External Hard Drive/RAID - Best Options?

gcgraphs

gcgraphs

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Currently store images on my PC's internal 2TB HDD with LR installed on an internal Samsung 512GB SSD. I back up to 2 x external WD HDD with one stored at a remote location.

I'll soon need additional primary storage and I'm looking for the best options. Got a budget of ~£1,600 and so far have looked at the these 2 x options:

Option 1 Synology DS918 with 4 x 8TB WD Red hard drives

Option 2 G-Tech G-SPEED Shuttle with 4 x 6TB Enterprise Class HSGT hard drives

I'll only be storing RAW files and some MS stuff (MS Project, Excel etc), no movies or games stuff.

The questions I've got just now are:

1/ Regarding RAID, would RAID 5 be the most practical solution and would this reduce my effective storage capacity by 50%?

2/ Are either of the above devices any good or are there better options around the budget spend?

3/ How difficult would it be in the future to change to higher capacity hard drives?

5/ Is it best to leave my LR Cat on the internal SSD or move to the new drive?

I've no practical knowledge of this stuff so would really appreciate a bit of help on this!

Thanks,

GC
 
I’ve got option one (with most costly version of the DS918 as I stream from it as well). I use Synology’s SHR, as that effectively allows RAID across different capacity drives, thinking of the future here.

On my main machine I have multiple drives, the Lightroom Catalogue and the Backup Catalogue are on different drives, and the Lightroom Backup Catalogue is automatically mirrored to the Synology NAS

Synology are well made machines and have excellent software support, I have 3 x 4Tb dives which gives me 8Tb under SHR and an additional 2Tb drive out if my old Home Server configured as a JBOD
 
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gcgraphs said:
Currently store images on my PC's internal 2TB HDD with LR installed on an internal Samsung 512GB SSD. I back up to 2 x external WD HDD with one stored at a remote location.

I'll soon need additional primary storage and I'm looking for the best options. Got a budget of ~£1,600 and so far have looked at the these 2 x options:

Option 1 Synology DS918 with 4 x 8TB WD Red hard drives

Option 2 G-Tech G-SPEED Shuttle with 4 x 6TB Enterprise Class HSGT hard drives

I'll only be storing RAW files and some MS stuff (MS Project, Excel etc), no movies or games stuff.

The questions I've got just now are:

1/ Regarding RAID, would RAID 5 be the most practical solution and would this reduce my effective storage capacity by 50%?

2/ Are either of the above devices any good or are there better options around the budget spend?

3/ How difficult would it be in the future to change to higher capacity hard drives?

5/ Is it best to leave my LR Cat on the internal SSD or move to the new drive?

I've no practical knowledge of this stuff so would really appreciate a bit of help on this!

Thanks,

GC
Click to expand...
1. No, RAID5 will reduce your storage capacity by one drive so 25% in your case. But RAID5 with drives that large is not a good option in case of a failure and RAID10 would be better. RAID10 does reduce your storage capacity by 50%, however, but you get better resilience from it.

2. The DS918+ will be very good - I have its close cousin the DS1618+ and am very pleased with it. I've not heard of G-Tech. My personal opinion is that there are only three makes of NAS worth considering: Asustor, QNAP & Synology. The Asustor AS5304T is worth considering as it has a better CPU than most in its class plus two 2.5Gb/s network ports should you want to speed up your network in the future.

3. Depends on the RAID level you've chosen. Usually easy with RAID10 but will destroy your drives with RAID5.

4. Pass ;)

5. I believe your LR catalogue should always be on local storage for the fastest access.

6. If you're using your NAS as primary storage, it isn't a backup and you should continue to use your external drives for security. Alternatively, vastly increase the internal storage on your PC and only use the NAS as backup.
 
Snapsh0t said:
1. No, RAID5 will reduce your storage capacity by one drive so 25% in your case. But RAID5 with drives that large is not a good option in case of a failure and RAID10 would be better. RAID10 does reduce your storage capacity by 50%, however, but you get better resilience from it.

2. The DS918+ will be very good - I have its close cousin the DS1618+ and am very pleased with it. I've not heard of G-Tech. My personal opinion is that there are only three makes of NAS worth considering: Asustor, QNAP & Synology. The Asustor AS5304T is worth considering as it has a better CPU than most in its class plus two 2.5Gb/s network ports should you want to speed up your network in the future.

3. Depends on the RAID level you've chosen. Usually easy with RAID10 but will destroy your drives with RAID5.

4. Pass ;)

5. I believe your LR catalogue should always be on local storage for the fastest access.

6. If you're using your NAS as primary storage, it isn't a backup and you should continue to use your external drives for security. Alternatively, vastly increase the internal storage on your PC and only use the NAS as backup.
Click to expand...

What about raid 6 it’s a bit slower, but more fault tolerant than 10 ?
 
WD Red vs Seagate IronWolf HDD's? Any real world differences or just a "Nikon vs Canon" type preference?

Thanks,

GC
 
gcgraphs said:
WD Red vs Seagate IronWolf HDD's? Any real world differences or just a "Nikon vs Canon" type preference?

Thanks,

GC
Click to expand...

I suspect no real world difference, in my 40+ years of messing with computers I've had more Seagate drives fail on me than WD, so I now buy WD!! But thats not over a large sample and is my personal opinion YMMV
 
Studio488commercial said:
What about raid 6 it’s a bit slower, but more fault tolerant than 10 ?
Click to expand...
Same but different and still hard on the drives if you want to expand or need to rebuild. I wouldn't use it on fewer than five drives and wouldn't use it (or RAID5) at all on drives over 4TB.
gcgraphs said:
WD Red vs Seagate IronWolf HDD's? Any real world differences or just a "Nikon vs Canon" type preference?

Thanks,

GC
Click to expand...
Yeah, it's pretty much a religious choice. Like Mr Perceptive, I'm in the WD camp.
 
I went with Toshiba drives and a QNAP NAS. Too many reports of Synology NAS boxes dying with a no boot problem. I did do months of deciding and researching before taking the plunge. I ended up with another QNAP NAS, I had two that have been running for literally years before one was destroyed in a fire last year. I've taken into account the loss of space and gone with RAID 5 like my original ones. I used WD drives in one, Seagate in the other before NAS specific drives came out and I've never had a problem now Toshiba purely on price.
I think like as has been mentioned its a very much Canon, Nikon thing. You buy what you think is correct for you and set it up the way that makes you most comfortable.
One of my NAS drives lives in my loft, and the second will live in my shed connected with home plugs just for backup.
 
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