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Economical NAS & DAS with thunderbolt 2

Fullframe

Fullframe

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 27, 2015
8
0
I am in need of experienced help regarding economical options for NAS storage with a 4 bay that has Thunderbolt 2. I have just purchased the late 2015 27-inch iMac with Retina 5K display Mainly for photo editing in Lightroom & Photoshop. Video maybe later down the track.
  • 4.0GHz quad-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 4.2GHz
  • 8GB 1867MHz DDR3 SDRAM - two 4GB
  • 512GB Flash Storage
  • AMD Radeon R9 M395X with 4GB video memory
I have tonnes of photos and now using a Nikon D810 that has 40mb+ photos which will be the reason for Storage. I would like something that is quite easy to use and intuitive. I have things like 1tb on Dropbox so something that recognises that would be advantageous.

The reasons I am thinking NAS is I can access it remotely, I can use it for multimedia etc but I can directly connect to it if I need to get a bit more speed out of it when editing.

I'm happy to spend up to $2000 AUD = $1400 USD = €1300 = £ 900 to get the best bang for buck. I like the versatility of this NAS DAS Unit as it gives me speeds with thunderbolt 2 with other plugins of USB3 HDMI https://www.qnap.com/solution/thunderbolt-nas/en-us/index.php

Cheers
 
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You don't need a Thunderbolt NAS (Thunderbolt NAS and economical does not go together, you only should use TB and TB2 at that when you need SSD speeds) for photos. Just build a NAS over gigabit or even ac wifi (depending on your network) using WD Red drives.

And economical NAS that is preconfigured for you (so drobo, synology etc) is another oxymoron. Unless your definition of economical in a SoHo environment is vastly different than mine.
 
But a NAS is typically available in a Network (Ethernet, WLAN) and not physically connected via USB 3 or Thunderbolt for faster access. If you want really fast access to your files, you have to buy a thunderbolt RAID, that is physically connected to your mac. A NAS is limited in the speed of the Network, the fastet you will get is Gigabit Ethernet Speed.
 
Gigabit ethernet means 125 MB/s theoretically, so say 110-115 in reality, which WD Red drives will do just fine. If you need faster than that, you need SSDs in a TB2 enclosure in some RAID array (which is not in the scope here), but are in no way economical IMHO.

But I guess the question is, what is your budget, sans SSDs and I can tell you if there are any TB2 enclosures that may work?
 
cmm said:
You don't need a Thunderbolt NAS (Thunderbolt NAS and economical does not go together, you only should use TB and TB2 at that when you need SSD speeds) for photos. Just build a NAS over gigabit or even ac wifi (depending on your network) using WD Red drives.

And economical NAS that is preconfigured for you (so drobo, synology etc) is another oxymoron. Unless your definition of economical in a SoHo environment is vastly different than mine.
Click to expand...

By economical I mean not QNAP TVS871T. I am happy if I can put something together for 1-2k AUD with 4-5 3tb drives. I currently have a Netgear D6300 wifi DSL router that it would be connected to. What is your setup CMM?
 
NAS is Network attached storage. By definition it'll come with a network jack, not Thunderbolt.

If you want Thunderbolt, that would be DAS - Directly Attached Storage.
 
I use Aperture and Lightroom with catalog on the main SSD and masters stored on an external HD, that I just upgraded to a Toshiba 7200 5TB for the new iMac that I'm waiting to be delivered.
I also have a Synology NAS with 3x4TB that I'm debating to sell since I don't use it anymore except for backup (the iMac will be my main server from now on).

If you need more space or speed than a single 3.5 7200 can provide, you can also think of getting a USB3 4-bay enclosure, like the Icydock, that you can easily share folders with OSX once directly connected.
 
I built my own NAS running CentOS and ZFS on Linux (ZoL). I was thinking of putting a guide together. That NAS connects via NFSv4 and SMB, runs owncloud (dropbox but for your own hardware), plex server in a container and a few other services. I switched to CentOS because FreeNAS was increasingly buggy. This box holes my ~/Pictures, ~/Documents, ~/Music and ~/Movies (14tb and counting of bluray rips and TV shows).

I have 6x6tb in RAIDZ2 array in a Lenovo TS440 box with 2x4 bay hotswaps added running over Gigabit ethernet (and sometimes I play around with AC wifi...I use a Ubiquiti EdgeRouter Lite and 2 Ubnt AC WAPs).

Then I got a good deal on 4x960GB SSDs which I have inside the OWC TB2 4 bay Mini RAID 5 http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/TB4MSR0GB/ for VMs, small files and (mostly) large Mathematica/MATLAB stuff and other physics/math work that I can run at home.

For backups, I have a basic 6x3tb array backing up the most important information of the two distinct boxes.

I don't know the prices in Australia.

You should not fill your NAS beyond 75% of the max capacity.
 
I also assembled my own, an HP Microserver running FreeNAS. 4x3TB drives formatted as ZFS. Very happily saturates my local gigabit connection and hasn't given a jot of trouble in nearly three years.
 
MagicBoy said:
NAS is Network attached storage. By definition it'll come with a network jack, not Thunderbolt.

If you want Thunderbolt, that would be DAS - Directly Attached Storage.
Click to expand...
MagicBoy said:
NAS is Network attached storage. By definition it'll come with a network jack, not Thunderbolt.

If you want Thunderbolt, that would be DAS - Directly Attached Storage.
Click to expand...
Hey magic, this one I like is a NAS & DAS in one, just not economical. https://www.qnap.com/solution/thunderbolt-nas/en-us/index.php.
 
I cant help but get a chuckle out of the "I want a large capacity reliable disk array but don't want to pay much for it" requests.

If people can afford to pay the price for an 27" Apple iMac, then surely you are not that strapped for cash to afford a proper storage device to hold their data. I have a high megapixle camera, and know all about trying to store the RAW files they produce. I also know that buying a $100 usb drive off Amazon because it's cheep does not mean that it's going to be fast and reliable. I took the time and effort to take those photographs and would actually like to preserve that data if possible.

I have a lot of data and spent the money on a 8 bay Synology with the Red Pro drives as I would like it to work for the next 5-6 years to fill my needs for that period. I didn't buy my iMac thinking I will toss it in a year for something better. I spent the money for a machine that will last me the next 5-6 years. Why would I not use the same approach to my data.. In fact my data is more so.
 
£2000. Ouch. 10GbE and Thunderbolt 2 don't come cheap. It's a specialist unit, designed for 4K video work and priced accordingly. Certainly not a consumer level NAS.

I think the FreeNAS box cost about £350 all in - £100 for the server after cashback, plus £40 for a RAM upgrade to 8GB. I initially re-used existing 1TB drives from some Firewire enclosures with faulty power packs. 18 months ago I upgraded to 4x 3TB drives when the prices were good. It's upgradable and the data can be can be migrated to replacement hardware with ease, unlike the proprietary NAS units.
 
roadkill401 said:
I cant help but get a chuckle out of the "I want a large capacity reliable disk array but don't want to pay much for it" requests.

If people can afford to pay the price for an 27" Apple iMac, then surely you are not that strapped for cash to afford a proper storage device to hold their data.
Click to expand...

I think you are heading in the wrong direction.
Many People who buy a 5k retina iMac do it because there are no real alternatives from Apple.
Even the 4k iMac comes in the 5k Price range, if you configure it a decent way.
The actual Mac Mini is a joke with it's dualcore processors.

In the end people already pay more as they initially wanted, so it's reasonable that they can't/ won't spend an extra Grand for fast external storage!
 
roadkill401 said:
I cant help but get a chuckle out of the "I want a large capacity reliable disk array but don't want to pay much for it" requests.

If people can afford to pay the price for an 27" Apple iMac, then surely you are not that strapped for cash to afford a proper storage device to hold their data. I have a high megapixle camera, and know all about trying to store the RAW files they produce. I also know that buying a $100 usb drive off Amazon because it's cheep does not mean that it's going to be fast and reliable. I took the time and effort to take those photographs and would actually like to preserve that data if possible.

I have a lot of data and spent the money on a 8 bay Synology with the Red Pro drives as I would like it to work for the next 5-6 years to fill my needs for that period. I didn't buy my iMac thinking I will toss it in a year for something better. I spent the money for a machine that will last me the next 5-6 years. Why would I not use the same approach to my data.. In fact my data is more so.
Click to expand...

Hey Roadkill, I'm certainly going to be spending some money on it, as you can attest the photos are worth something. I'm just quite inexperienced at this tech gear and want to invest in something that meets my needs now and into the future. I like the versatility of the QNAP TVS871T but don't need that capacity and that price tag. I am happy with the synology units, I just would like to see more functionality with thunderbolt 2 etc. understandable great thing come at a cost, so like all things trade offs may be necessary.

hifimacianer said:
But a NAS is typically available in a Network (Ethernet, WLAN) and not physically connected via USB 3 or Thunderbolt for faster access. If you want really fast access to your files, you have to buy a thunderbolt RAID, that is physically connected to your mac. A NAS is limited in the speed of the Network, the fastet you will get is Gigabit Ethernet Speed.
Click to expand...
Hey hifi, the reason I mention NAS the unit I like is both NAS & DAS but also a nice price. https://www.qnap.com/solution/thunderbolt-nas/en-us/index.php

cmm said:
Gigabit ethernet means 125 MB/s theoretically, so say 110-115 in reality, which WD Red drives will do just fine. If you need faster than that, you need SSDs in a TB2 enclosure in some RAID array (which is not in the scope here), but are in no way economical IMHO.

But I guess the question is, what is your budget, sans SSDs and I can tell you if there are any TB2 enclosures that may work?
Click to expand...
I'm happy to spend up to $2000 AUD = $1400 USD = €1300 = £ 900 to get the best bang for buck. I like the versatility of this NAS DAS Unit as it gives me speeds with thunderbolt with other plugins of USB3 HDMI https://www.qnap.com/solution/thunderbolt-nas/en-us/index.php
 
Last edited by a moderator:
cmm said:
I built my own NAS running CentOS and ZFS on Linux (ZoL). I was thinking of putting a guide together. That NAS connects via NFSv4 and SMB, runs owncloud (dropbox but for your own hardware), plex server in a container and a few other services. I switched to CentOS because FreeNAS was increasingly buggy. This box holes my ~/Pictures, ~/Documents, ~/Music and ~/Movies (14tb and counting of bluray rips and TV shows).

I have 6x6tb in RAIDZ2 array in a Lenovo TS440 box with 2x4 bay hotswaps added running over Gigabit ethernet (and sometimes I play around with AC wifi...I use a Ubiquiti EdgeRouter Lite and 2 Ubnt AC WAPs).

Then I got a good deal on 4x960GB SSDs which I have inside the OWC TB2 4 bay Mini RAID 5 http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/TB4MSR0GB/ for VMs, small files and (mostly) large Mathematica/MATLAB stuff and other physics/math work that I can run at home.

For backups, I have a basic 6x3tb array backing up the most important information of the two distinct boxes.

I don't know the prices in Australia.

You should not fill your NAS beyond 75% of the max capacity.
Click to expand...
I'm happy to spend up to $2000 AUD = $1400 USD = €1300 = £ 900 to get the best bang for buck. I like the versatility of this NAS DAS TVS871T Unit as it gives me speed, functionality and capacity for storage & backup. Sadly I wouldn't build my own NAS because I'm not tech enough to make sure it is what I want & need it to. I'm better at saying this is what I need and here is the list of wants to get me to my budget.
 
I'm happy to spend up to $2000 AUD = $1400 USD = €1300 = £ 900 to get the best bang for buck. I like the versatility of this NAS DAS Unit as it gives me speeds with thunderbolt with other plugins of USB3 HDMI https://www.qnap.com/solution/thunderbolt-nas/en-us/index.php

Cheers
Click to expand...

I have a Synology DS415+ which gives me 115MB/s write speed over gigabit ethernet. I used to have a QNAS but IMHO after owning a Synology, the software set is better. I am running raid with four 4TB WD Red NAS (WD40EFRX) drives. It's very quick and I am very satisfied with how it performs. Synology cloud services support dropbox linking. Total cost was $1500 including drives. I would recommend this unit to anyone.
 
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rtfmoz said:
I have a Synology DS415+ which gives me 115MB/s write speed over gigabit ethernet. I used to have a QNAS but IMHO after owning a Synology, the software set is better. I am running raid with four 4TB WD Red NAS (WD40EFRX) drives. It's very quick and I am very satisfied with how it performs. Synology cloud services support dropbox linking. Total cost was $1500 including drives. I would recommend this unit to anyone.
Click to expand...
I like this model, I'm just thinking this speed is a little slow these days considering thunderbolt 2 etc.
 
Fullframe said:
Hey Roadkill, I'm certainly going to be spending some money on it, as you can attest the photos are worth something. I'm just quite inexperienced at this tech gear and want to invest in something that meets my needs now and into the future. I like the versatility of the QNAP TVS871T but don't need that capacity and that price tag. I am happy with the synology units, I just would like to see more functionality with thunderbolt 2 etc. understandable great thing come at a cost, so like all things trade offs may be necessary.


Hey hifi, the reason I mention NAS the unit I like is both NAS & DAS but also a nice price. https://www.qnap.com/solution/thunderbolt-nas/en-us/index.php


I'm happy to spend up to $2000 AUD = $1400 USD = €1300 = £ 900 to get the best bang for buck. I like the versatility of this NAS DAS Unit as it gives me speeds with thunderbolt with other plugins of USB3 HDMI https://www.qnap.com/solution/thunderbolt-nas/en-us/index.php
Click to expand...
What I meant by availability is a lot of these things are not available in certain countries. Your best bet is to go to OWC and get a fast TB2 external SSD and then build a WD Red array up for your needs. The external SSD can be for your picture collection that you feel so strongly needs to be on SSDs and therefore on TB2. That will be way under $1400 USD sans HDD array. That is your bes tbet.

I understand what you mean though, I don't like the fact that TB2 devices are so expensive either, but it is the reality. So you have to live in it. You ronly other options to get SSD speeds are 10 GBe or eSATA (but you might not get the full SSD speed from eSATA, and at the price, the OWC TB2 enclosure with drive is probably your best bet.
 
I have both the OWC Thunderbay 4 and a Synology 4 bay NAS - both offer very different functions for a photographer

I chose the Thunderbay to store my photos (and other data) - put in four 4TB drives for 12TB of useable space.
Advantages: RAID5 offers better speed than single spinning disk. Should have some protection from bit rot and single drive failure. Still have single externals as true backups of data of the RAID. Speed is great when I have to look in my LR catalog for older photos to print and/or rework.

Also have a Synology 4 bay NAS at work for offsite backups. I researched the crap out of NAS vs DAS and disliked the slow speed of NAS drives in comparison. Works very well with Carbon Copy Cloner to maintain full offsite backups in case of catastrophic events (fire, flood, etc).

Hope that helps!

E
 
I have two 4-bay NAS (both from Synology) and one 2-bay DAS (USB 3.0 external HDD raid) for data storage/back up at home. In my opinion, you don't really have thunderbolt at all if you only put HDD inside. Even thunderbolt is really fast, the bottleneck of speed is the HDD itself. So USB3 DAS (or external 4/8 HDD raid) is as fast as thunderbolt. I edit my multimedia in internal SSD (which is fast enough)/USB 3.0 external SSD (not so fast as internal SSD but still much faster than HDD), then I store them on USB 3.0 one 2-bay DAS with HDD to free my SSD space for another working. Finally both NAS automatic backup my data of DAS twice for security, and for remote usage (watching video/photos from TV in living room...)
 
Great thread so far....I'm also trying to rework my storage solution which as of now is a bunch of USB 3 (some desktop but mostly small ones) that I store my RAW files on and have 2 clones of each set.

When I first started looking into NAS vs DAS, I thought that having NAS connected to my new 5K iMac in the home office and being able to access the RAW files from the living room on my 15rMBP would be the way to go. I was thinking of using the OWC USB3 thumb drive 240GB to transfer the Catalogue and Previews between each computer as needed and copy onto the internal SSDs each time.

Then I started thinking to utilize Smart Previews in LR and transfer that file and the Catalogue to the rMBP as needed and back to the iMac as needed and that would allow me to edit files without even needing the NAS access to the RAWs in the home office. So that would mean getting some sort of DAS (looking at the OWC Thunderbolt 4 drive one) at probably 12TB to give me 9TB of actual storage in RAID 5 with 1 drive failure security. I would then need another drive for a clone and another maybe for an offsite clone to move between the home and real office (off site).

I'm now highly leaning towards the 2nd option of a DAS, 2 clones (one to take to work) and the fast UBS3 thumb drive to transfer the Catalogue and Smart Preview file between the two computers.

Looking for suggestions just like the OP so thought I'd add my post here and not start a new thread. I've seen that new QNAP NAS with TB2 but that is way over kill and is mainly to be used to edit 4K on the fly from the NAS...not really something one needs for mine or the OPs situation...IMHO.
 
If you're gonna do a DAS you might as well do iSCSI rather than NFSv4, etc. But honestly, don't think too much about the DAS vs NAS terminology, DAS is a largely made up Mac term.

arbitrage, happy to help out if you can draw a diagram of your current setup and your ideal setup, and also your budget (I can look at it from a USD standpoint, being in Canada may change availability and pricing).

Best-
 
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