Recommended NAS RAID?

[Kermit8283]

Our typical computer use and needs: My wife is a graphic designer and works primarily from Photoshop CS5. She's wanting to keep her files on a network drive so she can access files from work and co-workers can get access.

I average 2-3k photos a month and primarily use lightroom3 for my work, and sometimes use photoshop. I'd like to also be able to work from the NAS RAID drive for data safety.

I have a large collection of DVDs and I wouldn't mind putting them on the drive but it's not a priority.

We both work from MBPs but I am about to order a new iMac. I want to keep it simple, and EASY to recover data if a HD fails. So I'm assuming that using RAID 1 is my best option? I was looking at a 4 drive system. Would I be able to use the 4 drives as two RAID 1 configurations?

I'd like to keep the total price to under $1000.00 if possible.

With our needs, is there a NAS RAID drive that will work for us? Which is the best?

 

[pprior]

you've got a lot of issues here.

1) Puting your files on a network drive does not equate to getting access from work. This requires either an FTP server, or other software running to share files over the internet. This also opens up a lot of security concerns and is a huge topic in itself.

2) "Data safety" is a nebulous term. I also do a lot of photography work and use lightroom. NAS access will be very slow compared with a direct drive. I have used both and just recently upgraded to a RAID-6 mini-sas tower and LR just flies now. But back to the term "safety" Some raid modes (other than 0) will help to reduce data loss risk due to drive failure, but drive failure is not the only way you lose data! User error, power loss, data corruption, fire, theft, it goes on. So do not make the mistake of thinking of raid as a backup, it's not. You need a separate backup from your raid system, and that depends on hwo much data you have.

Here is my personal system (until just recently, see the end), of course I have a mac pro, so I have more drive bays available - do you need access to all your files on the go (internal storage) or can you use external drives?

Internal Drive1: Photoshop/LR data
Internal Drive2: LR import backup (original RAW files)
External Drive: Time machine backup
Basement NAS (raid 5) backup of Internal drive 1
Rotating external drive: backup of Internal drive 1, done monthly and put into fireproof safe
Mozy: online backup of drive 1, rarely gets completely caught up due to volume but last resort backup.

Recent addition: 8 bay mini-SAS with 5 drive Raid6 array and 3 drive raid5 array (the first array being my work drive, the second being my import backup)

In short, I don't think you have a budget to reliably share data with multiple users and do so productively. A NAS box will do so, at reduced performance (lucky to get 40-50mb/sec) and I have a readnas NV+ that has been a very reliable performer, but serving over the web will be VERY slow (unless you have business class internet, your upload speed with be much slower than download) so you need to be more clear about what you're trying to do.