NAS Storage for photo backup and access

davmigil

Thinking of getting a NAS hard drive system for backing up and possibly accessing photos.

I like the sound of a mirror raid dual hard drive system I can access over ethernet, as could locate it in a different room (some rooms wired for ethernet already).

Anybody have any recommendations of a particular system, preferably in the 'for the home' pricing category.

My second idea with the above was to use it as a central storage area for photos so can work with them from any PC or laptop on the network. Anybody doing similar and is it smooth or fiddly? Am presuming if want something that works with both Windows and Mac it will get messy in formatting options, or is that something the NAS will handle?

Anyway, just at the 'what if' stage and would be grateful for any feedback. especially if you are already doing something similar.

Also anybody using something like the IcyBox unit which act as a usb dock to an internal hard drive?

stcstc

the nas is a nice idea, i use a windows server in a similar way

BUT

the nas is NOT a backup solution, it might give you some redundancy but its NOT a backup

I had a lacie NAS go bad on me, this was one of their top end ones, it cost me 2.5K in dtata recovery to retrieve the 250K worth of work on there

this is why i now have a server with an lto backup which runs twice a day

delynet

From over at Bargain Alerts

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=346

You can get a Netgear Stora 1TB Home Media Server - 2 Bay Network Attached Storage ( 1 X 1TB drive included ). For £123.56

You do need to be careful when adding it to your basket as its listed at a more expensive price but there is an option to 'view more' to get the cheaper price.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B002SNBCSQ

Heebie

Backing up to LTO twice a day is a bit excessive. Are you taking the tapes off-site & rotating them?

Generally if you're using RAID 5 with a hot spare available, once a week would be enough for most businesses. (although once a day is good.)

It also wouldn't be a bad idea to have the tape unit off-site somewhere if you can afford the connectivity between the two locations. (especially if you're not bringing the tapes you have off-site & doing a rotation. Having the tapes in the same place as the server isn't a good idea if they are important.. a fire or flood will take them all out.)

stcstc wrote: »

the nas is a nice idea, i use a windows server in a similar way

BUT

the nas is NOT a backup solution, it might give you some redundancy but its NOT a backup

I had a lacie NAS go bad on me, this was one of their top end ones, it cost me 2.5K in dtata recovery to retrieve the 250K worth of work on there

this is why i now have a server with an lto backup which runs twice a day

stcstc

with the amount of stuff going through my server i needed to do twice a day

as for rotation yea do a 4 week cycle

i have access to 2 lto drives off site, and 2 locations with tapes

A good friend of mine is a hp partner, he supplies all the kit. i dont know one of his clients that dont do at least daily backups

i know places that even do file replication 1/2 hourly.

I guess what i am trying to say is it comes down to how mission critical the data is and throughput of data

getting back to the nas, its a handy way to store image but dont depend on it as the only source

Heebie

Sounds like you're pretty well set, and that there's been plenty of research done on the system before it went in. Good things all. (and surprisingly rare.) I'd still think two LTO runs a day seems excessive.. although it sounds like they might be going to two different off-site locations.. which would certainly justify it.

Do you know what backup software you're using (bacula? Amanda?) & what kind of full/incremental/differential scheduling you're using? If you've got 2 offsite locations.. do they use the same, or different dates for their full/differential backups?

stcstc wrote: »

with the amount of stuff going through my server i needed to do twice a day

as for rotation yea do a 4 week cycle

i have access to 2 lto drives off site, and 2 locations with tapes

A good friend of mine is a hp partner, he supplies all the kit. i dont know one of his clients that dont do at least daily backups

i know places that even do file replication 1/2 hourly.

stcstc

i am using backup exec

doing full backup once a week, incremental others

actually the backups twice a day are two diff backup jobs, with some parts being backed up in both jobs

the 2 offsite locations are nothing special, my house and my wifes office

they are both replaced once a week

Heebie

Offsite is not special, and doesn't really need to be, more importantly.. IT'S OFFSITE! (although if you're not doing so already, keeping them in a hermetically-sealed container with several silica-gel packets is a good idea to keep the humidity away from them.)

stcstc wrote: »

i am using backup exec

doing full backup once a week, incremental others

actually the backups twice a day are two diff backup jobs, with some parts being backed up in both jobs

the 2 offsite locations are nothing special, my house and my wifes office

they are both replaced once a week

frost

i'm helping someone who just lost their server, which basically was just a file & print sharing device, so they're seriously considering a NAS with RAID 5, along with rotating offsite backups for larger files and/or possibly online backups for smaller ones.

all client pcs are running xp pro. the one issue i'm not sure about is whether they can set access at directory/folder level like they could with the Windows server - ie can there be a folder that only certain users can access?

nilhg

frost wrote: »

all client pcs are running xp pro. the one issue i'm not sure about is whether they can set access at directory/folder level like they could with the Windows server - ie can there be a folder that only certain users can access?

I'd imagine that depends on the operating system on the NAS, I've both NSLU2 and a DNS323, the NSLU2 can do what you want, as long as you understand unix permissions and groups,I never tried with the DNS. You may find that the more simple consumer friendly ones won't do this for you but the more upmarket ones will.

stcstc

i know some of the more expensive lacie ones do that kinda user management etc

frost

thanks stcstc and nilhg for your quick responses!

i'll have a look at the lacie line - this one looks promising, will read up the specs later
http://www.lacie.com/IE/products/product.htm?pid=11473

thanks again !

DougL

davmigil wrote: »

Thinking of getting a NAS hard drive system for backing up and possibly accessing photos.

If your house burns down, a NAS isn't going to save you. It's fine for local storage, but if you want a good backup system at a reasonable cost, you should look at http://www.jungledisk.com. Jungle Disk does full incremental backup to the Amazon S3 storage service. S3 gives you off-site storage in three datacenters...pretty safe. I store about 65 Gigs of photographs there currently, and it costs me about €10-€12 a month. The initial upload will take days over standard DSL, but after that it's incremental.

Obviously that's too much for some to spend, but I'd be devestated if I lost my photographs.

frost

looking at online reviews and the lacie doesnt look so great

An IT guy I know recommended the Buffalo Terastation Duo TS-WL/R1 or Buffalo Terastation Duo TS-WXL-1D

Manuf link:
http://www.buffalotech.com/products/network-storage/business/terastation-duo-ts-wxlr1-ts-wxl1d/

Cameraman

Buffalo are often recommended - but they don't come cheap.

I had a Lacie NAS unit - but wouldn't recommend them (support and reliability problems).

Also, I have found the performance very slow - I think this is an inherent limitation of the technology, rather than a specific Lacie problem.

davmigil

For Home use how about Netgear ReadyNas Duo or Synology 210J? The Netgear Stora price looks great, but reading reviews it seems to be a bit crippled (annual fee to access all functions and not accessible unless online?).

The first two accessible by both OSX and Windows. Just wondering do you run into problems accessing the same photo library from different operating systems and applications?

BROWNE51

I bough my first nas for the same purposes a few months ago from Komplett,a Synology ds410J(entry level).It comes with no drives but can hold 4 drives at 2tb each.Front end software is simple to use and its easy to install for a novice.Works well on the home network,streams fine via the router wirelessly to a mediacenter for music / photo / video.It also has its own media server(basic) and a torrent client(basic as well).Its a low power consumption device,going to standby when not in use.Horsepower wise there are plenty of devices out there with more ram etc but generally they dont take more than 1-2 drives for the price,it will be a balance between your storage requirements and future expandability and most important...your budget.
DS410J worth a punt in my opinion.

Lumen

I have a ReadyNAS Duo at home and work, each with mirrored hard drives. They work pretty well.

One issue is that (as far as I can tell) you can't connect to it using USB, SATA etc so the fastest way to connect is Gigabit ethernet.

There are USB ports. The ones on the back are for adding additional storage or dumping data on from another device (e.g. portable hard drive or USB key), which you can configure to happen automatically when you plug one in.

The USB port on the front is for the reverse - automatically backing up to external USB storage.

Shiny

I'm considering a Drobo when a version with USB3 comes out. I have
a buffalo Terastation lying around but no hard drives to put into it.

Up until now I have just being doing a full backup every couple of
months but I have a low flow of photographs.

edanto

davmigil wrote: »

The first two accessible by both OSX and Windows. Just wondering do you run into problems accessing the same photo library from different operating systems and applications?

I'm looking into this same question, wondering if anyone could advise if there are any potential pitfalls with having a XP and Mac systems accessing the same NAS?

Also - anyone know of any current deals on c.1TB NAS?

TinyExplosions

edanto wrote: »

I'm looking into this same question, wondering if anyone could advise if there are any potential pitfalls with having a XP and Mac systems accessing the same NAS?

Also - anyone know of any current deals on c.1TB NAS?

The biggest problem is going to be in formatting the NAS... OS X can have problems using an NTFS formatted drive, so you'll have to use FAT32, which can have problems when you get above 1TB because of the cluster size etc, it's not really worth the hassle (you could use an NTFS Driver, but I'd not reccommend it personally)

The best thing would be to get a NAS that has an OS built in as a fileserver and use that, then you shouldn't have too many problems

FoxT

We have used a thecus http://thecus.expertsinstorage.com/ unit for 2 years or so at work & it has been 100% reliable.

It sounds like you will also need an offsite solution - either web-based or Iron-mountain style physical tape backup. If you have a decent broadband connection then I think that web-based offsite is probably best. If you decide on a tape-based solution then it is critical that you test it! Many tape-based backup solutions are optimised for backing up at the expense of restore time. It can be difficult & time-consuming to restore. If your premises burns down do you want to be in a situation where you have to restore using tapes that have to be sequentially ( manually) inserted, using a restore programme you have never used/tested? Or, just get a PC from somewhere & recover your work from the internet?

- FoxT