Jimmy

Looking to run Docker containers without dedicating a separate server? The best NAS enclosures for hosting Docker containers combine reliable storage with enough CPU power and RAM to handle containerized applications. I have spent months testing various models in my home lab, running everything from Plex media servers to Home Assistant and Nextcloud instances. The … Read more

Setting up a reliable surveillance system means solving one critical problem: where do you store all that footage? I learned this the hard way after my SD card failed during a break-in at my workshop last year. Network Attached Storage (NAS) systems solve this by providing centralized, redundant storage for your security cameras 24/7. Unlike … Read more

Video editors know the pain all too well. You are midway through a color grade in DaVinci Resolve when your timeline stutters, the playhead freezes, and that dreaded beach ball appears. The culprit is almost always storage that cannot keep up with your footage bandwidth demands. Direct-Attached Storage (DAS) enclosures solve this problem by connecting … Read more

Every small business eventually hits the same wall. Files scattered across laptops, external drives that never get backed up, and that one catastrophic moment when someone accidentally deletes the client presentation. I have been there. After testing dozens of network attached storage solutions over the past three years, I can tell you that finding the … Read more

Waiting for your code to compile feels like watching paint dry. I spent three years working on a C++ codebase that took 12 minutes to build on a traditional hard drive. Switching to a fast NVMe SSD dropped that to under 4 minutes. That is 8 minutes saved per build, and when you compile dozens … Read more

Modern games are storage hogs. A single AAA title like Call of Duty or Final Fantasy can eat up 150GB or more of your console’s internal drive. I learned this the hard way when my PS5 started complaining about free space just six months after I bought it. External SSDs are the solution most gamers … Read more

Setting up a Plex media server changed how our family watches movies and TV shows. I spent months figuring out the storage side of things after my initial setup ran out of space within three weeks. The best external hard drives for Plex media servers offer the perfect balance between capacity, reliability, and ease of … Read more

I remember staring at three spare M.2 SSDs sitting in my desk drawer last year. Perfectly good drives with hundreds of gigabytes of storage, but no home since I had upgraded my laptop. Buying pre-built external SSDs would have cost me another $200-300. That’s when I discovered the world of NVMe enclosures and DIY external … Read more

Every video editor knows the pain of staring at a progress bar while files crawl between drives. When you are working with 4K or 8K footage on a Mac, storage speed becomes the difference between a smooth creative flow and endless frustration. I have spent the last three months testing external SSDs with my MacBook … Read more

Running a dual-PC streaming setup changed how I think about video quality. My gaming PC renders at max settings while my dedicated streaming PC handles all the encoding. The secret ingredient that makes this work flawlessly is a PCIe capture card. Do I need a capture card for dual PC streaming? Absolutely. Without one, you … Read more