projects thatI’ve edited and uploaded but haven’t backedup to Amazon Cloud Drive yet, “Vlog Storage”to keep our vlog channel stuff separate fromthis channel’s footage, and a few otherfolders.I also sync my phone’s photos and videosto a “Mobile Backups” folder via Synology’sDS file app from a sponsored tutorial I releaseda couple weeks ago, too.Click the link to learn more about that process.I also have 2 USB 3.0 drives connected tothe DS916+.One contains my Software archive along withsome scrap files I haven’t sorted yet, andthe other contains my Footage Archive forvideo projects and my YouTube uploaded finalexport archive.Sadly, this isn’t a complete archive, asI lost quite a lot of footage last year, hencemy locking down on archiving and backing updata.This all gets shared over my network.All local computers can access it, which isincredibly handy.Better yet, I actually edit from this NAS!Yes, all of my active projects STAY on thisNAS and I edit straight from it.The network transfer speeds I get of over100 megaBYTES per second make this super easy.I usually use 1/2 or 1/4 quality preview playbackanyway, and I almost never experience anyhiccups scrubbing through the timeline inPremiere or playing back edits.I use a local SSD as a cache and scratch diskto speed up edits and renders, and the combinedperformance allow me to smoothly and quicklyedit and render videos with no performanceloss, while taking full advantage of the 15TBavailable on the NAS.Honestly, I’ve been blown away by the performancehere.I’ve experienced no slowdowns at all.Every once in a while a certain effect mayslow down timeline playback, or it just hasa brief hiccup - but it smooths out quickly,and these things happen to local editing,too.I just wish other editing platforms had thesame optimizations as Premiere does, becauseediting over the network with Vegas Pro andCyberlink Powerdirector was a very slow andunenjoyable experience.I haven’t tried to use Resolve over thenetwork just yet.The NAS doesn’t get too loud, and doesn’tbeep at me anywhere near as much as my QNAPNAS does.Drive swapping is simple and toolless - likeREALLY simple - and easy to set up using Synology’sQuickConnect “find my NAS” URL system.Then mounting the network shares in Windowstakes only a couple of clicks and you’reoff to the races.I guess it’s worth reiterating that thisdoesn’t have to be an editing or productionNAS by any standpoint, that’s just my usecase.With the plethora of available configurationsettings, packages to install, and so on,it can do just about anything.Even has a Plex server, or their own “VideoStation” alternative.Plex performs alright.It choked on a full 10-bit HEVC file, butdid fine playing back normal 720p and 1080pmovie files.For more information about Plex, check myplaylist link in the video description.On the whole, this is a badass little NAS,and the Seagate IronWolf Pro drives give metons of space with the security and reliabilityto keep my data safe.Plus the IronWolf Health tool is pretty handy,too.This has been a great experience moving myvideo footage off of my main rig onto a morecentralized network location, and I’m gratefulfor the opportunity to have set this up.This has significantly boosted my productivitythis year, while still keeping up with my4k video production needs.Now I just want to look into getting the expansionbay and filling it up too, haha.One day.If you want to check out the Synology DS916+for yourself, check out my Amazon affiliatelinks in the video description down below.For more information about the Seagate IronWolfPro drives and health tools, I have a linkfor that, as well.I’m EposVox, like the video if you enjoyed,and I’ll see you next time.\n"