Question Clone HDD and SDD to NAS?

[JBerto]

Hi!

I want to do something that I don't know if it si even possible:

I have a PC with 3 hard drives:

An M.2 (the fastest of my 3 hard drives) where I have installed Windows 10, Office, and some programs (Visual Studio and similar).

A 2.5" SSD, where I basically have games and music programs (I play the electric guitar, and there I have the programs that I use for music and video recording and editing)

A "classic" HDD (the slowest of the 3) in which I basically do not install programs, but all kinds of documents (words, audios and videos that I compose with the guitar or any other type, movies, etc).

The fact is that I'm thinking of removing all that mess of hard drives and buying a NAS (specifically, the QNAS TS-231P3), installing on it an SSD with enough capacity to fit everything I currently have installed on the SSD and on the HDD , and connect it directly to the PC via a network cable (RJ45), (I wouldn't connect it to the router, I would simply connect it directly to the PC via RJ45 and that's it, since it would be to work "locally" with that NAS, which I also understand would works faster).

But of course, I know that I can't just copy the contents of the SSD and HDD to the NAS (well, the documents yes, but the programs won't work).

And that's my question... Is there a program, or is there a way to "clone" the contents of the SSD and HDD of my current PC to the NAS, and also modify the windows registry entries in order the programs that I currently have installed on SSD+HDD continue to work the same in the NAS?

(Because the other option would be, of course, to uninstall them from the PC and install them again on the NAS, but that is not an option, because apart from the fact that there are many, it is also that some of the music ones are complicated to install, they also have effects of audio that are installed elsewhere... a bloody mess!!!).

Is there a way to do that?

Thank you very much!

 

[JBerto]

With all SSD storage in the NAS, you could use the faster network. HDDs in the NAS will be just slightly above 1GE speed.

Thanks. The idea is install just one new SSD (not HDD) in the NAS with enough capacity to "transfer" to it all the info that is currently in the SSD and HDD secondary drives that are now in the PC (the main drive, the M.2 SSD with the S.O., will stay in the PC)

 

[USAFRet]

Thanks. The idea is install just one new SSD (not HDD) in the NAS with enough capacity to "transfer" to it all the info that is currently in the SSD and HDD secondary drives that are now in the PC (the main drive, the M.2 SSD with the S.O., will stay in the PC)

If this is all just files and data, yeah, you can do that.
Applications are a whole different thing.

 

[JBerto]

And also, my test above was a single large sequential file.

Small blocks of data or an application will not see that same speed comparison.
The LAN overhead will have a much greater impact.

You're right!

Anyway, would be great to have a test with a 2.5Gb ethernet port. Maybe the differences are no so big, and in any case, I supuse would be a lot faster than a HDD, and (maybe) not too far from a "slow quality" SSD (maybe... I dunno).
Would be interesting to see that kind of comparison, but they probably don't exist.

 

[JBerto]

If this is all just files and data, yeah, you can do that.
Applications are a whole different thing.

That's the problem... the idea is transfer apps too (audio processing software mainly).

Anyway, that kind of software doesn't need fast speed transfer rates, they need a lot of RAM and CPU speed to work properly, but not fast transfer rates, as they just use them to store de audio files after have being processed.

So, for that kind of SW, I suppose transfer speed (using that 2.5 port) would be enough, but the problem keep being the initial question... If there's an app to transfer automatically apps from my secondary drive to the new SSD drive in the NAS and do the registry modifications needed to work properly.