using a NAS for a photo library

[sparkie1984]

Hi all,

I am looking at getting a 13" mbpr, but it wont have enough storage for my photo library etc.

Is there any reason I couldn't buy something like a WD 4TB NAS and plug it into my home network and use it to house my photos library?

would it work ok on Mac?

I was looking at something like this:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/4TB-Cloud-P...30730641&sr=1-19&keywords=external+hard+drive

Many thanks

 

[ColdCase]

Plenty of folks do that. Its just a little slow if you have large libraries or heavy photo edits. A directly attached TB drive would be much more responsive, but responsive is subjective. Using wired ethernet is faster, but you'd have to get an adapter as I don't think the MBPr has an ethernet port.

How will you be backing up your photo library? Many use a drive directly connected to the computer for performance, and then a slightly larger NAS as a CCC backup destination (as an example).

 

[MCAsan]

I use LaCie Thunderbolt RAID sets for my library. TB is much faster than Ethernet as a transport. Much of the time the transport layer is not the problem, it is slow drives. Use 7200rpm drives with 128MB cache. Set them up as RAID 0 for max performance. Naturally be sure to have a good backup system with TM or CCC.

 

[AFEPPL]

Issue is wifi, ethernet if fine

 

[sparkie1984]

Thanks guys,

Basically I have an iMac with internal 1tb drive which backs up to a dedicated time machine 2tb drive.

I was thinking of buying a 4tb nas but using raid to give me 2tb with a backup.

I'm trying to think longer term as much as possible as I'm going to be getting into photography in the not too distant future.

My library is currently about 500gb.

Would I be better to look for something to connect directly? I was trying to limit connections to the laptop and thought an Ethernet connected nas may be a good shout. However if it won't play well I'm happy to directly connect it.

If you had £250 ish to spend what would you get?

 

[ColdCase]

RAID is not backup, good for redundancy and work through a disk failure, but backup via mirroring it is not. Mirroring drives is better than nothing, however

I would buy two drives, a 2TB+ for your machine to hold your working library, a 3TB+ USB to attach to your time machine. Use CCC or something like it to backup your working drive to the backup drive. Get a TB drive for your working library if you can afford it, otherwise USB3 is OK for photos. Not all play nicely with the Mac OS, and most have one quirk or another, so shop carefully.

IMHO, those two drives will allow you to get started with photography until you determine that you want to get serious... then we can start talking servers, DAS, RAIDs, and NAS things.

 

[sparkie1984]

Thanks for that really helpful post mate.

I'll get looking into thunderbolt drives, will a hard drive be faster in thunderbolt than usb3? Or is it purely having a reliable connection?

Thanks again

 

[MCAsan]

Thanks for that really helpful post mate.

I'll get looking into thunderbolt drives, will a hard drive be faster in thunderbolt than usb3? Or is it purely having a reliable connection?

Thanks again

A given spinning HD with the SATA III interface is only so fast. So the transport layer of USB 3 or TB will both do a decent job. You will waiting on the drive, not the transport layer. It is when you start using RAID 0 disks or using SSDs that the the transport choices between USB 3 and TB starts to be noticable. Personally I like TB as I can chain them from my TB Display.

Look for drives at least 7200rpm, 64MB cache (128 is better), and SATA III (6Gbps) internal interface. The drive connects via SATA to the enclosure's controller with does the translation to the external interface of USB 3 or TB.