Ideally I would like to host my projects on my NAS drive (3TB WD MyCloud) so that I can mess around with development on whichever computer I am on in my house. I threw all the project files for one of my projects onto the mycloud and loaded it up but every action takes about 5-10 seconds to load whatever I am trying to do, which obviously isn’t going to work as it is a huge inefficiency/annoyance.
I am wondering if hosting with a NAS is generally not going to be good for development or if for some reason the specific device I am using is a POS and that is at fault.
Is anyone in development while hosting with a NAS? Is it as fast as dev on a single machine ssd? I realize what speeds are possible with network storage but my experience with this one hasn’t been good performance wise. Are these WD MyCloud devices just junk as far as NAS goes?
My suggestion would be to not use it for this purpose, but rather as a secondary ‘backup’ of the data.
For reasons as you’ve described, and mainly because of absolutely zero historical edit changes to any of your code and project data. This is why you really need a code repository (git, svn, perforce)… believe me, it makes a huge difference in your world and will easily handle the network latency and ‘roaming’ use case.
I have a NAS, and I use it for backups only… The “mycloud” devices are reasonably locked down, meaning… you have no real access to modify the operating system or device to install an actual repository like noted above.
My recommendation, if you’re serious about doing it right… is to get yourself another system with which you have control over it, and install something like Perforce. They have a free, 20 user license version, works well with Unity (and other tools) and it is just awesome.
and to mostly answer your question… Yes, most of the consumer NAS drives are junk, and really just glorified external storage with a markup on cost.
Just use it as a remote version control repo. Probably more efficient then trying to work directly on remote storage. No matter how awesome your tech is.
Yeah, the above posts pretty much nailed it. I’m not familiar with “mycloud” devices at all, but you should be able to use it to host a source control repository, which you pull from and push to from other computers as you do work.
If it’s locked down then that limits your options as to what systems will be compatible. I know that Git can work with nothing more than network file access, though. Just have one of your computers make a “bare” repository on the host’s file system and you’re good to go. Many other systems probably have an equivalent, so I’d do some reading and see what you think works best for you.
Basically it’s a NAS device intended for backups. It seems to be very dependent on its companion software though and the reviews for it on Amazon and NewEgg have very common complaints. Namely it’s sluggish and has a tendency to lose connection because it puts itself to sleep.
Yes, if you intended to use the device for more than simply a backup. I’ve never used a NAS device myself, so I don’t know how it compares to the competition, but the reviews for this are all fairly clear that it is intended solely for that purpose.
Additionally keep in mind that if you want mirroring (aka RAID 1) you will need the more expensive dual drive model(s).