Key Takeaways
- NAS can store ROM files and free up the main gaming system space.
- By transferring the games to a NAS and shifting it to a different room, you can reduce the workspace clutter for smaller systems.
- NAS easily scales storage for gaming needs & frees up local drives.
Storing precious files, creating redundant backups, and sharing files across your devices may be the most common workloads for most NAS devices, but you’ll be surprised at all the cool things you can do with your storage server. For example, those in the early stages of their expedition into the world of home labs and self-hosting will realize that NAS setups – both DIY and pre-built systems – are fairly decent at running essential containerized services.
And there are the more unorthodox projects, such as storing your video game library on a NAS. Having tried this wacky idea a few months ago, here are four reasons why you might want to integrate a NAS into your gaming setup.
Related
I tried storing all of my Steam games on a NAS – here’s how it went
The experience wasn’t all that bad thanks to the amazing iSCSI protocol
4 Perfect for archiving your ROM files
And your rarely-played games
Unlike modern titles, ROMs, especially those ripped from old gaming systems, may not consume too much space. But when you’re an avid emulation enthusiast with a diverse set of titles spanning multiple generations of consoles, the GigaBytes tend to add up, and it’s possible to have a huge chunk of your drive space consumed by game ROMs. So, if you’re drowning in multiple ROMs that you wish to store for posterity, a NAS can take some load off your main gaming system – at least when storing the game files.
3 Reduce your workspace clutter
Ideal for lovers of minimalist setups
Imposing desktop setups featuring full-tower systems are perfect for hardcore gamers. However, clean setups featuring minimal clutter and modestly sized PCs have their own appeal, especially when your gaming setup doubles as a workspace (and vice-versa). Whether you are tired of using external drives to store your games, want to remove the constant whirring of internal hard drives, or plan to downsize your humongous PC to a more SFF system, you can simply transfer all your games to your NAS and move the enclosure to another room (or shove it into a corner) to enjoy a quieter, more organized setup.
2 Easy to scale the storage in a NAS
Not every PC has tons of SATA ports
Although full-fledged PC cabinets let you add multiple storage drives, the same can’t be said about other gaming setups. If you’re running your games on laptops, mini-PCs, and other devices where it’s difficult to add more storage drives, you can find yourself running out of space fairly quickly should you attempt to download your entire game library. Since most NAS devices let you add more drives, it’s possible to scale your storage server’s capacity in accordance with your gaming needs.
1 It can free up your local drives
No more choked boot drives
As PC titles continue to balloon in size, we’ve reached a point where your average 1TB drive can only hold a handful of games. That’s without the heavy HD texture packs that can add more graphical fidelity to your favorite titles.
Then you have the cool third-party mods that can range from small-sized QoL improvements to conversion mods that can occupy a considerable amount of your disk space. As such, storing your games and mods files inside a NAS can save you the trouble of running arithmetic calculations in your head every time you need to download a new game or two.
With enough modifications, NAS are surprisingly competent as game storage servers
Sharp-eyed readers may have noticed that I never once mentioned the biggest (theoretical) benefit of using a NAS to store games: sharing your entire library between multiple devices. Unfortunately, you’ll have to leverage the SMB protocol to access a centralized game library, as iSCSI isn’t built for multi-user access. But unless you’re fine with high latency, micro-stutter, and low stability in your games, I’d suggest mounting your NAS drives as local iSCSI volumes.
In my tests, taxing open-world games took some extra seconds to load all the textures when I ran a single HDD without any RAID setups or SSD caches. On an all-flash NAS, or even a properly configured server running powerful RAID configurations and caching provisions at 10GbE speeds, you’re bound to see significantly better load/fast-travel times. While esports enthusiasts might want to avoid storing their competitive titles on a NAS, single-player games (including those with fast-paced combat) feel significantly more responsive than you might expect over an iSCSI volume.
However, if the reasons I’ve listed in the article failed to convince you, you can try replicating this unhinged project on your NAS just for the bragging rights!
#reasons #NAS #great #storing #game #library
source: https://www.xda-developers.com/nas-is-great-for-storing-your-game-library/
