Network attached storage

BobbyMac said:
I have a rather large archive to prove it.
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Out of curiosity from how long ago? I know it used to be a problem . . .

From what I've read cd rot can often be attributed to poor handling where scratches in the label side allowed moisture/bacteria to enter the disk.

I really need to find a "perfect" solution (for me at least) - I've taken in excess of 10,000 photographs this year and storage is going to start being an issue soon. ATM I back up projects to hdd and dvd as well as exporting them all to jpg. :eek:
 
I use a Synology CS406 with 4 x 500Gb drives. It is set up so that there are 2 pairs of mirrored drives, providing 1Tb of storage. If one drive goes down I can recover it off the mirror drive. Of course this does not work if 2 fail... I suppose you could mirror the mirror for a super-redundant 500Gb system. It can also take a USB add-on drive, so you can backup your backup and take it offsite.
 
Of my backup archives from 2004 (all fin information for historical day trading) - 1800 CD and 60 DVD - around a quarter has rot. These were all immediately placed in storage after the backup. A restore was done twice last year from around 60 CD. This year we did one restore (3 DVD and 20 CD). It was during this restore that we discovered the rot, so we've been changing backup to tape. A pain in the ass but at least better reliability.

As for your photo storage: speak to a company like metrofile - they will assist. HDD storage is good as long as you have a similar backup - and HDD is per megabyte cheaper than most long term storage mechanisms. I would personally back up on two different brand drives though - e.g. Hitachi and Seagate. Often drives that fail are from the same batch.
 
steve-rsa said:
I use a Synology CS406 with 4 x 500Gb drives. It is set up so that there are 2 pairs of mirrored drives, providing 1Tb of storage. If one drive goes down I can recover it off the mirror drive. Of course this does not work if 2 fail... I suppose you could mirror the mirror for a super-redundant 500Gb system. It can also take a USB add-on drive, so you can backup your backup and take it offsite.
Click to expand...
That Cube Station looks pretty cool - I was thinking about something along those lines.
BobbyMac said:
Of my backup archives from 2004 (all fin information for historical day trading) - 1800 CD and 60 DVD - around a quarter has rot. These were all immediately placed in storage after the backup. A restore was done twice last year from around 60 CD. This year we did one restore (3 DVD and 20 CD). It was during this restore that we discovered the rot, so we've been changing backup to tape. A pain in the ass but at least better reliability.
Click to expand...
Thats pretty significant loss - was it a reputable brand of media?
BobbyMac said:
As for your photo storage: speak to a company like metrofile - they will assist. HDD storage is good as long as you have a similar backup - and HDD is per megabyte cheaper than most long term storage mechanisms. I would personally back up on two different brand drives though - e.g. Hitachi and Seagate. Often drives that fail are from the same batch.
Click to expand...
HDD does seem to be the way to go for the time being - I just worry about actually being able to access the data down the road.
 
bwana said:
Thats pretty significant loss - was it a reputable brand of media?
Click to expand...
Different brands - Verbatim and Sony seem to be the most affected.
bwana said:
HDD does seem to be the way to go for the time being - I just worry about actually being able to access the data down the road.
Click to expand...
If you want a guarantee, then you will need to use the services of a reputable company (obviously a big cost). IMHO, going the HDD route will be the least costly, and the risk is probably the lowest for the time being. That said, periodic re-backups are often a very good idea.
 
BobbyMac said:
Different brands - Verbatim and Sony seem to be the most affected.If you want a guarantee, then you will need to use the services of a reputable company (obviously a big cost). IMHO, going the HDD route will be the least costly, and the risk is probably the lowest for the time being. That said, periodic re-backups are often a very good idea.
Click to expand...

Agreed. How long did the affected discs last before rot set in?
 
Network drives are a nice concept and work well for file serving to a network. But if you are actively working with large files, the access speeds compared to USB/SATA/IDE are quite painful.
 
Gatecrasher said:
Network drives are a nice concept and work well for file serving to a network. But if you are actively working with large files, the access speeds compared to USB/SATA/IDE are quite painful.
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Even on a gigabit network?

Being a firewire user I find USB painful enough.
 
Gatecrasher said:
Hey, I'm just a lowly home network user.
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So am I but a quick survey reveals most, if not all, of my computers have gigabit network cards so all I would need is a gigabit switch to take advantage of it, right?
 
DLink DNS 323

I got a Dlink DNS 323 NAS device, which has space for 2 SATA drives. I loaded it with 2 500GB Seagate drives, configured independently.

The device does support RAID 0 and 1, but I figured that if I delete something by accident, it would be deleted from a mirrored disk as well, which wouldn't help much.

Since the device runs Linux, and is extensible through the "funplug" tools, I added a script to rsync data from the primary disk to the second disk periodically, and keep a series of backup copies. Since the files are hardlinked across snapshots, the actual capacity required for each snapshot is limited to the size of the changes.

Granted, I will run out of space on the backup volume before I run out of space on the primary. What I might end up doing then is getting a 750GB or bigger disk as a backup, and using the current backup 500GB for offsite storage. Either get a USB2SATA enclosure, and plug it in the USB port that the DNS 323 has, or simply swap drives in the DNS323 and copy the primary volume.

I considered things like the Infrant (now NetGear) ReadyNAS line, which has 4 bays, but they were excessively priced.

One device that I DID like a lot, but was unable to get due to timing issues was the new [ame="http://www.amazon.com/EX470-MediaSmart-Server-Sempron-Processor/dp/tech-data/B000UY1WSK"]HP Media Smart Server[/ame]. 4 drive bays, quite a bit cheaper than the ReadyNAS, and it should actually turn out to be a perfect headless home server if someone manages to get Linux to run on it. (As you may guess, I am not a big fan of Windows Home Server). The only question might be the power consumption and heat generated by the more powerful processor.
 
bwana said:
So am I but a quick survey reveals most, if not all, of my computers have gigabit network cards so all I would need is a gigabit switch to take advantage of it, right?
Click to expand...

Yes....

My wife keeps asking me... but now I suddenly know what it is I want for Christmas. Thanks Bwana and Rogan.
 
I have a WD 500G NAS with 2 usb outs, one to my printer and another to my Seagate external drive of the same size.

Q: Is it possible to split the usb connector to the external drive so as to attach another drive?

Thought this may be of interest to someone thinking of speeds: If I copy PC-usb-router-ethernet-NAS it is 8 times slower than if I go PC-ethernet-router-ethernet-NAS.
 
RoganDawes said:
I got a Dlink DNS 323 NAS device, which has space for 2 SATA drives. I loaded it with 2 500GB Seagate drives, configured independently.
Click to expand...

What would be the advantages of your set-up over say, a WD II 1TB GB Lan? The cost of a D-Link DNS 323 plus two 500gb SATA HDs is about 40% more expensive.
 
Sorry for the late response, I didn't see your message (no notifications :( ).

There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of difference between those two, to be honest. I just wasn't aware of that option when I was looking around. The WDC is also Linux based, so you can probably also run your own custom backup solution on it, if you choose to.

Rogan
 
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