Can’t remember now, eBayed them all, it was when top of the line ones were 1Tb so a while back
Never had a problem with mine.
Sorry, I meant which alternatives to WD do you use?
Seagate Barracuda or WD Black. 7200rpm with a large cache. Buuuut, every HD manufacturer has blips in reliablity. Personally, I’ve only had 2 die in the last 15-20 years, and that’s from heavy video production use. Every now and again you’ll read reviews brimming with hateful outrage about a minor manufacturing defect, but that’s exactly what it is.
I rep all the work I need up to a B2 BackBlaze instance, seems to be much cheaper than using any other cloud storage provider.
For local storage I use a Synology NAS, but they don’t come with any HDD provided. Every year BackBlaze release a list of the most reliable drives they use across all their storage. So I go through the list of Synolgy compatible HDDs in the size I need, then cross reference them in the BackBlaze reliability report (A Look at the Current 2020 Hard Drive Failure Rates) and just get the most reliable one from that. Sorry, not a clear answer, but I do that every 2 years with my mirrored drives, regardless of whether they are complaining or not. So if you get HDD attached storage check what failure rate is like in that BackBlaze report first.
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Any reason in particular you haven’t switched to SSD?
I use the NAS to archive music and photos, mainly. Plus some other bits and pieces. Fast access not really needed. And also way cheaper.
Same as Spanky, I’m using a couple of Synology NAS at home, one for personal use, other for work backups. Home one has tunes, photos, films, skate videos, home video, that sort of thing - servers basically. It’s on the home network, so I can access it from anywhere if I really need, and it’s useful for being able to share files across different devices and users. They’re handy if you’ve got a ton of media you want to keep organised.
They also use a different version of standard platter HDs, optimized for use in a server/RAID. Nothing to stop you using SSDs in a NAS, other than cost & capacity at the moment. I used one on a job a few years back which was all SSDs. Cost the studio a fortune, but was insanely fast.
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This sounds like great advice, thanks.
Looking to get my first NAS set up, as I’m currently just juggling separate external HDDs to keep everything backed up.
Do you or Ciaran run plex directly off the NAS, or do you use a separate computer for that?
I don’t run Plex. I think there’s a Plex package that installs with Synology NASs tho
Just checked, there is:
Synologys are fucking brilliant. On the top end ones you can even run VMs on them.
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Synology NAS works fine with Plex. if you’ve used it before, it’s controlled by an app you install to the NAS via the Synology Disk Station log-in, via your web browers. Then you access Plex as normal after that. The NAS comes with its own version of Plex, which for some reason with mine, gets the metadata badly mixed up and puts in posters for porn films instead of the high-brow arthouse cinema verite and skate videos I have.
If you’re migrating a library from an external drive to a NAS, then there’s probably a particular workflow to follow. Haven’t done it, so couldn’t tell you how it works.
The thing to bear in mind is that you’ll need a separate batch of same-sized HDs to go in the NAS as Synology makes a RAID out of them. E.g., if you have 4 in there, you get the capacity of 3 - RAID Calculator | Synology Inc. - if you put the external drives in there, they’ll be wiped first.
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I’m having to use PowerPoint 365 this morning to remake a presentation someone’s made. I swear it it the worst, most bizarrely created piece of ‘designing’ software I’ve ever used.
Surely the people who created it have presumably used some professional design software at some in their lives? And yet they’ve just decided to make this UI from scratch with their eyes closed. I don’t know how PC users deal with shit like this day in day out.
I just had to google how to change the font colour.
The problem is that the UI hasn’t been made from scratch, it’s the result of decades of iteration and no clean start for fear of pissing off the huge number of existing users. They really need to just bite the bullet at some point.
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Thanks for reply, I’ll get researching.
As it looks like I am going to be stuck inside most of the winter, I figured now is the time to get tinkering with stuff like this.
I’ve just bought my first Raspberry Pi, so next task on my list is to get a Pi hole up and running for the home network.
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Lolz.
it’s not about PC users, it’s to enable easy design for those who don’t know what good design is, unfortunately. And yeah, it’s shit.
Never used it, so do report back with your findings!
Yeah, by PC users i just meant like, ‘every day computer’ users. Its just, it could be so much easier for people if it was designed well. Like if the whole point of Powerpoint is to enable people to make presentations and stuff themselves, if it was a good program, surely that would help the target audience more.
I’m probably being a bit of a designer snob, but surely something as simple as having draggable guides to help line things up would be beneficial.
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I have a Pi, I log into it if I am barred from visiting a UK site so I can use Chrome. Bit slow mind but does th job.
How does that work compared to VPN software?
VPN means I can log into Synology and tunnel through the connection there so whatever device I connect to it with uses the same network connection as the NAS
Or I can VNC into the pi and use it as a remote desktop (also in the UK)
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Marketing, my Mrs has her own business. She has a website primarily uses Instagram to reach her customers but it has sort of peaked. She isn’t able to reach new customers and was wondering how we could get her to reach new people.
She sells enamel pins, stickers and some other bits and pieces. Her Instagram is @illustrationsbyjoanne and her website is www.illustrationsbyjoanne.com she also has an etsy shop but she drives customers to her website. I’m unsure on how to do the Google buzz words thing, and her etsy struggles because she is pushed to the bottom due to the algorithm.
Any help or ideas would be greatly appreciated or something we could look into.
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