📖 Chapter 01 — The Creator's Storage Pyramid
The three tiers of storage every creator needs, and where each one should live.
Learning Objectives
- Name the three tiers of creator storage and what each one is for
- Decide which tier a given file belongs in
- Understand the performance tradeoffs of each tier
- Avoid the most common creator storage mistake (treating archive as scratch)
Introduction
If you've ever run out of disk space on your laptop halfway through a project, or lost a finished render to a failing drive, or spent 20 minutes finding the right version of a file, this chapter is for you.
The fix isn't "buy more storage." The fix is a structure. Three tiers, each with a clear purpose, each with the right kind of storage. Once you have the structure, the storage decisions become obvious.
The three tiers
For a video creator, the storage needs split cleanly into three tiers. Each tier has different requirements, different hardware, different rules.
Tier 1: Scratch
What it is: the temporary space where the editor (DaVinci Resolve, Premiere, Final Cut) holds the current project's working files. Source media for the timeline. Cache files. Auto-saves. Proxy media.
What it needs: speed. SSDs, NVMe if possible. Multi-gigabyte per second read/write. The scratch is the bottleneck for editing performance; slow scratch = laggy timeline.
Where it should live: the laptop's internal SSD. Not the NAS. Not a USB drive. The local SSD is the right place because the editor needs every millisecond of performance, and the network is too slow to deliver it.
How big it should be: 2-5x the size of the largest single project you'll edit. A 200 GB project needs 500 GB-1 TB of scratch.
How to back it up: daily to the NAS (or to a separate drive). Auto-saves are your friend here; the editor will create them automatically.
When to delete: when the project is done and archived. The scratch is for the current project, not the long term.
Tier 2: Working storage
What it is: the place where in-progress projects live between work sessions. The folder of "stuff I'm currently working on" that gets synced to multiple devices.
What it needs: reliability and reasonable speed. Doesn't need to be SSD-fast, but should be fast enough that opening a project doesn't take 5 minutes. RAID-protected (so a drive failure doesn't lose the work).
Where it should live: the NAS, in the Media/Active dataset. Reachable from the laptop over the network (or via Tailscale when away from home).
How big it should be: 3-5x the size of the largest single project, to hold several in-progress projects.
How to back it up: snapshots on the NAS (already covered by the Media/Active snapshot policy from Volume 1). Plus an off-site copy for the projects that are too important to lose.
When to delete: when the project is finished and moved to the archive.
Tier 3: Archive
What it is: the long-term home of finished projects. Source media, project files, renders, the entire history of what you've created.
What it needs: capacity, reliability, and (importantly) longevity. The archive is for 5+ years. The hard drives you buy for it should be NAS-rated, designed for 24/7 operation, and have a long warranty.
Where it should live: the NAS, in the Media/Archive dataset. Cold storage, slow access is fine, but the data must be there in 10 years.
How big it should be: 10-50x the size of a single project, to hold your entire history. For a creator with 5 years of work, this is the biggest tier.
How to back it up: 3-2-1. The original on the NAS, an off-site copy (a different physical location), and a cold copy that's rarely touched (a disk in a safe, a tape, a cloud archive).
When to delete: never, unless you've explicitly decided the project is no longer worth keeping. The archive is the history.
The pyramid
Visually, the three tiers form a pyramid:
The principle: the closer to "now," the faster and more local. The closer to "forever," the larger and more durable.
The most common mistake
Treating the archive as scratch. The conversation was clear: most creators who run out of space are using their archive drives for active work. The archive should be read-mostly; the scratch should be read-write.
The signs you're making this mistake:
- You have to wait minutes to open a project from the NAS
- You delete old projects to make room for new ones
- You can't find a project you finished two years ago
- Your scratch space is on the same drive as your archive
The fix is the pyramid. Scratch on the laptop. Working on the NAS as Media/Active. Archive on the NAS as Media/Archive. Each tier has its own job, its own hardware, its own rules.
The Media/Active vs Media/Archive split
From Volume 1, Chapter 10: the conversation designed the NAS with two datasets under Media:
The split serves two purposes:
- Different snapshot policies. Active gets daily snapshots (because work is changing). Archive gets snapshots after each major edit (because archived projects should change rarely).
- Different backup priorities. Active is on the same off-site backup cycle as everything else. Archive gets the 3-2-1 treatment from Chapter 5.
The split also makes it obvious to the family: "Active" is where TK's current work lives, "Archive" is where it goes when it's done. No ambiguity, no lost projects.
The "hybrid" workflow
The conversation's most important recommendation: edit on the laptop, archive on the NAS. This is the hybrid workflow.
For a typical YouTube video:
- Source media (camera files) imports to the laptop SSD. Edit timeline is on the laptop SSD.
- While editing, the project's working files sync to
\\NAS\Media\Active\<projectname>\. This is the safety net: if the laptop dies, the work-in-progress is on the NAS. - When the video is rendered, the final file goes to
\\NAS\Media\Archive\<year>\<projectname>\. The source media and project files go with it. The laptop SSD is freed up. - The next project starts with a clean scratch on the laptop.
Why this works: the laptop is fast for editing. The NAS is safe for archiving. The hybrid uses each one for what it does best.
The tool: Syncthing
For the laptop-to-NAS sync during editing, the conversation's recommended tool is Syncthing. It's a continuous file sync tool that runs on both the laptop and the NAS, keeping a folder in sync without you having to think about it.
Syncthing is open-source, peer-to-peer, and battle-tested. The conversation's setup:
- Install Syncthing on the laptop (or use the SyncTrayzor Windows app for a UI).
- Install Syncthing on the NAS (it's in the TrueNAS apps catalog as
syncthing). - Pair the two devices (each gets a device ID; you authorize the other).
- Share a folder:
~/Projects/Activeon the laptop syncs to/mnt/tank/Media/Activeon the NAS.
Now, every time you save a file in your active project, it syncs to the NAS within seconds. The laptop is still the source of truth for editing; the NAS is the safety net.
When NOT to use the pyramid
The pyramid is for video and audio. For pure text, documents, photos: you don't need scratch. Working storage (the NAS) is enough; the laptop's local disk is the scratch.
If you're a writer, photographer, or developer, the pyramid collapses to two tiers: working on the NAS, archive on the NAS. The "scratch on the laptop" tier doesn't exist for those workflows.
The pyramid is specifically for creators working with large media files that benefit from local SSD performance during editing.
Engineering Note
Storage is the easy part; workflow is the hard part. Anyone can buy a 100 TB NAS. The discipline of putting each file in the right tier at the right time, of moving projects from active to archive when they're done, of maintaining the metadata that lets you find a project from 3 years ago — that's the work. The NAS makes the work possible. Only the workflow makes it actually happen.
Summary
Three tiers: scratch (laptop SSD, fast and ephemeral), working (NAS Media/Active, RAID and reachable), archive (NAS Media/Archive, large and permanent). The hybrid workflow: edit on the laptop, archive on the NAS. Syncthing keeps the working folder in sync. The most common mistake is treating archive as scratch. The pyramid is for video and audio; for text and photos, two tiers are enough.
Checklist
- ⬜ Verify the laptop has enough SSD scratch (2-5x the size of the largest project)
- ⬜ Set up the Media/Active and Media/Archive datasets on the NAS (already done in Volume 1)
- ⬜ Install Syncthing on the laptop and the NAS
- ⬜ Set up the Syncthing folder pair (laptop active ↔ NAS Media/Active)
- ⬜ Practice: start a new project, edit it, archive it. Confirm the workflow works end-to-end.
Looking Ahead
Chapter 02 goes deep on the archive: the project structure, the naming convention, the metadata that lets you find a project in 5 years. The pyramid tells you where things live; the archive convention tells you how they're organized inside that where.