So I'm looking at buying a Synology. Based on my needs, which model should I get? There are so many different models.
How complicated is it to set up?
How complicated is it to set up?
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How do you manage your photo storage / archival?
- Thread starter BJB Productions
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Highly recommend Backblaze. I use their personal backup. You don't have to pay to download from their servers but you do have to pay if you require them to send you a drive or memory stick. It runs seamlessly in the background and can be set to run at night etc. The initial backup obviously takes quite a while but after that you can just forget about it.
This is a backup rather than storage so you need to have the files on your computer or attached storage for it to work. I have my work on an external RAID connected by USB3 as you suggested. It should work with a NAS too (I think) but you would need a quick connection (not wifi) for daily work with big files. You could use Back to my Mac to connect over the internet from a Macbook if you need to.
This is a backup rather than storage so you need to have the files on your computer or attached storage for it to work. I have my work on an external RAID connected by USB3 as you suggested. It should work with a NAS too (I think) but you would need a quick connection (not wifi) for daily work with big files. You could use Back to my Mac to connect over the internet from a Macbook if you need to.
The question I've been struggling with is if I should just do what you do - get a raid and then back it up. OR, I can get a Synology and use it with B2 so I don't have to keep all my files locally.
I just started thinking about online backup and decided to give Backblaze a try. I discovered that it will never work for my needs. I live off the beaten path and internet service is very slow. Backblaze estimated my initilal upload would take 252 days and that was slightly less than a terrabyte of info. I quickly gave up on that idea.
Yikes. I have a pretty slow ISP as well. They offer a 'Fireball' service where you can mail them a hard drive with all your data. It's pricey though. What is your next best option?
Yikes was pretty much my reaction as well. I thought I had read something about sending them a hard drive with your data on it but I didn't see that option on their site. I did email them asking about other options but they didn't mention anything about that. I guess for now my best option is to keep doing what Im doing and trying to keep current with my backups and keep one off site,and hope for the best
Off site works as long as you're diligent about keeping the data updated regularly.
Yeah, that is the only problem with this backup plan. And unfortunately, I'm a procrastinator.
I've got about 200GB of images kept on 1 external HD and backed up to a second external HD. I also use iDrive to back these images up to the cloud.
Is there a better way?
What is the largest capacity Disk (not hard drive) storage these days?
Thanks!
Is there a better way?
What is the largest capacity Disk (not hard drive) storage these days?
Thanks!
I'm not sure what you mean by "Disk (not hard drive)." Solid state drives go as high as 4 TB now, but they're a waste for pure storage; their main advantage over a HDD is in the read/write speeds. For purely archival purposes they still offer inferior price per storage. Prices seem to vary wildly, but 4 TB SSDs (which seem to be SATA III rather than the newer and much faster NVMe - those max at 2 TB at present, just under $500), compared with $500-600 for 16 TB HDDs (or $300-400 for 14 TB).
Your backup solution seems fine. You have your working drive, a physical backup, and an off-site backup. That's the ideal backup scenario.
If you're looking to improve it further, there are some things you could do. Right now you have a vulnerability in that if your main drive goes down you would lose everything on it that hasn't yet been backed up to your spare drive and your online backup. You're not doing anything time-sensitive or mission-critical so the time lost in restoring from backups is less of a concern, but that's also a difficulty posed by your setup. Two possible options to further improve (which are probably overkill, but here they are):
1) Get a second drive and create a mirrored RAID with your first drive. You probably know this already but for those reading with interest, this causes the computer to see one drive, but data is copied to both drives. If one of the two drives fails, the other drive still retains all of the data and is used by the computer. This means you don't lose anything and you also don't suffer downtime. However, it's not regarded as a "backup" because if you (or a malicious program or person) deletes something on one drive, the other drive mirrors it and deletes it as well. If data is corrupted on one drive, the corruption is mirrored on the other drive as well. There is also a performance hit with a mirrored RAID as the system is writing data twice, although I don't honestly know that it's so significant with modern systems.
For what it's worth, about six or eight years ago I tried to create a mirrored RAID using Mac OS X's built-in RAID capabilities, and it was a huge mess. Maybe it was something with my setup, and maybe things have improved a lot since then, but it made me less trusting of that feature for macOS. Others have used it with success, though.
2) Change to using a NAS or DAS (network-attached storage or direct-attached storage) device. The most well-known makers of these types of devices include Synology and Drobo. These are devices that can attach to your router or to your computer bearing multiple hard drive bays. They're mini-computers that are designed around storage. They function like a RAID 5 or a RAID 6 - which is to say that all of your data is spread across all of the hard drives contained in the unit, with additional parity data spread amongst the drives as well. If any one drive (RAID 5) or even two drives (for RAID 6) become unreadable or are removed, the system re-formulates the missing files from the parity data and re-distributes your data amongst the remaining drives.
The benefit of NAS/DAS units are twofold. One is a similar benefit to the mirrored RAID, and the other is the ability to pool and expand storage. As an example, I use a Drobo 5C (USB-connected), which is a five-bay unit. I have four 3 TB drives (which at the time were the best price per unit storage) and reused one older 1.5 TB drive. All pooled together and accounting for the space lost to protection (parity data), I have 9.36 TB of usable space... and I'm currently using a little over half of that. When the time comes, I can easily pull out the old drives and stick in new, higher-capacity drives; doing this one-by-one means I won't lose any data (or even have moments when I can't access my data, although using the drive when it's rebuilding would slow things down). The Drobo 5C supports 64 TB at maximum; other NAS/DAS makers and products probably support more.
All overkill for 200 GB of photos, but options to be aware of.
Thank you! i’ll Digest this. When I said disk, not hard drive, I meant along the lines of DVD for Bluray.
I don’t have a RAID but I do have a synch program that automatically keeps both drives synced.
Ah, got it. Usually CD-type media is referred to as disc (with a c) instead of disk. Granted, I probably still might have been confused over which you were referring to regardless of how it was spelled, since discs aren't used by too many people these days!
