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Need advice on storage/expansion options

B

badlydrawnboy

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Oct 20, 2003
1,531
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I have a retina 5K iMac with 500 GB SSD. I have OS X, my music, and my files on the internal drive.

I also have an external LaCie Big 1 TB drive that I use to store my photo library. I have a couple of HDDs in external enclosures that I use for backup 2-3x/wk.

Overall this setup has worked well. It is almost completely silent, which I require because I do a lot of audio recording. And it is fast, which I like because I'm really into photography and I have a full-frame DSLR that produces large files, which I process in Lightroom and Photoshop.

However, both my internal drive and LaCie Big are starting to get quite full. If I could go back in time, I would have bought the 1 TB internal SSD with the iMac, but I didn't—and as far as I can tell, there's no way to upgrade that, right?

I would really like to increase the storage size for my photo library, as well. But I need to have a completely silent external drive. I can't have an enclosure that has a fan. Right now the only option I can see is getting another LaCie Big and daisy-chaining it to the first one, and creating a RAID-0. This would give me 2 TB of *very* fast storage that is completely silent, but it only adds 1 TB of space for $1,300. This would allow me to move my music and maybe files off of my internal drive, to free up space there, and still have 600 GB or so extra space for more photos.

Are there any other options here, given my needs? Thanks.
 
Your backups don't need to be on a local attache storage. If you want silent, then you have other options. As you already know it's to go with the Lacie, but you can get a 1tb SSD drive for around $450 and put it into a fanless external enclosure for around $40. Another option that I went with was to go with a NAS. The great thing about a NAS is that you don't have to put it in the same room as your computer. I have my 8 bay (24TB fully redundant) on the other side of the house so any noise it makes it no where near me.

Going with a raid 0 for files that you are wanting to keep is just asking for trouble as you are striping data between two or more drives. Any drives in the stripe fail, and you loose everything. ZERO chance of recovery.

The local 500GB SSD should be used for your local files.
 
Thanks. I have CrashPlan which is an automated, cloud-based backup. I also have two backup drives that I rotate, every other day. So I'm not that worried about data loss.

The additional storage I need right now isn't so much for backup as it is for my photo library, so it needs to be fast. And silent. The LaCie Big fits the bill, but it's expensive and not particularly large in terms of storage size.

It's the silence requirement that really limits my options.
 
I know about CrashPlan and it's good that you have some form of backup. I gather that is backing up your photographs to offsite cloud storage.

As said, you can buy a 1TB SSD drive for quite a bit less than a LaCie. Without even knowing what country you are in, it gets a bit harder to recommend but http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias=aps&field-keywords=samsung+ssd+1tb there are some SSD drives from Amazon. Will be silent and plug into the USB3 that will be about as fast at the Thunderbolt. Or buy a thunderbolt external case and plug in your own SSD's into it. http://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-...d=1437743125&sr=8-9&keywords=thunderbolt+case

But if you are doing actual work and getting paid for it, I find it a case of EGO rather than NEED when users say a drive is not fast enough. I have a Canon 5D3 and don't have any trouble pulling off a NAS. I guess there are those with a 50megapixle camera that have even more massive files.
 
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badlydrawnboy said:
Overall this setup has worked well. It is almost completely silent, which I require because I do a lot of audio recording.
Click to expand...

Do you need fast storage, or just silent storage? It may be worth your while to purchase an optical thunderbolt cable and an enclosure that can be placed in another room... but that means you'll be spending hundreds of dollars *before* you start loading it with drives. And if speed really isn't a factor, NAS could be a better bet.
 
You're going to view this as a simplistic response (which it is), but...

I do audio recording as well.

I have external drives, with fans.

When I need to record, I turn the external drives off, or (if there is no on/off switch) I unplug them to silence them.

It works.
Without spending over $1,000 ...
 
Fishrrman said:
You're going to view this as a simplistic response (which it is), but...

I do audio recording as well.

I have external drives, with fans.

When I need to record, I turn the external drives off, or (if there is no on/off switch) I unplug them to silence them.

It works.
Without spending over $1,000 ...
Click to expand...

Definitely possible. But I have to say I've become accustomed a silent workspace and I now really dislike the sound of a spinning hard drive and fan. I tried a Thunderbolt enclosure with some drives in it a while back and it drove me crazy.

I do have a cabinet with a drawer that is about 15 feet (cable length) away from my iMac. I was thinking of insulating the drawer and then putting an enclosure with a relatively quiet fan in there, with some SSD drives inside of it (I do want it to be very fast in addition to being quiet).
 
badlydrawnboy said:
Definitely possible. But I have to say I've become accustomed a silent workspace and I now really dislike the sound of a spinning hard drive and fan. I tried a Thunderbolt enclosure with some drives in it a while back and it drove me crazy.

I do have a cabinet with a drawer that is about 15 feet (cable length) away from my iMac. I was thinking of insulating the drawer and then putting an enclosure with a relatively quiet fan in there, with some SSD drives inside of it (I do want it to be very fast in addition to being quiet).
Click to expand...

Where did you get a TB enclosure?
 
Thanks. I tried the D2 a while back. Unfortunately I got a lot of "disk not ejected properly" errors with them, as described in this (very long) thread on Apple Discussions.

Also, although it is fairly quiet, it's not totally silent which is what I really want.
 
I have a WD My Book and it's quiet, and it was very affordable (4TB $109). No fan, but runs quite cool. It has some HDD noise, but it's about as minimal as you can get with a spinner. I imagine it would be at least as quiet and the same speed as the LaCie. I have an OWC Tbolt enclosure and it's like making margaritas next to your Mac, so know what you mean.

Obviously this isn't SSD fast. But SSD prices are falling; you can get a Samsung 500GB for just over $200, or Tbolt for a bit less than twice that. The former would certainly be fast enough for photos; but maybe the Tbolt for a bit more speed if you ever wanted to use it as a boot drive. Silent, and even pretty portable.
 
badlydrawnboy said:
Thanks. I tried the D2 a while back. Unfortunately I got a lot of "disk not ejected properly" errors with them, as described in this (very long) thread on Apple Discussions.

Also, although it is fairly quiet, it's not totally silent which is what I really want.
Click to expand...
If the D2 is not quiet enough for you, I don't know what else to suggest. I have mine on the desk behind my iMac, and I can't recall ever hearing any noise come out of it, but granted I'm not running a recording studio.
 
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