Network Attached Storage Recommendations?

[mby]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

As the internal drive on my MacBook fills up rather fast, I'm looking into buying NAS.

 

Setup: the MacBook is backed up to a Time Machine, for the NAS I'm looking at a RAID (5?) solution, hoping to have the backup problem solved that way, agreed?

 

With regards to hardware, I've read positive tests about QNAP's TS-439 Pro; is somebody using this?

 

Last decision required is the type/brand of drives; which brand is to be recommended and where is the best price per GB? - Do you recommend server grade drives? - Wasn't there an issue with Seagate drives recently?

 

Thanks for your help and best regards,

Michael

[Advertisement]

The Leica Q3 is available for pre-order at B&H Photo Video and Adorama

[Speenth]

Hello Michael,

 

You'll probably laugh at my technically inane solution (I am the complete computerphobic) but for me it's simple, understandable and gives me some confidence that my precious DNGs are safe:

 

 

• First, buy two USB external drives, each with enough capacity to store all your images (I bought two WD 1.5Tb drives at 90 Euros each).
   
  
• Download 'Allway Synch' (free, reliable no-frills synching software).
   
  
• Plug in the drives, name them in Allway, set synching to automatic and duplicate the precious files on both drives.
   
  
• That's it!
  

 

Every time I turn on my machine all my images are synched with each drive invisibly.

 

I rely on the probability that only one of the three drives (internal hard disk and two external drives) will fail at any one time. But, for belt and braces purposes, I also back up the lot to Jungle Disk - Amazon's online storage service! Jungle Disk - Reliable online backup and storage powered by Amazon S3 and Rackspace - JungleDisk

 

Now I know the techies on this forum will point out the serious flaws in my approach. I am looking forward to that - then I'll know that I'll have to invest in a NAS too.

 

Steve'

 

PS: I've been told that Drobo NAS stuff is good (especially for simpletons like me): Data Robotics, Inc.

[roguewave]

I use a Drobo Pro. It works very well. The most important thing to understand about backup is that you require redundant backup, not just backup. A RAID provides realtime redundant backups across multiple drives. Drives fail, they are only machines that have a life span that is uncertain. The Drobo can use unmatched drives, so you don't have to the house to get up & running. It works best with matching drives. I have 4, 2TB drives in mine. That gives me about 5 TB of redundant storage. If even 2 drives fail, it warns you & you can swap out the drives in real time, not needing to bring the system down.

[wparsonsgisnet]

My problem with the NAS solution is that my wireless/wired hub isn't providing enuf bandwidth. The NAS can eat data as fast as even a usb-2 dirve on powered hubs.

 

I am contemplating a hot-switch rack and at least the striping part of RAID because I am running out of disk space next to the disk farm.

[wparsonsgisnet]

I use a Drobo Pro. It works very well. The most important thing to understand about backup is that you require redundant backup, not just backup. A RAID provides realtime redundant backups across multiple drives. Drives fail, they are only machines that have a life span that is uncertain. The Drobo can use unmatched drives, so you don't have to the house to get up & running. It works best with matching drives. I have 4, 2TB drives in mine. That gives me about 5 TB of redundant storage. If even 2 drives fail, it warns you & you can swap out the drives in real time, not needing to bring the system down.

 

Ben, this looks like a nice solution. Did you buy a package or add the drives yourself. And, what drives are you using/

 

Also, what off-site technique are you using?

[sandymc]

for the NAS I'm looking at a RAID (5?) solution, hoping to have the backup problem solved that way, agreed?

 

Don't recommend that!!!

 

RAID is not backup - RAID offers the convenience of probably not having to rebuild the drive from zero, in the sense that if all the stars align, you might not have to do a full restore of your drive when a hard drive failure occurs. But it offers no protection against failure of the RAID controller or bad software or power glitches or a whole list of other things, and unless you're buying into top-of-the-line (read very expensive) RAID hardware, only about a 70% chance that you will actually be able to rebuild the RAID array even if something simple like a single hard drive failure occurs.

 

The two separate USB drives strategy above is actually safer, especially if you keep the drives in a physically separate location.

 

Sandy

[mby]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

Don't recommend that!!!

(...)

The two separate USB drives strategy above is actually safer, especially if you keep the drives in a physically separate location.

(...)

 

Very good point Sandy, so I'll go the normal external drive route.

 

Any particular type brand you could recommend?

 

Thanks and best regards,

Michael

[roguewave]

Don't recommend that!!!

 

RAID is not backup - RAID offers the convenience of probably not having to rebuild the drive from zero, in the sense that if all the stars align, you might not have to do a full restore of your drive when a hard drive failure occurs. But it offers no protection against failure of the RAID controller or bad software or power glitches or a whole list of other things, and unless you're buying into top-of-the-line (read very expensive) RAID hardware, only about a 70% chance that you will actually be able to rebuild the RAID array even if something simple like a single hard drive failure occurs.

 

The two separate USB drives strategy above is actually safer, especially if you keep the drives in a physically separate location.

 

Sandy

 

Sandy is dead wrong about how the Drobo implements it's raid technology.

 

That is not true with a Drobo Pro. I can hot swap any time I choose. I also have single backups on external single 1TB drives, but those are the most likely to fail.

 

Bill, I bought the networked Drobo with 4 individual 2TB drives. All are the green wd drives. Go to the Drobo site.

 

I bought the Drobo with the network interface from the folks at macmall.com. Here's the rep I used & he was terrific. He also got the folks from Drobo online with me to confirm every issue I had questions about. Most of the best photographers I know & many of the people I work with in the graphic arts use Drobo gear. It works very well & plays well with both MS & Mac machines on the same network. There are important improvements to be added, but I feel certain they will be implemented over time.

 

Let me say this again. A Drobo provides true redundant backup over multiple drives. I t is NOT an issue of getting one drive backup & running. It is about have true multiple copies of data in different drives & physical locations.

 

Here's the rep I used.

Mohammed Abdulkaliq [MohammedA@macmall.com]

[sandymc]

Very good point Sandy, so I'll go the normal external drive route.

 

Any particular type brand you could recommend?

 

Thanks and best regards,

Michael

 

Not brand, but drive reliability is very much about temperature - go with enclosures that are actively fan cooled.

 

Sandy

[sandymc]

Sandy is dead wrong about how the Drobo implements it's raid technology.

 

Actually I quite like the Drobo stuff - if you're want RAID that's flexible and easy to manage, it's a good way to go. But it is largely standard RAID with a virtualisation layer on top of it. Virtual storage has been around in enterprise solutions from a long time now - very nice, very convenient and easy to manage. But don't mistake RAID, virtual or not, for backup. Backup is at least two separate boxes, preferably in physically separate locations.

 

But, its your images!

 

Sandy

[wparsonsgisnet]

Actually I quite like the Drobo stuff - if you're want RAID that's flexible and easy to manage, it's a good way to go. But it is largely standard RAID with a virtualisation layer on top of it. Virtual storage has been around in enterprise solutions from a long time now - very nice, very convenient and easy to manage. But don't mistake RAID, virtual or not, for backup. Backup is at least two separate boxes, preferably in physically separate locations.

 

But, its your images!

 

Sandy

 

I was thinking the Drobo might simplify my life ( and desktop). Currently, I have two sets of usb disks mirroring my pix and another of the same in my detached garage in a fireproof box.

 

The Drobo might serve for both disk sets on my desktop. I would still keep the "off-site" backup in the garage.

 

The problem with my current solution has nothing to do with security. All my images (and other data, if I wish) are quite safe. It's a problem of integer arithmetic. When a drive fills, I have to get a bigger one -- and a mirror of the same size -- and then copy terabytes of data for a while.

 

The Drobo solution, with 4 2-tb disks could grow into an 8-disk solution in the future with less of the damn photography-as-computer stuff to do.

[stunsworth]

Here's the rep I used...

 

I've not mentioned the email address you posted, but it's generally bad form to post an email address in its entirety as it makes life very easy for the automatic bots that go through forums like this harvesting email addresses for spammers. Something like Fred.Smith -at- mycorp.com is possibly better.

[roguewave]

I've not mentioned the email address you posted, but it's generally bad form to post an email address in its entirety as it makes life very easy for the automatic bots that go through forums like this harvesting email addresses for spammers. Something like Fred.Smith -at- mycorp.com is possibly better.

 

Thanks Steve. I'll take note. I gave this recommendation as when I tried to get technical information that gybed with what the Dobro reps told me I should have in a complete package, this firm was spot on. They even got the Dobro rep on the phone & she gave me her phone number at Dobro, if I needed any followup. That's unusual in my sphere.

 

Bill, I agree, offsite (not in the same building) is also an excellent choice. I also have a cloud computing site run by a friend that has an other copy of mine.I synchronize every night to all sites. If windows 7 has legs, I will setup a mirror Windows Server 2008 (upgrade from Windows Server 2003) locally & off site (my brother's company in PA) so that I get an additional backup each night.

[integrale]

FWIW I use a Bufallo TerraStation Pro that runs a 1.5 TB RAID5 set-up. I'll second that RAID is not backup but a reliable NAS. You may consider the impact on performance (running RAID5 is slowing down write times). This article on Wikipedia is quite informative: Standard RAID levels - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

For backup, I use two Bufallo LinkStations; one is permanently attached with weekly backup from the NAS (Sunday night), the other is in the safe in my office. I swap the LinkStations monthly. This give me an off-site backup not older than one month, which is not acceptable and I'm currently looking into online backup solutions.

[marknorton]

Lots of different opinions here when it comes to hard drive expansion, but I favour a NAS RAID box over multiple USB drives. I use 2 ReadyNAS Pro boxes, each with 6 1.5Tb drives giving something like 7.5Tb formatted capacity, connected to my server using a dedicated LAN card and cable connections. It's great for offloading archived stuff leaving your local ATA attached hard drives clear for your current work. Wireless access is fine for ad-hoc browsing but not as the primary connection.

 

I'm not as gloomy about RAID as Sandy is, however, if you understand that the key to data security is maintaining at least two independent copies and multiple generations of your data, it's important to know that a RAID array does not count as two copies. A RAID array allows higher data capacity than single drives with built in resilience against single drive failures but your data is not duplicated and is vulnerable to some other single component failures. RAID addresses the most likely of those - drive failure - but as Sandy suggests, other failures can cause you problems.

 

To other recommendations for data security nirvana:

 

- Keep replacement drives "in-stock" so that if a drive does fail, you can address it immediately. Your data is super vulnerable if you put off the recovery. Power up those drives every 6 months to keep them fresh. I keep drives for my ReadyNAS boxes, my server and my laptops, mostly Seagate Barracudas.

 

- Boost your confidence in your setup by doing a practice run to verify that if a hard drive does fail, your RAID array can recover. Hot unplug one of the drives, plug in another one and see what happens.

 

- Run everything from a UPS to guard against power spikes and think about physical security.

 

- If a hard drive gives so much as the slightest hint of a problem, bin it. One of my RAID drives is showing a reallocated sector count of 17 sectors (not so many, given how many there are) but it's not long for this world. Hard drives are so cheap that they are throw-away items, especially given the value of data on them.

[ericperlberg]

The OP mentions using NAS, network attached storage, but then some posts talk about NAS solutions while others just talk about RAID, DROBO or single disk backups. All backup systems are not necessarily NAS. NAS storage boxes have their own operating systems and can be set up with permissions for various users and are accessed across the network either wirelessly or through some sort of ethernet connection. NAS boxes are not dedicated to one machine. If you only want your MacBook to access the storage and there are no other computers which will be accessing it then there's no special reason to have a NAS box. You just need some sort of external drive be it RAID or separate drives or a box containing several independent (not RAID) disks sometimes referred to as JBOD (just a bunch of disks). The DROBO drives could be made into a NAS with the addition of another piece of hardware called DROBO share. The DROBO Pro (8 drives) and the new DROBO S (5 drives) can't use the DROBO Share hardware, are not NAS and are dedicated to one computer only (or shared through that one computer using file sharing). Obviously the single USB drive approach are not NAS solutions.

 

RAID/DROBO solves one vulnerability problem, that all drives will fail at some unknown point but creates a new problem, that the RAID controller itself makes the whole collection of drives subject to data loss if the RAID controller develops problems. It happens. If you want to archive your RAID drives you have to do it as a set, you take all 4 or 5 or however many drives were in your box out of the box and keep them as a set. They can only be used again in the same make of RAID, so again, you're dependent on the box that created them. When the box dies your RAID archived drives are pretty useless.

 

As Mark points out, the "solution" to RAID controller failure is to have a backup RAID set up mirroring the first RAID set up or perhaps backing the RAID drive up to a tape drive system which is slow but can handle large amounts of data. For further protection you can then rotate the tapes and even store one tape off site. As you add more redundancy to your system you will have more drives whirring away and fans to cool them and there is likely to be a fair bit of noise generated so you have to take that into consideration too. Quieter RAID units are also the most expensive and none are silent. You have to think about how much noise you want in your work environment.

 

Server grade drives are built more robustly and have a higher mean time between failures, a statistical measure that tells you a lot about a large group of these drives and almost nothing about the drives you personally own. A drive fails when it fails. Faster 7200rpm drives move your data more quickly which you want but slower drives develop less heat and are less prone to failure. The Western Digital "green" drives are all 5400 rpm drives with some speed enhancement features so in theory you trade off some speed for quieter, cooler running and possibly more robust drives. Seagate had a problem with some drives but fixed that problem awhile ago. The problem drives had a specific part number which you can probably google.

 

Qnap have a good reputation, as does Thecus and FirmTek from what I've researched. LaCie also have many RAID and NAS solutions and claim to be quiet but my problem with LaCie multi-drive units is that you have to buy bare drives from LaCie which is booth expensive and takes away your ability to choose the drive you want. I've had a FirmTek e-sata setup for awhile and have no complaints, its reasonably quiet, not too ugly and it works. DROBO products are written about all over the web, people seem to like them except when they don't work and then people generally hate them. HIVE also make something similar though more expensive but with an impressive guarantee though if HIVE go out of business the guarantee is useless.

 

Backup to online storage is still more expensive I believe than local backup. It's also slow so if you have serious amounts of data to backup (terrabytes) then you need to make use of their large scale data transfer by sending them the disks to be backed up.t

 

The whole thing is a series of tradeoffs between cost, noise, redundancy, ease of use and luck.

[roguewave]

Eric, thanks for all the data. I recently purchased a Drobo Share unit with 4x 2TB green drives for additional redundancy, separate and aside from my dedicated Drobo Pro. I discovered that my workflow improved with a few changes. I have a very fast 1TB drive which is my "scratch" drive for all things Adobe. I do all my manipulations on this drive. Lightning fast. Once I have the finished product, I "box" the resultant files I wish to keep, i.e.,psd, jpeg,.. and send them off to the Drobo Share 8TB unit and the Drobo pro.

The two Drobo units are in different physical places for another layer of protection. Given that 1TB drives (My Books-WD) can be purchased for about $100 in NYC, I also maintain 2 other separate drives as backups of just my RAW files, with a nightly synch between them. BTW, my Drobo's are almost silent. No discernible noise in my workspace.

[stevelap]

I've been forced into investigating a decent replacement backup solution at the rush (as I'm now down to relying on two internal drives on a MacPro....I know, I know.......) although my needs are reasonably straight forward.

 

Does anyone have any experience of these people? G-TECHNOLOGY, Product Line - External, Portable and Desktop Hard Drives Designed for the Mac!

 

This G-Technology - G-SAFE - RAID 1 (Mirrored) Storage Solutions for Data Security should work as a simple two-drive mirror, ideally backed up with a second example but more probably a stand alone external HD initially.

 

The DROBO is the obvious easily configured solution, and it can usefully use non-proprietary drives, but would ideally need the duplicate unit back-up solution (getting expensive now) or the more costly DROBO S (adding eSATA + 5 drives for better double disk failure protection).

[Advertisement]

Hallo,

Look here: Interesting Leica gear

[ericperlberg]

Does anyone have any experience of these people? G-TECHNOLOGY, Product Line - External, Portable and Desktop Hard Drives Designed for the Mac!

 

This G-Technology - G-SAFE - RAID 1 (Mirrored) Storage Solutions for Data Security should work as a simple two-drive mirror, ideally backed up with a second example but more probably a stand alone external HD initially.

 

The DROBO is the obvious easily configured solution, and it can usefully use non-proprietary drives, but would ideally need the duplicate unit back-up solution (getting expensive now) or the more costly DROBO S (adding eSATA + 5 drives for better double disk failure protection).

 

There are a few YouTube video reviews of the g-tech stuff as well as many other units. G-tech seem to be a favourite of video makers, but I was not impressed though I wanted to like them because they look nice. I think they've been bought by Hitachi whether that has changed the quality I don't know. I'll bet they come with hitachi drives. The one g-tech e-safe that I heard was not very quiet and speeds were nothing special.

 

Keep separate in your mind 2 different issues

1) the redundancy in any one unit like the Drobo or a RAID (like HIVE) unit only give you 1 drive protection in the case of WHEN a drive fails.

2)You still need to think about having a second unit to mirror the first to make sure that if the controller goes bad you don't lose all your data.

 

The drobo 4 drive units have just dropped in price. They're not terribly fast but at £270 each without drives they're a good deal for RAID like drive.

 

The 5 drive units or the 8 drive DROBO Pro don't change the basic problem. You need a second unit to mirror the first for decent protection.

[Sandokan]

Take your personal laptop into the office and plug in.

Make sure you have AV fully upto date and everything scanned (so that the IDS doesnt pick you immediately).

Make sure you have a Personal Firewall turned on and set to block all incoming requests (AKA paranoid mode) - this is to stop the network admins trying to scan your machine to see what it is and what it is doing.

Copy all your .dng files to your personal directory on the server (if .jpg then change the extension on all of them to something else).

Dont change jobs ever again.

 

The alternative is all of the following:

RAID5 for high availability and single drive failure tolerance (or a DROBO).

Duplicate (at least) two copies onto high capacity hard discs in thier own enclosures.

Take one of the copies to another site (in-laws, parents, storage warehouse ...)

Redo the duplication every time there is a significant increase in your data stored or at least every month.

 

RAID controller failure - for your personal data - take the risk as you have (at least) two backups on discs. This is all dependent on how paranoid you are and how much it is worth to you - RISK MANAGEMENT. The cost of 100% mitigation and protection against all possible failures (including an adverse event that will effect both you and any second storage within 80km of you) is your requirement and comparison to the cost of the data.

 

If all of this is worth it to you, then the next step would be to print out all your important data (photos and text documents) and take photos of it all with a film camera and then store the duplicate sets of films at archival bunkers www.swissdatasafe.ch

 

I have my Mac and its two raid drives for local storage and failure protection. I have the copies stored in my office cabinet and another at the parents'. That is the limitation of my risk strategy.