Users often purchase NAS devices to store a combination of documents, media, and backups.
The following table compares the advantages and disadvantages of creating a single large volume or multiple smaller volumes.
Requirement |
User Goal |
Single Volume |
Multiple Volumes |
---|---|---|---|
Simplicity |
Store files |
Users create one large thin volume if they want to use snapshots, or one large static volume if they do not. They then create three shared folders on the volume, for documents, movies, and backups. |
Users create three separate volumes for documents, movies, and backups. Users must decide how much space to initially allocate to each volume. |
Speed |
Edit video and audio files |
Users create one large single static volume on the NAS. The files are backed up daily to another NAS, or to an external disk. |
Users create a thick volume to store the movie files. Random-write performance is slightly lower than a single static volume. |
Containerizing storage space |
Copy a large number of movie files to the NAS |
Users copy the movie files to the movies shared folder. However, they must pay attention to much data they have in the movies folder. If they copy too many files, the volume will become full. |
Users copy the movie files to the movies volume. When the volume becomes full, they can increase the volume size. |
Multiple snapshot schedules |
Protect document files using snapshots |
Users create a daily snapshot schedule for a single volume. The snapshots record all changes made to document files. However, the snapshots also record changes to movie and backup files which wastes resources and storage space. |
Users create a daily snapshot schedule for the document volume only. |
File system repair |
Fix file system errors |
QTS must scan the entire single volume, which can take a long time. The volume cannot be accessed during the scanning process, making the entire NAS unusable. |
QTS only needs to scan the volume that has an error. Each volume is small, so scanning is relatively quick. Users can still access files on other volumes while the scan is in progress. |