Do I need 2 NAS's? One for my work files and another for surveilance?

Hi, I had a question about NAS disk drives.

I know that there are hard drives that are solely dedicated for NAS drives. And if the NAS is going to go through some extra usage like when there are many different users, assessing it at once, 24/7, they have NAS drives called Enterprise NAS drives. And, if the NAS is going to be used for surveilance videos, they have dedicated NAS drives that are called Surveilance NAS drives.

Well, I work from home a lot and I store all of my work files (about 1 TB) on my Synology NAS drive and work off the NAS. However, I also use the Synology NAS drive for video surveilance recordings for a remote building and for areas around my home.

My question is should be using two different NAS's?

Or, should I partition the NAS so that one volume is dedicated for my work files and another volume is dedicated for my surveilance videos?

What's the best choice?

Personally I would want to store my (valuable?) data on a separate drive from one that is being hammered 24/7 with video recording.

Hi there
as previous poster says keep the systems separate -- you might for instance need to pass surveillance video over to police / court etc in some circumstances so if you had your other stuff on the same system --tough !!!

BTW even NAS systems also need backing up -- while HDD's are so much more reliable these days they can and still do fail - apart from user errors such as deleting / modifying files incorrectly.

With NAS systems HDD's are cheap these days -- even large capacity ones so why risk the whole kybosh in one system - especially if you are worried about "the integrity of the building" (i.e the need for video surveillance around it).

I'd build bespoke NAS systems rather than buy "dedicated NAS drives". You can build cheaply any decent Linux system for your NAS (x 2) --the OS is free and you don't need a mega power cpu .

Running an OS like Linux on a NAS system is far easier (IMO) than buying something with a bespoke proprietary OS on it such as QNAP -- also with a Linux system it's easy to add any other application you might need on the NAS - e.g multi-media serving etc and apply any security updates.

Cheers
jimbo

Jimbo,

Thanks for the point about police surveilance; I didn't think about that I'd have to hand it over. I already have a Synology NAS. What you're suggesting is that I make 2 volumes. One volume is dedicated for my work files and use regular NAS drives while the other volume uses surveilance-level NAS drives. And, if something does happen, I just need to hand over the surveilance drives!

Anything else I should consider?

jimbo45 said:

Hi there
as previous poster says keep the systems separate -- you might for instance need to pass surveillance video over to police / court etc in some circumstances so if you had your other stuff on the same system --tough !!!
Cheers
jimbo

" I already have a Synology NAS. What you're suggesting is that I make 2 volumes. One volume is dedicated for my work files and use regular NAS drives while the other volume uses surveilance-level NAS drives. And, if something does happen, I just need to hand over the surveilance drives!"

While this might seem sensible to you the police (in the UK at least) certainly give me the impression that they generally aren't exactly very computer literate & I suspect that they might just want to take the entire unit away. So to avoid the possibility of them taking your work files away you might want to consider having 2 completely separate NAS systems - I would even put them in separate rooms.

You are so right. The police will probably indeed plead dumb and just take the whole thing. I agree that I should be even extra careful and put the NAS in a totally different room so they don't pull a fast one.

rqt said:

" I already have a Synology NAS. What you're suggesting is that I make 2 volumes. One volume is dedicated for my work files and use regular NAS drives while the other volume uses surveilance-level NAS drives. And, if something does happen, I just need to hand over the surveilance drives!"

While this might seem sensible to you the police (in the UK at least) certainly give me the impression that they generally aren't exactly very computer literate & I suspect that they might just want to take the entire unit away. So to avoid the possibility of them taking your work files away you might want to consider having 2 completely separate NAS systems - I would even put them in separate rooms.

For the surveilance videos, can I just use a old computer with NAS drives? I'd rather not buy a new NAS drive dedicated for video surveilance because the NAS itself isn't that cheap.

rqt said:

" I already have a Synology NAS. What you're suggesting is that I make 2 volumes. One volume is dedicated for my work files and use regular NAS drives while the other volume uses surveilance-level NAS drives. And, if something does happen, I just need to hand over the surveilance drives!"

While this might seem sensible to you the police (in the UK at least) certainly give me the impression that they generally aren't exactly very computer literate & I suspect that they might just want to take the entire unit away. So to avoid the possibility of them taking your work files away you might want to consider having 2 completely separate NAS systems - I would even put them in separate rooms.

CerebralFreeze said:

For the surveilance videos, can I just use a old computer with NAS drives? I'd rather not buy a new NAS drive dedicated for video surveilance because the NAS itself isn't that cheap.

Hi there

an old computer would be absolutely fine for this -- With large or even external drives they wouldn't get hammered -- Video surveillance dosen't need mega fast drives or 4K super UHD Video either. You aren't trying to outsmart N.A.S.A !!.

I'd try and run a Linux OS on it - plenty to choose from and even a cheapish webcam would record fine -- typical Linux program is cheese which records webcam to HDD. Install something like ubuntu, centos, openSUSE or Linux mint. these work usually straight out of the box, and can run on very basic equipment. Your Video recording HDD's can be formatted either with NTFS (ensure package ntfs-3g is installed on your Linux system) or ext2/3/4 or XFS. Personally I'd format the HDD's as EXT4 or XFS (from Linux cmd line as super user (root or sudo) mkfs.xfs /dev/sdx -f will do it where sdx is the number of the device and -f will erase any existing file system on the HDD.

Best thing about the Linux idea of NAS -- OS and applications all free -- cheap webcam is fine too unless you need an all singing dancing professional camera that rotates every so often etc -- but if you need that level of protection you probably need a professional set up anyway.

Cheers
jimbo