NAS with my DAW

[enuenu]

The DS413 is on its way. Any thoughts about using it in real time for DAW use? Maybe it would work if I hard wired it to a Gigabit capable router?

[polaris20]

Maybe if you had gigabit, and used either NFS or iSCSI. I dont think CIFS could handle it. Don't know, I've never tried it with audio.

[Masaaki]

I have Synology DS710+ with a five bay expansion unit (8TB Synology RAID -RAID5 equivalent).

Read/write speed over the Synology NAS is impressive, and 75MB/s is quite possible, so I can directly track to the NAS drive. However, I don't do it, because the traffic through the gigabit router is not always the same.

I have 7 desktop PCs, and 2 laptops all go through the router that is attached to the NAS. If somebody start download big stuff, the traffic to the NAS could be compromised. So, I track to a local HD, and back up to the NAS drive with backup software.

The software, DiskStation, requires a little bit of learning, but it's very powerful. Visit Synology forum if you have questions.

[loopdude]

I think it depends on how he works. I work ITB and have my songs and samples on a NAS. Recording my external synths is no problem.

Recording a band or something "bigger" then EDM might differ.

[drakem]

Originally Posted by Paul in SoCal

I don't think using NAS for real-time DAW work is a good idea (backup OK, of course.) A good 7200 rpm USB 3.0 drive is probably your best bet as an external solution. Or have your DAW builder put a second SATA-III internal drive in your laptop, even if it means giving up the optical drive (you can still use a USB external unit, if needed.) That's actually the ideal solution.

^^^ this.

NAS never worked for us. Clogging the intranet. Issues with remote control...you name it.
We have 4 pcs running for edit work and 3 separate for Vienna VPRO. Working with 100 GB over net material all the time.
The viennas never liked constant monitoring.
To make it short. We have scrapped the fancy stuff.
SyncBack Pro is handling all the network backups 1:1. Its running on an old quad Opteron fitted with couple of 3TB Seagates. No compression. no fuss. HD is cheap.
After an hour it writes the same files to the external hard drive for the " if it doesn't exist in 3 different places it doesn't exist at all".

[DaVogi]

depends on the DAW, if you us PT HD or native+toolkit you can use DiskCache. we have 3-5 workstations working over gigabit ethernet, even streaming hd video to 1-3 stations simultaneusly.

[enuenu]

Thanks all. The NAS was intended as a backup solution, just thought I would see how far i could push it. I am seeking out a DAW PC now and will use intenal drives as suggested. We're cool Paul

[polaris20]

You'll be happy with the Synology. Both Win7 and Win8 make it very easy to automatically back up to a UNC path on a NAS, and the Synology also has apps on it where you can connect it to cloud storage for offsite backup as well.