NAS for photographer

[bertie]

Hi, I'd be greatful if some of you could share some advice on systems to consider for the following. The range of systems in mind boggling and I'm not confident of making the right choice if left to my own devices!

I'm a keen amateur photographer and I'm paranoid about backing up my photos. I currently do home backups like this: Regular copy 500Gb WD NAS (now full!)and various USB drives which I shuttle back and forth to an offsite location. I also backup most recent pictures to a cloud location to cover for the period between moving backups offsite.

My perfect new NAS would do at least the following:

• Minimum 2Tb, ideally 4Tb

• I want to be able to plug in a USB drive and initiate a copy to it without needing to have the PC running the whole time - I don't know if any systems can autonomously copy to USB. I'd then be able to buy a couple of suitable USB drives to manage the offsite backing up

• Speed is not supercritical as this will be only for backing up and it's going to connect primarily via a powerline adaptor due to not being able to cable the rented house

• I'd like to understand if there is upgrade potential in the future to swap out the drives for bigger ones. I don't need hot swap but I'd like to think as drive prices fall I could increase the capacity.

• I'd also like to know if it's necessary to have a UPS for such a set up or whether these drives are robust against unplanned shutdowns
  Budget - 500 Euros/$700

Thanks in advance for any advice,

Bertie

 

[occamsrazor]

If you're really paranoid about backing up photos, I wouldn't recommend a NAS at all, I would go with direct-attached storage i.e. multiple "normal" hard drives. Simpler, therefore less to go wrong.
Choose an enclosure with very good fans to keep the drive temperatures down, and choose your drives carefully. Use backup software that does bit-by-bit verification.
If you really need your pix to be available on the network, either simply share your drive on the network from the computer it's attached to, or clone your photo archive to a NAS (but not using your NAS as the primary archive, only as a copy).
My personal choice is a two-drive Raid-1 enclosure, manually backed up to a third separate single drive using Chronosync on Mac.
As for UPS, depends where you live and the reliability of electricity supply. Where I live I always use a UPS, but the supply is very unreliable here.

 

[bertie]

Actually, I think you might be on to something. Always a good idea to ask others.

My PC has eSATA so it would definitely be faster.

I guess my next question is if I bought one of these :

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Cremax-MB662US-2S-Screwless-External-Enclosure/dp/B001OANDRC/ref=sr_1_2?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1326041307&sr=1-2

could I swap one of the drives each week and take offsite, bring the old one back and install it and leave the enclosure to do the mirroring? I've looked at the ICY BOX documentation and it's a bit scant to be honest. My concern is whether the enclosure can tell which one is the current image and which one is the old one to be overwritten. I'm also interested if while the drive is replicating it is in any way useable or whether it's offline for a day or so while it rebuilds. Easiest way would be to wipe the new drive prior to install but I guess I'd need another drive caddy to be able to that independant of the raid box.

 

[occamsrazor]

I would treat that device as the onsite one, and take a third one offsite. While you can rebuild raid-1 devices by re-slotting in the second drive - and it does work very well - I don't really trust it, but then I'm pretty paranoid. I just think the potential for some confusion and messing things up via user error is significant e.g. getting the two drives mixed up and cloning your slightly out of date offsite backup to the primary drive, thus losing all your changes. Do not underestimate the potential for user error e.g. accidental deletion, formatting, getting drives mixed up, etc.

Have a look at the first two links "Archiving Photos workflow, and RAID for photographers" in this blog post I wrote a while ago. Please note it is a couple of years old and some stuff may be out of date. But the concept I use remains the same:

1. RAID-1 pair as main archive (protects against drive failure)
2. A 3rd drive acting as backup that I manually back up to using quality backup/cloning software (protects against user error).

If you wanted offsite, you could take the 3rd drive...

 

[bertie]

Thanks. Yes, you're right about the human error. It happens. It happens a lot. So, I think I'll be following your advice.

Cheers,

Bertie

p.s. from looiing at your blog you know a thing or two about taking pictures!

 

[occamsrazor]

NASes are useful though. I have a QNAP TS-239 ProII that I use for Time Machine backups (of my computers, not the photos) and as a movie server. Just that I am always using it through the NAS operating system which I don't know enough about to feel confident for critical files. At least with direct attached storage I feel I am in control of the actual disk, so can easily use disk utilities on the drives if need be.
If you do get a raid-1 enclosure, get one with removable drive trays, and ideally a third drive single enclosure that uses the same drive trays. That way as your archives grow it's easy to grow with it.
That way you can use multiple pairs (or triples I guess) of drives with the same enclosures. I use Stardom enclosures which you'll find rebadged under other companies names. But I've also looked at the Icybox stuff and it looks decent.
Regarding your question about backing up a raid-1 by re-inserting the other drive.. Can't say for sure on the Icybox, but on my stardom this does work fine. It doesn't do an incremental backup though - it essentially considers the first inserted drive as the prime, wipes the other and then does a block-level clone. So it's a nice way to clone a drive to an empty one, but for regular backups isn't ideal as it's writing the whole disk every time and even though it uses the internal SATA interface of the device, takes a long time.

 

[stevech]

another thing about NASes... 24/7 remote access to all your files. If you password/SSL secure to your liking and choose to open certain folders to the Internet via login.

However, a 2.5in. travel disk can hold your collection just as well, I suppose. Or a 32GB thumb drive.