Comrades, I have a problem. My back up drive, on top of being FW800, is borked. I have managed to move the files and rescue 15 years of vacation photos, 7 years of professional images along with a few terabytes of comics, music, and assorted software. So, clearly, it's time for a NAS. How ever, like most of my computer and camera stuff, I'm looking for one that is environmentally more robust then the average. Not milspec, although if anyone knows of one, please let me know. I need to be able to spec it up to 16TB, ideally 4x4. Raid options would be nice, and if it runs a linux flavour I would be happy. The Thecus N5810Pro caught my eyes based on specs, but it's not the sort of 'throw in a pelican case and into the back of the truck' build quality I would like. and it's expensive. Ideas? Thoughts?
You're gonna need to be more specific. Wanting a NAS you can throw in a pelican case (as good as they are) and data security are two mutually exclusive goals. If you want a good backup, I'd just grab a Seagate 8TB archive drive and other than a monthly backup, leave it on the shelf.
^ what he said. HP Microserver G8. It is low power (Celeron G1610T), it is x86 (so you can install anything), it has dedicated LAN port for remote control, it has dual LAN, 4x3.5", slim DVD drive (but you could reuse it for an SSD drive), internal USB port for USB based OS, internal microSD reader (probably usable for boot as well). And OS - well then it is your choice if you go FreeNAS, OpenMediaVault or something else.
I bought the 5 Bay Synology DS1515+. You can throw 6TB WDD reds in there for a 21.7TB RAID5 volume (one disk redundancy) or apply the RAID to 4 disks and have one disk spare as a hot standby for the NAS to use in the event of another drive failing. It feels pretty robust - metal outer and the inner components are further protected beyond that. I'd feel comfortable standing on it. It's certainly a bit more expensive than the microserver but the DS software is great if you only want NAS functions, disks are hot-swap, etc. What troubles me is how much you're going to move this thing around. You won't want mechanical drives to take heavy knocks on a regular basis. Perhaps you should simply get a big backup drive for your 'hot' files on the road (if you travel with data) and push your other archive files into cloud storage or onto a NAS that can be kept in a safe / stable location. (sorry for multiple edits, re-read OP)
I have had a sleep on it and am by far less stressed and annoyed then I was. I think I need to separate my needs for high speed storage and redundant storage. Something like a Synology DS414 as a NAS and then a pair of Thunderbolt Raid drives for capture and editing. Lacie has a nice offering here as does G-tech. Or internal drives if Apple poops the bed with the next generation of Macs and MBPs. In which case a Skylake build is in the future. Which I am leaning towards, seeing as how the Linux video and image editing is impressive at this point. And with a confirmed Star Citizen port to Linux it seems silly to get another Mac. Then, however, I saw the Synology EDS14 NAS server.......
ioSafe make a fireproof and waterproof NAS, seems to be based of a Synology one. (I don't know it it's literally bullet proof. Buy one and test it for us!)
Setting the hardware recommendations aside for a moment - what are you doing that necessitates a NAS that is close to milspec, and that can be loaded into a pelican case and taken on the road? I'm intrigued. I'm also curious what programs you're using to do image and video editing in Linux. Image editing has had several options over the years, but video editing is one of those areas I was never quite happy with. That said, Blender's NLE function seems to have matured rather well over the past couple of years. Apologies for the thread hijack.
We have been on a 14 month relocation cycle since we moved back to the US. It's been playing havok with our household and I want storage options that will survive. Me moving them around, movers moving them and being placed in long term storage. I have the feeling that the Drobo crapped out from being stored in the garage at 100 degree(F) plus temps for 6 months. Under FW800 it's a mess, USB 2.0 seems stable enough to mount and move files. OSX wants to repair the file table every time it mounts and then tells me it can't fix it, so I'm hoping to get the last 500gb off today. It looks like the drives themselves are ok; I'm hoping to just get a NAS, swap the drives in and format. Lightworks. I still need to have a proper 'sit down and learn to use it' session, but I'll get to that once I know all my image files are secure. I was looking at Darktable for image management and RAW conversion; if you have any other suggestions, I'm all ears. Same for proper imaged editing; I'm not sure GIMP is there yet.
Just remembered that Amazon has $60/yr for unlimited cloud storage if you're looking for multiple tier redundancy.
I am looking at that now, and it seems Prime members get unlimited photo and 5Gb of files for free. I need to find out if that includes RAW files. Edit: Amazon does include certain RAW formats as "photos", including NEF and DNG. So that just means extracting the master files from the libraries. Thanks bindi.
That's pretty interesting. I have used Carbonite in the past - their basic plan is $50/year unlimited, but you need to manually tell it to store video. I'm not a huge fan of having programs like this live on my desktop but I guess it's fine for most people. Synology doesn't support these drives yet but does support Amazon glacier and a few other services. Those are way more expensive however - I'd be keen to be able to backup to NAS and have the NAS push some subset of files to one of these cheaper services.
