Looking for photography storage solution

[gus6464]

I have a photographer friend who has asked me for a recommendation on a better solution to her file storing. She currently just has a 3 different large external HDDs that she uses to store her Lightroom data but it's a huge amount (over 2TB worth and growing every day) with no backup. I was thinking about recommending her to get a NAS with a couple HDDs in RAID5 but I figured I would ask here as I am not familiar in setting up a proper photography storage solution.

What do you photographers out there use?

 

[dma0991]

There's no specific storage method meant for photographers. What she needs is something which will guarantee her data is safe should a HDD die. NAS should do the trick. 4 bays with 3-4TB drives should be sufficient for a year or two.

However, NAS or RAID is not a 100% guarantee that the data is completely safe. It is best to also do offsite backup whereby she will do a periodical backup every month or so in an external drive and keep it elsewhere from the main storage. This prevents partial data loss from theft or fire.

 

[rsutoratosu]

Make sure its a fast nas, if shes shooting raw or high megapixel, you probably want something fast to preview & etc.. Pick one of the online site and back it up

 

[gus6464]

Ok thanks for the info. What fast NAS do you recommend? Also I am assuming RAID5 would be the way to go?

 

[smitbret]

I wouldn't trust RAID 5. If my livelihood depends on those drives, I am going RAID 1/10 or RAID 6 and an offsite backup.

 

[Elixer]

Yeah, better safe than sorry.
RAID is not a backup!
If she is a pro, and her work is her livelihood, she *must* get offsite backup.
If she is in it as a hobby, then you only need offsite backup of the important stuff.

 

[corkyg]

What Elixer said plus. I have been doing digital photography since 1994, and it does grow. I have somewhat of a triplicate plus system. Triplicate HDDs on 3 different machines, and then the good stuff burned to optical media in several copies. Off site storage is great, but - you must have some triage. (Every shot is not worth keeping.)

The main task is indexing and subdividing folders of material. I use events, dates, and subdivide those. One can be very creative in this regard. Develop a plan and go for it.

 

[sub.mesa]

I suggest you read up on ZFS and determine for yourself whether this is the right solution for you.

The advantage of ZFS is that you can have cheap mass storage with cheap harddrives and still maintain a very high level of protection to your data. In particular, failures on the RAID level are pretty much non-existent in the case of ZFS. Where traditional RAID and RAID5 in particular is inherently unreliable, ZFS provides the ability to provide formidable protection to your data keeping it safe from corruption and bad sectors on your harddrives.

The most logical solution would be to buy a cheap homebrew NAS and run a ZFS appliance like FreeNAS on it. There are more ZFS solutions available, including ones which should be even simpler than FreeNAS. I suggest you try out these solutions in a Virtualbox virtual machine on your desktop computer, so you can judge for yourself whether this is something you can operate.

Trust me, going the ZFS route means you have granted your data much better protection than any other solution out there. In particular corruption, RAID failures and bad sectors are basically a non-issue with ZFS. For a photographer who doesn't want artefacts in his or her pictures, this should be the number 1 solution to look at.

 

[cantholdanymore]

I just have a couple of external 4TB HDD with the same data, but I'm not a pro

 

[Silenus]

I must reiterate what Elixer says. Whatever NAS/solution you decide on....whether it has RAID protection or not...it is NOT a replacement for a proper (and preferably offsite) backup. You MUST stress this and take it's cost into account. That said with the amount of data she is dealing with a RAID'd NAS solution sounds like the best way to go for primary storage. But it still needs to be backed up separately, at least the most critical data.

 

[Zxian]

A NAS with a few large files would work well. I'll just throw my voice into the choir - RAID is not backup. RAID only ensures uptime and availability of your data. It does not protect against user error or other issues.

If you want to go with a NAS, I would recommend a Synology or QNAP device. Both of them have very good support and a good feature set. Add a few large drives in RAID1 (for uptime) and start using that as a backup destination. She wouldn't want to be working on remote files anyways, so she'll need a storage drive locally. ZFS is a good solution, but it requires more technical know-how than most people have today. Unless you're willing to manage it for her and help if something does go awry, stick with a more commercially supported solution.

As for offsite backups, which are just as important, you've got a few options. One of them would simply involve a 3TB USB3.0 external drive. Once a month, you bring it to her place, copy over all of her files, and then take it back home. You two can have a meal, watch a movie, whatever else while the backup is running.

Another option would be to use something like Crashplan to handle your backups for you. If you're willing, you can setup a system at your place and set that as a backup destination for her. Seed the initial archive (there are instructions all over the net) and then attach it to your system.

 

[ronbo613]

My photos; scans and digital, are some of my most valuable data, irreplaceable if lost, so I treat it as such with plenty of backups:

Onboard backup: 6 separate hard drives, 1 and 2TB within my workstation for immediate backup

Synology NAS: 2 X 2TB WD Red for regular backups, seperate volumes, no RAID

External Hard Drives(most in enclosures): At least four backup drives, 1,2 and 3TB.

I've found SyncBack, a free backup program, to be a big timesaver.

I usually rotate drives; take one out of the workstation and use it as a backup drive in an external enclosure. Since it won't be accessed very much or used on a regular basis, I feel this procedure extends the useful life of the hard drives.
I am in the process of setting up a Linux file server for more storage. Digital photos and HD video take up a lot of space.

 

[bigi]

For photos, better safe than sorry.

RAID6 solution for uptime (server/nas). Three separate well planned backups. One of them offsite.

I'd avoid RAID5. It can not tollerate 2 drive failures. 2nd HDD often fails during 1st HDD rebuild.

 

[Cerb]

+1 to most everything said so far. Also, though, if you back up to something not (a) using ZFS or (b) explicitly doing good checksums of your data via special NAS software (SHA1 per file, at least), then put backups in archives (like TAR, RAR, or 7z). On most FSes, that will get you CRC-checking that the device can't. It may take many TB, or even PB, before an error occurs, but with a large data set, it will. You need to know when that happens, be stopped in your tracks, and forced to recover a good file from another backup. You could go as far as integrating parity files in there, too, but with several distinct copies, that might be a bit much.

 

[gus6464]

Thanks everyone for all the valuable info. Her current setup involves having her runtime on one external HDD which is full and now she is running a second one to continue. Her PC is kinda old as well so I will see if she wants to do a new machine with RAID runtime and then an external NAS for RAID backup with a third offsite solution.