Time is getting close where I'll have to build myself a new DAW and i'm pondering the idea of using an Ethernet NAS drive(s) for sample data, backups and project audio. The main DAW itself will just have an SSD for OS and applications.

I'm thinking with a suitable switcher the NAS should be accessible from a 2nd DAW should I decide to keep the old one active for a while longer.

Doable?

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Should be very doable. There are a plethora of open source OS'es geared towards NAS like FreeNAS and Openfiler, if you're building it yourself.

But yeah, make your own DAW? tells more nao.
What OS will you be developing it for and what will be some of it's key features?

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quote:

ALFI - BOHICA - DJ MIX (Stream+Dropbox)

quote:

Originally posted by dj_alfi Should be very doable. There are a plethora of open source OS'es geared towards NAS like FreeNAS and Openfiler, if you're building it yourself. But yeah, make your own DAW? tells more nao. What OS will you be developing it for and what will be some of it's key features?

Nooooo

What I mean is i'll be building just a PC, as in Windows 7/64 and then using a NAS drive for storage instead of internal drives. The idea is that I could share sample and project data between machines, and have something that sits there all self sufficient and secure.

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Lol ok, in that case, maybe not. The lower end NAS'es are often equipped with pretty slow hard drives, and for samples that's a big no-no. If you'd be building your own NAS as well, then I'd say go for it, if you're planning on buying one, and you haven't M4B's credit card, then I think a solid internal hard drive would suit you far better.

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quote:

ALFI - BOHICA - DJ MIX (Stream+Dropbox)

Why NAS? This is old technology that has almost been totally replaced by SATA. IMO, I would build a server system that uses "hot-swap" SATA drives and hook up a crossover CAT6 cable from it to your computer. If you had a Mac, I would have recommended using a Thunderbolt-based storage system, buuuttttt....

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NAS drives for what you're trying to do would be the right way to go.

So called hot swap drives are not smart especially as the bridges always burn out on them, if no the actual drive, Not fun when you have a couple of TB's of samples on them.

The only problem with NAS drives is latency - you can't expect to stream off that in abundance and get away with it. You could preview sounds etc, but the moment you're woking on a local host which is attempting to pull several tracks of samples off a NAS drive, shit will dodgy. You'd have to copy audio files to local directory etc, but I do that on my projects anyway.

NAS can be a bit of a headache though in terms of setting up but it's the only option that lets you share content between two discrete platforms at the same time.....

Unless, you were to get something like a mac mini and use Lion 10.7 server to make it storage center with Raid0 drives. Mmmmmmm, tasty and way faster than a standard NAS drive, not to menttion it would be a sly way of getting you to join the darkside

Seriously, NAS is the way to go, just make sure you do your homework as to which one has the least bottlenecking.

Why not just a storage system over USB 3?

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quote:

Originally posted by Anakratis Why not just a storage system over USB 3?

Because USB is a single master to slave relationship and he wants two computers to access them whenever he wants.

It gets pretty tiresome having to plug cables in every time you switch computers, especially when there is a solution that doesn't need it.

Why don't you just set up a shared folder on one computer, then mount it as a network drive?

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Originally posted by DJ RANN Because USB is a single master to slave relationship and he wants two computers to access them whenever he wants. It gets pretty tiresome having to plug cables in every time you switch computers, especially when there is a solution that doesn't need it.

I swear I spotted a shared drive that had two USB3 ports. Nevermind then.

If you have the patience, I would wait for a PC-friendly Thunderbolt PCI Card to connect a Thunderbolt-powered storage system. Apple has allowed Intel to recreate the Thunderbolt system, so PC-friendly Thunderbolt stuff should be coming in shortly.

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take note that if you use SSD's you need to do daily backups. They are not as reliable and when they crash. They crash. There is no pre warning. Great but not as reliable. I back my stuff twice a day. I use intel SSDs as well which are supposed to be more reliable but still. Data recovery with SSD 's from what i've been told is non existent.

everyone will say it is more reliable in theory , but it doesn't seem to be working that way with people in audio anyways.

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Last edited by Looney4Clooney on Dec-13-2011 at 22:36

L4C, as far as backups go, what do professionals use for this sort of thing in the audio space?

I work in video games and we use Perforce servers to manage all our code/content. I've always wanted to set-up a P4 server at home for my music production projects as I can see some serious value in having a proper versioning system for tracks I'm working on as opposed to just a bunch of arbitrarily named .alp files.

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