# Drobo vs G-raid



## Chuck Alaimo (Nov 28, 2015)

hey hey, it's about time to step up my storage and backup game and I'm thinking its time to move away from standard external hard drives and into something a bit bigger and more versatile. with that said, been looking into both drobo and g-raids. I have one drive now and I have had zero issue with it. But, I hear lots of talk of drobo and lots of people swear by them. So, looking for more info, pros and cons and such!!! TY in advance!


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## Canon Rumors Guy (Nov 28, 2015)

Drobo's are horrible products, do not under any circumstance waste your money on one. Proprietary file systems are a very bad idea if your data matters to you.

Synology makes the best NAS units in my opinion.


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## privatebydesign (Nov 28, 2015)

Yes Drobo's rode a wave of product placement with higher profile bloggers etc, but some of the horror stories told about the proprietary nature of the file systems made me very glad I didn't go that way!

Don't forget, for a solid backup system to be valid a single box, however clever, can't supply it, RAID boxes just cover some disc redundancy.


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## jrista (Nov 28, 2015)

I WHOLE HEARTEDLY agree with CR here. I tried a couple of Drobo's in the past. UTTERLY HORRID products. Save yourself time, money, and extensive hassle, avoid them at any cost (don't even take one for free!)

I've been using a ReadyNAS NVX for about six or seven years now. It is an older device, and I am not specifically recommending it (I'm sure better devices exist today), however this thing has been a workhorse and has operated flawlessly, without ever being shut down outside of maybe a power outage or two, ever since I set it up. I've upgraded the drives inside a couple of times, once going from two drives to four, then another time to upgrade one of the drives to a larger sized. It's an always-on, always-online system, uses X-RAID so it remains online even during volume expansion, drive replacement, etc.


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## sanj (Nov 28, 2015)

I have two Drobos - one for photos and my iMac's back up. Other for movies. 
They both work beautifully and I highly recommend them. I have had them for 5 odd years and never had a single issue.


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## Sauropod (Nov 28, 2015)

My experience with Drobo has been positive.

I have had a Drobo FS since new and picked up a Drobo 5N on Black Friday 2 years ago. 

The FS now has 5 4tb drives set to dual redundancy. Over the years some of the cheap drives I initially used (1gb no names) have failed. Drobo would alert me to failures and I would add a new drive. Drobo's data rebuilding is a slow process, think 2 full days+ for a few tbs, during which time you can access the data (albeit slowly), and about 5 days for 8tbs!

My 5N experienced a fan rattle sound 7 days before its warranty expired. I contacted their tech support, they had me shut down the device, remove all 5 drives as a pack and put them aside, then ship the 5N to them. A few days later I had a repaired unit in hand, put the drives back in, and it worked as expected.

I initially bought into the "use any drive" hype but, over the years, have come to learn that starting with NAS drives (WD Red for example), though initially more expensive, has been a better investment time-wise as none of the NAS drives have failed (I know all drives eventually fail though...), while the non-NAS drives, over 5 years, have seen 4 failures (out of 10 total non-NAS drives I have used). 

My LR6 catalog sits on an SSD drive while the images themselves are stored on the Drobos connected via ethernet. Though the 5N is faster than the FS neither have what I would call blazing speed, clicking on raw images results in a perceptible amount of time (~1/2 secondish) for the image to pull up fully. Definitely slower than when I put images directly on the SSD but still useable, and for me having the files on my network allows my wife to access them from her machine. Sadly she has to have her own catalog as Lightroom doesn't support one catalog to many users.

Do I trust only in Drobo? No, with storage so inexpensive I have photos, by year, copied to dedicated hard drives that sit offsite, that way if one of the Drobos did completely fail I could reload the data easily. 

If I were starting fresh would I buy Drobo? I would consider them for sure, however as other posters have noted there are non-proprietary systems that merit strong consideration. I would be especially interested, considering how I use the Drobos on my network to store accessible images, to see real world use speeds of other NAS systems as I would love to lose that half-second pause when I view images, a half-second adds up over hundreds of images!


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## Chuck Alaimo (Nov 28, 2015)

hmmm... if I went drobo i was thinking 5d not the 5n (wasn't thinking NAS, and not sure I want even want to go the NAS route).


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## Chuck Alaimo (Nov 28, 2015)

Sauropod said:


> The 5D, as I understand from reading and observing for I've never personally used one on my system, looks to be 2x to 3x as fast as my 5N, with some review sites stating they can do video editing right from the 5D. I found a site that stated a 5D hits 80 Mbps real world speed on USB 3.0 and 200 Mbps on Thunderbolt, I consistently get 25 Mbps transfer speeds on the FS and around 40 Mbps on the 5N.



that's why i'm thinking go with the d...not a super tech so learning...lol...DAS is direct attach, NAS is network...so to be a working drive as well as act as backup layer 1 speed and ease of use are high on my priority list. I'd be thinking thunderbolt...

NAS sounds nice, but seems like much more of process and much more of an expense too.


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Nov 28, 2015)

I have two QNAP NAS units. They are a bit higher end then Drobo, and have worked well for the past several years. They are reasonably fast, around 110 MB/sec. My 6 Disk heavy duty unit is a backup for my 4 disk cheapie unit. They have lots of Apps that add functionality. Synology and Thecus are also good units.

Unfortunately, I've never found any reviews that dig into the reliability of the hardware but just talk about speed.


I've used NAS units now for well over 15 years, I occasionally upgrade to bigger drives, but have never had a drive fail. I've used various brands of drives, but Seagate has served me well. The NAS units are always connected to UPS units and shut down automatically when the batteries get low.

My first NAS was a ReadyNas. I had replaced it and relegated it to backup duty when the power supply failed. It turned out to be proprietary and no longer available. Its possible to make your own by modifying the pin out of a power supply, but I've never bothered since its so obsolete by now. I just pass on Readynas by now.

I find that small net builder has a lot of data about the various NAS units.

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/tools/charts/nas/view

I picked up a plastic fantastic throwaway 4 disk unit on the cheap from Amazon last march and put four 4TB drives in it. It ran hotter than I liked, so I went into the drive settings and turned the fan speed up rather than leave it on auto. It runs 24/7, but spins down the drives at night. It has built-in software that backs up to the other NAS.

I paid under $400 for the bare unit, the price seems to vary. If it lasts 4 or 5 years, it will be obsolete. I tested transfer speeds, and with a single large file, it does exceed 110 MB/sec speeds. I connect both Ethernet ports to my HP smart switch so that they share the load (Port Trunking). You need a switch that can do this to take advantage of port trunking.

http://www.amazon.com/QNAP-Personal-2-41GHz-Transcoding-TS-451-US/dp/B00KXP9RJC/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1448738369&sr=8-6&keywords=qnap


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## Zeidora (Nov 28, 2015)

Re NAS, I had some from Buffalo Technologies previously for easier cross-platform (Mac-PC) sharing, but nowadays, that is no issue anymore. On one Buffalo 4bay Terrastation, the main board failed, so had a bunch of HDs without any access. NAS is too slow for mass data transfer (TBs), USB3 is faster, or use Thunderbolt.

15 years ago I had a hard fail on a G-drive, so never looked at them again. I now have LaCie RAIDs, both 2 bay and 4 bay, and am happy with them. All in RAID1. Smallest is a 2x2TB rugged, largest is a 4x4TB 4-Big. They are also in two different locations, 70 miles apart.


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## LDS (Nov 28, 2015)

Zeidora said:


> NAS is too slow for mass data transfer (TBs), USB3 is faster, or use Thunderbolt.



Actually you can get a 10Gb/s NAS, but you'd also need a 10Gb card on your device, 10Gb switches and cables, and it makes that an expensive setup.

Just to reach those write speeds (Thunderbolt, 10G Ethernet), you may need also some expensive disks - they need to pump data in and out fast enough, while most NAS spinning drives (especially the less expensive ones) are designed more for reliability than raw speed. Memory caches large enough may help, but not always.


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## Canon Rumors Guy (Nov 28, 2015)

Zeidora said:


> Re NAS, I had some from Buffalo Technologies previously for easier cross-platform (Mac-PC) sharing, but nowadays, that is no issue anymore. On one Buffalo 4bay Terrastation, the main board failed, so had a bunch of HDs without any access. NAS is too slow for mass data transfer (TBs), USB3 is faster, or use Thunderbolt.
> 
> 15 years ago I had a hard fail on a G-drive, so never looked at them again. I now have LaCie RAIDs, both 2 bay and 4 bay, and am happy with them. All in RAID1. Smallest is a 2x2TB rugged, largest is a 4x4TB 4-Big. They are also in two different locations, 70 miles apart.



I also have a 5 Thunderbolt drive LaCie 5big, divided into a RAID 0 and RAID 1.


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## pwp (Nov 28, 2015)

Canon Rumors said:


> Drobo's are horrible products, do not under any circumstance waste your money on one. Proprietary file systems are a very bad idea if your data matters to you.
> 
> Synology makes the best NAS units in my opinion.



This is an exact mirror of my experience. Drobo does gold standard marketing and promotion but the realities of ownership are lamentable to sat the least. Just don't get Drobo. 

After a long somewhat intense negotiation with Drobo I managed to get a full refund as the high end unit simply failed to deliver what the marketing promised. Next NAS step was as successful as the Drobo was a time wasting failure. A five bay Synology NAS took the Drobos place and has been stable, fast and very easy to manage for the past three or four years. It's usability rivals Apple for clarity, ease of use and functionality. Get Synology.

-pw


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## kaihp (Nov 29, 2015)

I haven't used a commercial NAS/RAID box, so I cannot comment on Drobo vs Synology, QNAP and the others.

I'd like to point out that you should be careful about which harddrives you are planning to use, the size of the individual harddrives and how much protection (parity) that you're planning for. 

The devil about types and sizes lies in the read-error rate when you have a drive failure and need to rebuild the array. When a drive fails, your RAID5 have just been downgraded to a RAID0, ie you're out of redundancy.
Most consumer drives have a read-error rate of ~1E-14. NAS or enterprise drives gives you 2 decades lower error rate. With 1E-14, that's a read error in 12.5TB - compare that to your RAID size when doing a rebuild.

For that reason I ended up last year building my own NAS/server box with 6 x 6TB WD Red (WD60EFRX) drives, running ZFS Level2*. I did this because I found the cost of commercially available 5+ bay systems to be horrendous, compared to their performance (especially on the CPU side). The drives can push 175MB/s internally and with bonded GigE's I can push in excess of 135MB/s between desktop and NAS box. I have seen scrubbing/rebuild speeds in excess of 500MB/s(!)


*) Full specs for the curious:
AsRockRack C2750D4I motherboard (8-core Avoton. The 4-core 2550 was unavaible so I went with the 2750)
2 x 8GB ECC-DRAM (buffered)
6 x 6TB WD RED (storage)
1 x 250GB Samsung 840 Evo (boot, root and ZFS cache - expendable stuff)
Ubuntu 14.04 LTS with ZFS (see www.zfsonlinux.org for links to guides)
The machine is running 24/7 and is consuming less than 60W. Effective storage is about 22.5TiB


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Nov 30, 2015)

kaihp said:


> I haven't used a commercial NAS/RAID box, so I cannot comment on Drobo vs Synology, QNAP and the others.
> 
> I'd like to point out that you should be careful about which harddrives you are planning to use, the size of the individual harddrives and how much protection (parity) that you're planning for.
> 
> ...



While most of the better NAS units with 4 or more drives run Raid 6 which has two redundant drives (You can choose), a Raid system does not protect you against data loss or corruption. That's the reason why we need backups. Raid improves availability, which is critical for online commerce, banks, etc. However, for a photo storage system, assuming you did not use raid 6 or a hot spare, it takes 5 minutes to pop in a replacement drive which will start rebuilding immediately. It is possible that a 2nd drive will fail during the rebuilding process, but its very unusual for small systems with 4-6 drives.

In my experience, a power supply failure is far more likely than a double hard drive failure, and the low end NAS units we are discussing here often do not contain redundant power supplies, merely because they are expensive. Synology does have a low cost (Under $1500) NAS with a redundant power supply, but its overkill for photo storage unless you are needing 24/7 availability. Still, if you are willing to lay out $1500 plus the cost of decent drives, its a good choice.

Utility power failures and glitches are even more likely to happen, so operating a NAS without a UPS is asking for trouble.


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## kaihp (Nov 30, 2015)

Mt Spokane Photography said:


> kaihp said:
> 
> 
> > Most consumer drives have a read-error rate of ~1E-14. NAS or enterprise drives gives you 2 decades lower
> ...



You are absolutely right about backups. RAID won't help you if you accidentially delete your entire folder hierarchy of pictures. Only backups will save you then (I still need to set up a crashplan.com backup, but with a measly 4Mbps xDSL line, my 2.5TB will take more than 70 days of 100% utilization to complete the initial sync).

RAID helps with both Availability and Reliability (of the system, not the individual parts). ZFS is a bit special, since it does checksums on all data and metadata, so it can actually detect and rebuild ("scrub") corrupted data.
This is why I opted for using ZFS over the standard RAID system and ext4fs.

As for having double-failures, you may not have seen them, but they're there. Just do the math: With an 1E-14 error rate and reading through 4 2TB hard drives, there is a 64% chance that you're going to get hit by a non-recoverable error. If you're lucky you get to know about it. If you're unlucky, you get silent data corruption.


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## LDS (Nov 30, 2015)

kaihp said:


> Ubuntu 14.04 LTS with ZFS (see www.zfsonlinux.org for links to guides)



You can also use FreeNAS (www.freenas.com), which is based on FreeBSD which has been supporting ZFS for years. They also sell complete systems, but their OS is free and simple enough to install and use, being designed to run a NAS system.


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## LDS (Nov 30, 2015)

Mt Spokane Photography said:


> Raid system does not protect you against data loss or corruption. That's the reason why we need backups.



Yes, but backups should be more than "Yet Another Copy". The issue here is when you start to copy corrupted data, and don't spot it in time, you end to have multiple copies of corrupted data. A good backup software does more than simply make a copy of data. It does compute and store enough additional data to spot and correct - when possible - corruption (it also store catalogs to let you find and access old versions quickly enough, but that's another story).

In the old times it was mandatory because media (tape, optical discs) were not reliable enough, yet today with huge disks and volumes, the overall probability of corrupted data is no longer so little. But good backup software became harder to find, because disk reliability made "just make multiple copies" look good enough for many tasks.

But there's a difference between short-term backups, and long-term ones, that could also better named "archiving". The former is usually important to quickly recover from "catastrophic" damages (small or big) of "online" or "near-line" data, the latter is important to keep safe "historical" data for a long, long time, data which may be accessed rarely. This means that corruption may be more difficult to spot, unless the archive is checked regularly, and errors corrected.


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## kaihp (Nov 30, 2015)

LDS said:


> kaihp said:
> 
> 
> > Ubuntu 14.04 LTS with ZFS (see www.zfsonlinux.org for links to guides)
> ...



Absolutely right. The only reason I didn't go with FreeBSD/FreeNAS is that I've never used it, while I have used Linux since 1993 (before v1.0).


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Dec 1, 2015)

LDS said:


> Mt Spokane Photography said:
> 
> 
> > Raid system does not protect you against data loss or corruption. That's the reason why we need backups.
> ...



There are lots of good backup software programs, and you are right, just making a copy only duplicates any errors that crop up.

I make and save both disk images as well as backups. I make the images about once a month, but backups weekly. I also mirror my raid, but that's not a backup, it merely keeps me going if one NAS fails.

I have plenty of storage space to do this, its so cheap with the low cost of 4TB drives. B&H even has 960GB SSD's for $200 today. I'm looking forward to being able to afford 16 TB of SSD's for my NAS.


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## Halfrack (Dec 1, 2015)

Everyone stop for a minute - quit solving a problem without fully understanding it.

Chuck, what is the current drive size you have, and how many years did it take to fill? As a side note, Thunderbolt will add a $100-200 to the price point, so you may want to consider FW800 or USB3 as the connection option. How are you currently backing up your photos?

If it's just you, and 2-6tb is plenty of space for all current stuff and 2 more years of shooting, get a:
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/Thunderbolt/External-Drive/OWC/Elite-Dual-RAID - and set the dip switches to JBOD. Setup a basic mirror (RAID1) in Mac OSX and enjoy life. Plain drives with basic OS level mirroring allows for the most recovery options possible if anything were to happen. There are other options that are USB3 or FW800, but that is the easy selection. Plus you can back the whole thing up to BackBlaze for $5 a month.

For more than 6tb, I'm going to recommend a Synology NAS - direct attach storage (DAS) spanning multiple disks can overwhelm a user. Personally, the only thing that matters is recovery, and you can recover the data on a Synology NAS with a regular PC with enough sata ports and a Linux LiveCD - I've done it for a client, it works amazingly. This is not true of Drobo, or some/most other NAS makers.

Stay away from Drobo, since they haven't done much since being purchased/merged with Connected Data in 2013, and a large number of bad recent experiences for current users. 

Stay away from ReadyNAS - Netgear has a HORRIBLE 6.4 release that breaks a large number of boxes, but hasn't pulled back the update. 

FreeNAS/NAS4Free are both options if you're looking for a build it yourself box. The upside is ZFS and all it's amazing fun, worth it to me, but most likely not to 99% of the world. The downside is how much time are you going to spend managing it? That's time better spent elsewhere, and not a skillset most photographers have.


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## Chuck Alaimo (Dec 1, 2015)

Halfrack said:


> Everyone stop for a minute - quit solving a problem without fully understanding it.
> 
> Chuck, what is the current drive size you have, and how many years did it take to fill? As a side note, Thunderbolt will add a $100-200 to the price point, so you may want to consider FW800 or USB3 as the connection option. How are you currently backing up your photos?
> 
> ...



Ty for slowing things down. Was getting lost in a lot of terminology I don't understand. Build my own just isn't on my table now. Over the summer I needed to upgrade my system and made the switch to Mac because I just don't want to mess around with the innards of a computer just to make it work. So with this decision, I want it to be as nice and simple as possible.

To answer the questions,

I currently have 2 WD 2 TB drives and a 2 TB g-tech drive. The WD drives are not even on my mac (they'really windows formatted) and the only reason my g drive is usable is because I move things around to make space, and delete things files every few months to clear up space. My wedding business is really just ramping up so I've been able to get away with what I have but I know it'll be a headache this next season. Hell, before my last wedding of the season I had to clean out a ton of files to make room (yeah, doesn't help that I've been renting 5ds/r's!!!!). I could easily see myself burning through another 2 TB drive this coming season. And knowing that is why I've been looking into a more advanced option. I was originally thinking of just getting another regular drive, but, the cost of good 4 TB drives put you right on the doorstep of RAID prices. And yeah, a few of my colleagues have been lecturing me on the need for file security, so that's in a nutshell how I got to the point of asking here. 

Simplified - I have close to 6tb of data, 4 would be archived and 2 is recent/working files.

I was thinking Thunderbolt because macs only have 4 USB ports and those 2 Thunderbolt 2 ports just saying...I'm empty, use me. I was also thinking that I'd be working off whatever I end up going with here, so speed was also why I was thinking thunderbolt.

I like the sound of the macsales unit, sounds like it's easy to setup. I went to the synology website after the first few comments and very quickly became overwhelmed with options and lots of spec's I frankly don't understand. That's why I said a few posts back that I don't even know if I want a NAS system. I'm not super hard-headed, I just dont have the time to deal with something with a steep learning curve. I know I need to plan for the future. That's why just adding another basic external drive isn't an option. I just don't want to leap into something that leads to continually asking for help!!!!!

Cost is the other side of this. When I started this process budget was between $200-400. That changed up of course once I started seriously cosidering a RAID. With NAS I don't know where to start...am I looking at 1k? Or 2k? Or more?


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## sanj (Dec 1, 2015)

Nice thread


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## RGF (Dec 1, 2015)

I had a several Drobos in the past. On a PC, very slow. Lots of problems with Firewire interface (could have been the Dell), fewer problems with USB 3.0

Now on a Mac and I am using OWC Thunderbay 4 with HGST drives (my research indicates these are highly reliable) and Softraid. Run the system four 4TB drives in a Raid configuration. This is one copy. Other copies are kept off line or in the bank vault. 

This rather affordable solution. Other boxes, much more sophisticated, cost lots more.


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## Halfrack (Dec 1, 2015)

Happy to help - context makes it a lot easier.

I'm going to +1 on the Thunderbay 4 - it'll hold 4 drives, and as an added benefit doesn't have the horrible external power brick or switches that could be moved. What you can do is hedge your 5DsR purchase and step a little further for lots more space:

$1217
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/TB2IVT20.0S/
or $1279
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/TB2SRT20.0S/

It's the 20tb version, but you'd operate it in the same way - it shows up as 4 drives on your Mac. If you're still running 10.10, few clicks in Disk Utility turns it into 2 5tb drives that are redundant in the event of a drive failure. If you've upgraded to 10.11, you'll need to use the Software RAID software to configure the RAID 1 volumes. Use one as your archive, and one as your working set. Yes, there are fancy things that can be done to make it a bit faster, but the trade off is special software that can cause issues or hardware that is proprietary. If you want to save a few bucks you can get the bare drives and the enclosure without any disks, installing them is really easy, but it doesn't get the burn-in (aka testing) that MacSales is going to do for you.

Here's the bit on Apple removing the software raid from 10.11 and how to work around it in terminal:
http://www.tekrevue.com/tip/create-raid-el-capitan/
http://www.softraid.com/pages/support/compatibility_notes.html


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## kaihp (Dec 1, 2015)

Halfrack, good that you got us back on track.

Chuck: my apologies, I intent wasn't to have you roll-your-own (that's a fairly specialized thing), but more put a perspective on things. Sorry for using the fire hose on you 

*Capacity*: With 6TB now and adding another 2TB next year, you really need to consider both capacity and reliability. Getting a 8TB array now will just last you 12 months. In my mind, I would look at >10-12TB usable capacity.

*Price*: As for price, it seems like a WD Red ("NAS") 6TB drive isn't that much more expensive (USD240-250) than the WD Blue/Green ("consumer") 6TB drives (USD222). But you're quickly getting out of your original $200-400 range, sorry for bringing the bad news.

*Access/archiving*: What's your general need for accessing "old data"? Do you _really_ need to have all those photos available at a whims notice? - or could you live with having only the last 1-2 years of photos available online at any one time?

I would probably also start considering an "archiving plan" if I were eating through 2TB a year. Copying to two external drives that are totally offline (and offsite) isn't a bad option. A 3TB 2.5" drive is $115. Each year's photos would go on a new pair of drives.

Have you considered using an online backup service like Crashplan or Backblaze? They're down to $50/year for unlimited storage.


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## Chuck Alaimo (Dec 1, 2015)

kaihp said:


> Halfrack, good that you got us back on track.
> 
> Chuck: my apologies, I intent wasn't to have you roll-your-own (that's a fairly specialized thing), but more put a perspective on things. Sorry for using the fire hose on you
> 
> ...



Np man, it's all good...

Answering... I'd say that 4 TB of older data is definitely not general use stuff. Old client files that I won't be working on and may only need to access if a client needs a new disk.

So it's the 2 TB of current data and the upcoming data I need to have space for. 

Yeah, the original budget is out the window for sure. Just how out the window. Those 20th OWC drives seem like they fit the bill. Does the array come with the drives or is it just the array and then I have to buy the drives separately?


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## kaihp (Dec 1, 2015)

Chuck Alaimo said:


> Answering... I'd say that 4 TB of older data is definitely not general use stuff. Old client files that I won't be working on and may only need to access if a client needs a new disk.
> 
> So it's the 2 TB of current data and the upcoming data I need to have space for.



So here's one option: For your current data, have a box with 2 drives of 4-5-6TB each (mirrored, RAID1). Use your existing 2TB external drives as archival and keep buying a pair of drives every year for archival.
That would be a OWC chassis like this: http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/METB7DK0GB/ and 2 WD40/50/60EFRX drives to populate it.
Price is $779 for enclosure + 2 x 6TB drives-



Chuck Alaimo said:


> Those 20th OWC drives seem like they fit the bill. Does the array come with the drives or is it just the array and then I have to buy the drives separately?



The 20TB arrays that Halfrack linked to are including 4 x 5TB harddrives. Effective space would be ~15TB though (1 disk goes for redundancy).


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Dec 1, 2015)

Halfrack said:


> Happy to help - context makes it a lot easier.
> 
> I'm going to +1 on the Thunderbay 4 - it'll hold 4 drives, and as an added benefit doesn't have the horrible external power brick or switches that could be moved. What you can do is hedge your 5DsR purchase and step a little further for lots more space:
> 
> ...



Software Raid is something to stay away from! This unit has no drive monitoring, so it does not read the Smart Data from the drives and warn you before your drive dies (All decent Raid units do this), it has a internal power supply, you can't just plug in a standard computer power supply or power brick. Its badly overpriced. 

The unit will only operate when the attached computer is running, so its not a NAS. Its intended for a very different purpose than a NAS, be sure to understand that. It basically just extends your Mac's internal disk storage, and is not shared with other pc's, Macs, Tablets, phones, etc like a NAS can do.

Also be very careful of a unit that does not use a standard computer power supply or even a brick. Both can be purchased and are easy to install when the original dies, and it will die!

I learned the hard way with a proprietary power supply, the manufacturer stopped supplying them after 5 years and mine failed at 6 years.

The PR does not tell you these things, they stress speed, but don't tell you its a throw away item.

Unfortunately, its not easy to find out the details of maintenance from the reviews or manufacturers specifications. Get a unit that has a replaceable power supply, not a integrated one.

For the price of that item, a Synology blows it away.


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## Chuck Alaimo (Dec 1, 2015)

Mt Spokane Photography said:


> Halfrack said:
> 
> 
> > Happy to help - context makes it a lot easier.
> ...



Ok, so given the info I just posted about data needs... could you narrow this down for me via links? Which of their systems would most suit my needs...


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Dec 1, 2015)

Chuck Alaimo said:


> Ok, so given the info I just posted about data needs... could you narrow this down for me via links? Which of their systems would most suit my needs...



Chuck, I'm biased by my experiences, so take that into account.

The QNAP TS-451 4 Drive unit is cheap, uses a power brick and plastic cover. Inside, it has a intel Celeron (Not Atom) processor, and is powerful and has all the functionality of a much more expensive unit. You can buy with disks or add your own. Since you have a couple already, just getting a empty box might be best.

In the $500 (+/-) range, I can recommend

http://www.amazon.com/QNAP-Personal-2-41GHz-Transcoding-TS-451-4G-US/dp/B00LVT2Y12

The low end Synology is also a good choice
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00LO3KW7S?ie=UTF8&tag=small0c-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B00LO3KW7S

Here is a blog discussing NAS brands, like me, they feel that Qnap and Synology are at the top of the list.

http://www.snbforums.com/threads/how-to-buy-a-nas-2015-edition.22884/



Now, as for drives, with the low end NAS units, low power drives might be a advantage heat generation wise. They are quite because they operate t lower RPM's when not busy with heavy loads.


Choose the drive capacity you want, I'd go for 4TB if you can afford it, but 2TB is not a bad choice.

http://www.amazon.com/Red-Desktop-Hard-Disk-Drive/dp/B008JJLZ7G/ref=sr_1_3?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1448994279&sr=1-3&keywords=WD+Red

I have 7 Hitachi Drives (HGST) (One spare) that have never failed in 6 years of 24/7 operation. 
http://www.amazon.com/HGST-Deskstar-3-5-Inch-CoolSpin-0F12117/dp/B004E9SGO0/ref=sr_1_1?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1448994651&sr=1-1&keywords=nas+hard+drive+HGST&refinements=p_85%3A2470955011%2Cp_n_feature_keywords_four_browse-bin%3A8067152011

The QNAP with 4 X 2TGB drives will set you back about $900. with 3X 4TB Drives, about $950. The Synology costs about $60 more.


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## Halfrack (Dec 1, 2015)

kaihp said:


> Chuck Alaimo said:
> 
> 
> > Those 20th OWC drives seem like they fit the bill. Does the array come with the drives or is it just the array and then I have to buy the drives separately?
> ...



The box comes with the drives in it, and it would actually be only 10tb of effective space, 2 5tb mirrored drives.

Chuck, do you have a large enough SSD for working against as you import & edit all the files? You got a new Mac, which one by chance, and does it have a Fusion Drive or a Flash Drive (SSD)? Do you currently backup your Mac there at home with Time Machine?

I'm chewing a few things over, it may be better to have only 1 RAID1 set for working data, a single drive for the archive, and a SSD mounted in it for working space. I'd still say purchase the pre-built model, copy the archive to 2 drives, then remove one of the drives for offline storage and put in a SSD for faster working with current files.

The 2 earlier links have a single difference, the $1,217 doesn't have the easy RAID software, while the $1,279 does. Either of those will work, plus:

1 - http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/MEQX2TRAY/ - $15 sled to hold the drive in the case
1 - http://eshop.macsales.com/item/NewerTech/ADPTADRV/ - $15 adapter that holds the SSD in the right place on the sled
1 - SSD of your choice (I like Crucial, but have used SanDisk and transend as well) - a 240gb - 512gb should be under $200 now

It's 8 screws and you'll be at top speed. On your import, import to SSD and import a copy to the RAID1 set. Work against the SSD for faster rendering/editing/photoshop swap space.


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## Halfrack (Dec 1, 2015)

Mt Spokane Photography said:


> Software Raid is something to stay away from! This unit has no drive monitoring, so it does not read the Smart Data from the drives and warn you before your drive dies (All decent Raid units do this), it has a internal power supply, you can't just plug in a standard computer power supply or power brick. Its badly overpriced.
> 
> The unit will only operate when the attached computer is running, so its not a NAS. Its intended for a very different purpose than a NAS, be sure to understand that. It basically just extends your Mac's internal disk storage, and is not shared with other pc's, Macs, Tablets, phones, etc like a NAS can do.
> 
> ...



No, no and no. *Every QNAP runs software RAID. Every Synology runs software RAID.* They both implement it in an embedded Linux/BSD distribution. The products suggested actually are more useful as they'll announce an issue on the desktop rather than just alert via email and the web UI if you browse to the NAS. External power supplies are just as much an issue as internal ones, there is no magic solution - I agree non-standard ones suck, but there isn't a standard internal or external supply. OWC offers a 3 year warranty and US based technical support. The box literally is a Thunderbolt to 4xSATA adapter, with a lot of the cost builtin because it's Thunderbolt. OWC does a similar box in USB3 for $150 less.

Softraid ( http://softraid.com ) is being suggested for RAID1 - not RAID5/6/XRaid/Hybrid - and that's only if he's upgraded to El Capitan. 2 drives, same content, treated as a single drive, fully functional without the other. RAID5 across 4 drives is bad - especially when dealing with 3tb and larger disks. RAID6 across 5 drives is where I would recommend starting, but it's a different solution for a different problem.

Chuck, are you using the data on more than 1 computer or on multiple computers?


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## Chuck Alaimo (Dec 2, 2015)

Halfrack said:


> Mt Spokane Photography said:
> 
> 
> > Software Raid is something to stay away from! This unit has no drive monitoring, so it does not read the Smart Data from the drives and warn you before your drive dies (All decent Raid units do this), it has a internal power supply, you can't just plug in a standard computer power supply or power brick. Its badly overpriced.
> ...



Single computer


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## Halfrack (Dec 2, 2015)

Chuck Alaimo said:


> Halfrack said:
> 
> 
> > Chuck, are you using the data on more than 1 computer or on multiple computers?
> ...



Perfect, if you go to the Apple in the top left, and click the drop down and click 'About This Mac' are you running 10.9, 10.10 or 10.11?

If it's 10.9, click 'More Info' and a new window that pops up. In both cases, click 'Storage' on the top menu. The top left drive, how big is it and is it SATA, Solid State SATA, Flash Storage or Fusion?


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## Chuck Alaimo (Dec 2, 2015)

Halfrack said:


> Chuck Alaimo said:
> 
> 
> > Halfrack said:
> ...



ok, running 10.11.1 --- and it is a fusion drive but not sure if that makes a difference because i have the latest version of OS x


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## Halfrack (Dec 2, 2015)

Chuck Alaimo said:


> ok, running 10.11.1 --- and it is a fusion drive but not sure if that makes a difference because i have the latest version of OS x



Very nice - so your internal drive is a small flash drive and a standard SATA drive working together as one. It's not as fast as a SSD, and this may be the best reason to do the ThunderBay enclosure. It would give you a single drive of 'archive' stuff, a pair of drives that's mirrored for redundancy of your working set, and a SSD that's blazing fast for your import / actively working against & Photoshop swap space.

To make the setup easier, do the $1279 model with the SoftRAID software - it'll just work. For the SSD I'd do a 512gb or larger - leave the internal drive for programs & email, but keep all your photos on the SSD & mirrored drives. The performance increase will blow your mind. If you really want to, you can break the purchase down a bit, getting the enclosure without disks, the items for the SSD and a single drive to consolidate your 3 externals onto. You can add in the mirrored drives at a later time.


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## LDS (Dec 6, 2015)

Mt Spokane Photography said:


> Software Raid is something to stay away from!



Most "cheaper" units use software RAID or a hardware/software RAID combination (where a lot of RAID code is in the OS driver, not in the chipset firmware, which has limited processing power). True hardware RAID controllers are usually too expensive for low-end systems, especially those with on-board cache and battery backup.


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