Large & Fast Storage

Paddy@CIRL

Howdie folks,

I'm looking for a solution to a storage problem I'm having. I use a program called Lightroom to archive and sort all my photographs. LR basically catalog's all these images and you can access them remotely if need be. For example, I currently have all my photos stored on my desktop machine (XP) but I access them through my WiFi router and work on them from my laptop (OSX).

Obviously, there is considerable speed issues here as it becomes very, very slow when accessing vast amounts of images. Also, It's a PITA making sure my desktop machine is powered on and then checking it for its IP address so I can access it from the MacBook. I can't store the files locally on the MacBook as there is around 7-800GB's of images and even the Desktop is starting to reach it's capacity.

What I 'think' I need is some sort of Network storage device that I can stick in a corner and access via ethernet cables around the room. I don't really need WiFi access, although it is handy, I reckon it could be one of the main reasons the speeds are suffering? I'm also thinking something accessed via ethernet would be much faster than USB or Firewire (I've tried locating the files on a USB external HD but speeds were slow aswell)

Ideally, I'd need at least 2-3TB of storage to give me a year or two of not having to worry about storage space. Then I have to worry about backups but I could manage with a couple of external drives TBH.

Could anyone point me towards what I should be looking at / for ?


It'll be Mucho Appreciated !

J-blk

The WiFi is definitely going to be a bottleneck - even with 802.11n, it just can't hold a candle to Gigabit ethernet, which if you are going to go wired, is what you'll want to be using.

As for the storage itself, this is going to seem a bit crazy in the Mac forum, but I use a Windows Home Server, the Hewlett Packard Mediasmart EX475:

http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/whs_hp.asp

It's the only Windows system I have lying around .

TBH, using it only as network storage is overkill, but over a bog-standard NAS, you get some pretty cool benefits - as you can install applications on it, run them as services and get it to do all kinds of other things, other than just store your data but I won't go into that now.

From the storage perspective, the benefits are that you get 4 drive bays, so you can go right up to 4TB internally at the moment (are 1.5TB drives out yet?) and you can keep adding additional drives via USB (3 ports) or eSATA - the USB ports will not slow it down because it works on the idea of a "landing zone" => data is copied to the main system drive first (which is internal anyway) and then offloaded to all the additional drives as needed.

You can also have it automatically duplicate certain folders to two drives, so your data is protected (it does not use RAID so you just swap out bad drives - there's no array to rebuild).

It's now also possible to set it up to backup the entire server to external drives you connect to.

Overall, I love it - it's a bit pricey but a really good solution IMO if you need massive amounts of easy to expand storage.

babypink

i would recommend Drobo with the DroboShare addon:

http://drobo.com/Products/Index.html

Gigabit Ethernet, and can scale up to 16TB (as drives become bigger)...actually with the DroboShare you can double up and use 2 of them.

Drobo is seriously cool in that it automatically protects data on the array, so that if you have a drive failure, just swap it out for a new one and keep on trucking. Similarly if you're running low on space - it will tell you which drive to replace - just replace it for a bigger drive and boom.... loose no data yet your storage pool has just grown.

Ok, there is a small performance overhead compared with a straight-up NAS but in the long run - its absolutely ace!

use the Drobolator to work out actual capacity - note that the actual capacity is NOT the sum total of the drives you put in - as space needs to be used for "protection"

http://drobo.com/Products/drobolator.html

WizZard

+1 recommendation for Drobo + Droboshare

Paddy@CIRL

Thought Drobo isn't available in Europe ?

J-blk

Paddy@CIRL wrote: »

Thought Drobo isn't available in Europe ?

It is available from Expansys as far as I know, maybe others too:

http://www.expansys.ie/p.aspx?i=171186

http://www.expansys.ie/p.aspx?i=161699

And the older one:

http://www.expansys.ie/p.aspx?i=160451

babypink

ebay!!!