need large redundant storage solution

Hi all,

my photo collection is pushing 120 gigs and I need a large scale backed up solution. Until now i've had my primary copy on my internal drive (now virtually full) and 2 backup copies on twin 320gb external drives.

One of those external drives has crashed with the only copy of my 30 gig music collection so pending a data recovery, i'm not sufficiently backed up.

I'm looking to invest some good money in a larger, multi drive setup, say, 2 or 3 500 gig drives setup in a backup fashion like a raid array. with this set up, I would use my 320 gig drives as extra backups to store in alternate locations.

i'm not sure what options are there and clueless about this stuff so i'm looking for suggestions for a large & growing photo collection that is my life and needs sufficient redundancy.

i really appreciate any advice. cheers,

chris

I picked up the Wiebetech 2 Bay RTX http://www.wiebetech.com/products/RTX200.php that is Hardware RAID 0 and RAID (also had been using Silver SATA versions in the past.) The RTX has various connections to the computer (FWE, USB, eSATA) and the drives can be slipped in and out like floppies. I have one running RAID 1 and then remove the bottom drive and pop in another empty drive to rebuild to the second drive for storage off-site etc. Takes a little time to back up, but you do not need the computer. For smaller drives it is not too long. Very easy to deal with, and I would guess there are other similar items out there like that one.

Scales up easily as needed. Since you current drive is 120 Gigs, put a larger drive in the bottom bay, 250, 500, 750 etc rebuild to that drive and you are good to go. You can start with 250s since they are so inexpensive if you want.

Try a ReadyNas (I use one) or a Drobo.

Search on this forum will find alot of information on the ReadyNas.

I agree with Joel, I think what you're looking for is a NAS (network attached storage). It'ss probably the best solution for what you're looking for. The range from single disk enclosure up to multi-terabyte systems. You just have to decide what you need. I'd recommend a setup with Raid 5 or 6 though. That will protect you from a HD failure.

Cheers,

Mike

Indeed NAS is a good solution. I use a Linksys box with two mirrored 750GB drives. I feel that mirroring may be a simpler and possibly more reliable solution than a striped raid unless you are looking for a higher speed data transfer.

The difference between a NAS and an eSATA enclosure is the transfer rate - you'll be limited to 1 gigabit with the NAS whereas you get the full speed if your drives if connected by eSATA. So if you'll only be backing up from one computer to the external drive then the wiebetech (or equivalent) should be a lot faster.

Cheers

James

james, you make a good point. how does the ethernet connect compare to a firewire 800 capable array for speed??

to avoid being overwhelmed, i've been looking b/w the readynas drives and the lacie arrays with esata & firewire 800 (which are cheaper)

If firewire's faster (don't have eSATA on my comp) what advantages would a networked array have if i have no real need to add the drive to my network?

any others I should look at or avoid??? thanx guys,

Chris

Based on this thread NAS may not be good for storing a LR library:

http://luminous-landscape.com/forum/index....showtopic=24909

There seem to be two flavors of eSATA today, 1.5 and 3 Gb/s looking over the stuff at Lacie

I currently have my library on a nearly full 3/4 TB USB2 HD with a duplicates spread out on a collection of 250 to 400MB drives as BU. Looking to expand too. B)

If you already have a gigabyte home network, the advantage of NAS is that it can be tucked away somewhere out of harm's way and look after itself. I recently cooked a firewire caddy drive on the mess I call my desk by it getting accidentally switched on with a pile of papers on top of it.

I don't pretend to know how much bandwidth you guys might need but at work we run D-link NAS boxes in local clusters of 4 machines in preference to the main server rack to speed up access when batch processing large 3D models. Properly set up, a gigabyte LAN should transfer data quicker than even a striped raid can deliver.

Hard Drives have come down so much in price, it makes sense to me to have at least 1TB drives now in place. After trying to follow all the RAID stuff etc, it all seemed too complicated for my needs. With a 120GB photo library, your needs appear similar to mine, and are really not that demanding compared to the guys that store tons of video etc.

I happen to run Aperture, but the principle is the same, and I do the following.

My primary drive in my MacPro is a 1TB drive. I have 2 more 500GB internal drives which keep backup copies of all documents on the primary drive, and one of which stores the Aperture Vault which is the backup of the Aperture Library. I then have an Apple Time Capsule which is a 1TB NAS drive which essentially works in the background to backup the 1TB internal drive throughout the day.

Essentially then I have a primary drive, a backup drive directly attached, in my case internal, and a second backup NAS drive. Until Apple came along with Time Capsule I found NAS drives a little tedious to set up. I don't think for your purposes a NAS drive is essential, a 1TB external drive (USB or Firewire) would work just as well as the backup to your backup, with a cord long enough to keep it away from your desk.

Until Apple came along with Time Capsule....

Jeff,

Do you like Time Capsule? I was thinking of getting a 500 Gig one solely for Time Machine and partition it for emergencies to boot from if needed (of course for this application I only need a drive 2X or so the size of my main MBP HD, which is 200 Gig).

Of course besides what I want to do with TM I have three Lacie 1TBs on my desk and smaller older ones stored, as I always backup my photos/video in three places. Might not be the best storage but it works for me without having to "think" too much as there is a lot I don't understand about RAID and the like.

Or should I get a different FW HD and do the same?

Time Capsule does look interesting though - does it conflict with any of the other computers in your house, etc? I looked at it the other day and couldn't tell if it was just an add-on to my apple wireless base station or a substitute....? Plus I have the older generation Apple Extreme and not sure Time Capsule would work. Unfortunately they were too busy at the Apple Store for me to get any questions about it answered.

Sorry Chris - don't mean to get off-topic - but I think it is interesting since Jeff brought it up and maybe some others would like to know about Time Capsule as well.

Good Luck! Best, Carol

Hi Carol,

Time Capsule / Time Machine seem to work well; but I hope they add a few features like scheduling backups at certain times, rather just continuous background backups.

I was finding that Time Capsule Time Machine Backups seemed to slow my machine down when they run, but I think this was related to an issue with my hard drive. (Getting ready to die) Anyway, so I have been turning Time Machine off when I working on my computer, then back on when I'm not working on it. I have replaced this drive and I am in the process of initializing and reinstalling on a new one so I will let you know how it goes.

james, you make a good point. how does the ethernet connect compare to a firewire 800 capable array for speed??

 

to avoid being overwhelmed, i've been looking b/w the readynas drives and the lacie arrays with esata & firewire 800 (which are cheaper)

 

If firewire's faster (don't have eSATA on my comp) what advantages would a networked array have if i have no real need to add the drive to my network?

 

any others I should look at or avoid??? thanx guys,

 

Chris

Gigabit Ethernet has maximum theoretical throughput that is about 25% faster than firewire 800 (1000Mbps vs 800Mbps). However, getting maximum performance from your ethernet connection is highly dependent on the quality of your network as well as the volume of traffic and often takes some tweaking to get it running efficiently.

NAS has several advantages/disadvantages depending on how you set it up. For me, I like the fact that I can automount my NAS via NFS when at home and it doesn't matter whether I'm sitting on the couch with my Macbook pro on my lap or hardwired at my desk in front of my desktop monitor; my data is always available without worrying about power or wires (granted that when you access it via wireless it's a lot slower). It's available to anyone I want to have access to it while there at my house and if I really wanted, I could set it up as an ftp server and webpage server. The big worry for me is that because it's on a network that is exposed to the outside world, there is always the chance that I can be hacked into and security is an even bigger concern since it's also available through a wireless network.

Firewire 800 is almost as fast theoretically and might be a little faster practically. The biggest advantage to firewire is it's plug and play. Plug it in, format the drive and you're ready to go. Depending on what you get it's portable and if you have little 2.5" drives you don't even need an external power source.

At 3Gbps, eSATA is buy far the fastest interface. But realizing it's full potential doesn't often happen. Most laptops don't have a express34 slot or eSATA port, so you may be down to a cardbus adapter. The problem there is that the cardbus specification has a maximum throughput of 1Gbps.

In your case, if simplicity is king and the advantages of NAS aren't compelling, then firewire is a good way to go.

Cheers,

Mike