Storage Setup Ideas (NAS, DAS, etc.)

Ok, I am looking for some ideas or input in case I have not thought of everything yet. Here is my situation: I have 2 computers at home, a desktop and a laptop. The laptop is my wife's and it is basically a fun/personal computer with some of her work stuff on it (teacher). I also have some of her work stuff on mine (desktop). Now I travel to and from my office with my desktop (27" Imac), I know crazy, but it works. I recently had a slight snafu with my Lightroom catalog and lost one of my latest projects, so here I am trying to better my setup. So currently, since the incident, I keep my main working Catalog with All my photos on a separate HD (30K photos). I back that up to a a 2nd slightly smaller separate HD. I also have an additional separate HD for just videos, but it's just about full. Finally I have a 4th separate HD which backs up just my computer and only the small "In Progress" catalog from light room.

Here is my process. Upload shoot into "In progress catalog" on computer. Process photos, move them to "main" separate HD for storage and Publish folders used for my website and web sharing. I then copy the processed photos to the 2nd back up separate HD, and then finally erase them from the computer.

Ok, hopefully this is making some sense. So I am now learning about mass storage, and want to make the right decision. I do most of my editing at my office and some at home, both of which are on the same desktop, so I am ok with maintaining the first portion of my process of keeping the "In Progress catalog" on the computer.

So my basic understanding is that the DAS may be a little better for my setup, but the NAS may be what I am looking for. Here is what I am thinking of a new setup. Basically I would use the Mass storage as 4-5 separate hard drives kind of like I am now, and probably not in a raid format. Let's say I go with a 4 drive setup. 1st drive will be my main working catalog with all my photos and publish folders. 2nd drive will be for storing and working with all my videos (not a big part of my life at this point). The 3rd drive will be an additional back up of both the first and second drives. And finally the 4th drive will be for my Time Machine backup of my computer (and In Progress Catalog) and my wife's laptop.

Ok, so hopefully this isn't too boring and making sense. So as it appears I will be mainly using the mass storage for back ups. I would like to if possible be able to access the information from my office, mainly to transfer the completed (in progress catalog) work to the "main catalog" on drive 1 so that I can publish it online. Also In case I want to work on some of the photos on the main catalog from the office that I have not copied to my computer.

Just looking for additional ideas, input, thoughts. I am hoping I have a decent basic idea here. I know it's a bit of overkill but hopefully it will last me several years and I can grow into it. One major question I have and am going to research is, "Can I connect my desktop directly to the NAS/Mass storage for a higher speed connection when I am at home, or does it only work through the Ethernet? I also have an Xbox, wireless printer, 2 tablets, and 2 phones in the house and if I can integrate them as well that would be cool. I am just not that quite knowledgable about this stuff, but I do learn easily.......

By the way, right now I am leaning towards the Synology NAS 415Play but am open to all ideas.

Thanks in advance for reading, and replying......Have a great day......Jake

In a sense you are using a DAS setup right now, you have a whole lot of hard drives connected to your computer and you Directly access those through the computers bus (either SATA or USB), hows that working out for you?

If you want to have storage that you don’t want to carry around then your only options are a SAN and a NAS. A SAN makes little sense for you as you don’t need the scalability of it(and cost). A NAS makes more sense but there is going to be a few downsides… your connection speed between points (home to office) is usually too slow to work off of anything and backups for a lot of photos could take a while. You certainly can work with files off a NAS over the internet but be prepared as your patience will be tested. The best would be to use a hard drive for what your working on at the moment in your computer. Then have your NAS at the office or home where you can back up.

on a last note I always suggest to build your own NAS but it depends on your tech level and your willingness to learn. Building your own gives you a powerful understanding toward the system. It also has advantages on expansions later down the line with either performance or storage needs. If you build your own NAS you can go out and pick up replacement parts quickly (powersupply im looking at you) Im unsure if the Synology NAS uses a traditional power supply etc...

Ok thanks gotaudi, kind of sounds like I am on the right track. As much as I would love to build my own NAS, which I am sure would be fun, and my addictive personality would love, I just don't have the time for another hobby which I know the building would turn into one. I like the idea of the Synology as it seems to have a simple setup process and software that allows me to play with different apps. I like that I can just swap out a drive if one begins to have an issue. I am going to try to find out if I can connect directly to the Synology via usb or some other connection for a faster connection when I am at home.....

I use the smart previews of Lightroom 5, it works really well. I can edit just fine - in Lr not Ps though - and once I'm home I plug into the network drives and Lr just updates, by magic, the original images. This is where I can do my Ps editing if needed.

Also like you I have a local folder with my current projects on it and only move them to the network drive once I done usually within a month.

A NAS in raid is a good step in your backup plan, in case one drive fails.

jakeg1999 wrote in post #17117262
Ok thanks gotaudi, kind of sounds like I am on the right track. As much as I would love to build my own NAS, which I am sure would be fun, and my addictive personality would love, I just don't have the time for another hobby which I know the building would turn into one. I like the idea of the Synology as it seems to have a simple setup process and software that allows me to play with different apps. I like that I can just swap out a drive if one begins to have an issue. I am going to try to find out if I can connect directly to the Synology via usb or some other connection for a faster connection when I am at home.....

Home built and pre built both have their places.. Nothing wrong with going either route. If you understand exactly what you want and it fits the bill then you have found your solution.

As for using USB or something that would allow you to transfer at higher speeds, Gigabit Ethernet will transfer around 115MB/sec if its an uncompressed file type (like video or photos etc). That speed is close to what a spindle hard drive will do (in non raid), slightly lower (80-100MB/sec) as the files get smaller. USB 3 will go slightly higher (~125MB) so I would think that going with gigabit will be the best.

I cant wait for 10Gbps switches to be available at a reasonable price. I dream of upgrading my gigabit home network and my server to 10Gbps network and like 8x16TB SSD drives..... Oh the fun that will be.

One thing that I have moved on too is have lightroom write a XMP Sidecar file, keep a set of photos on your desktop and your NAS, when you get home only replace the XMP files on your NAS with the ones on your Computer. you can also have a program do this automagically over a network quickly as they are very small files.....

I have played with the smart previews a bit as well, but for some of my work I run each photo through several different programs so it's much easier for me to work with the whole file, however the smart previews are awesome.

A question for you gotaudi, there are two different units I am trying to decide between, both from Synology. Both are fairly equal, with one being a bit older in tech But it has 2 Lan ports and states it has double the speed of the other. The other is their latest offering and has a few more bells and whistles as far as software but only 1 Lan port. I am leaning towards the newer one (DS515play) over the older (ds412+) mainly because it's newer in tech I guess. If I understand your last post, the 1 gigabit port is fairly similar as far as speed to the separate hard drives I am using? I plan to contact Synology tomorrow but have read that their sales customer service isn't too good, but their repair service is great.

I think I may have answered my last question in that the newer one allows for streaming of android/ios device both of which I have and the older does not..

jakeg1999 wrote in post #17117771
I have played with the smart previews a bit as well, but for some of my work I run each photo through several different programs so it's much easier for me to work with the whole file, however the smart previews are awesome.

A question for you gotaudi, there are two different units I am trying to decide between, both from Synology. Both are fairly equal, with one being a bit older in tech But it has 2 Lan ports and states it has double the speed of the other. The other is their latest offering and has a few more bells and whistles as far as software but only 1 Lan port. I am leaning towards the newer one (DS515play) over the older (ds412+) mainly because it's newer in tech I guess. If I understand your last post, the 1 gigabit port is fairly similar as far as speed to the separate hard drives I am using? I plan to contact Synology tomorrow but have read that their sales customer service isn't too good, but their repair service is great.

well the CPU in the newer DS415Play is better with video transcoding (although I dont know if it can do a a medium bitrate movie) But it would probably do well for music. If you want video transcoding this is a whole different system (I would gladly share my thought if interested).

warning technical data...
The presence of a second network port is a good feature but comes with a few caveats. First, To take advantage of link aggregation (combining 2 or more ports to work together) you must have a network switch that supports Link aggregation
Second if you want to use double the speed your desktop must have a network adapter with two ports. Pretty much you need two ports throughout the chain to achieve the 2Gbps speed.(this is what i currently use between my server and workstation)

Another reason its good is redundancy, if one netowrk port/cable fails it will fail over to the other one (pretty uncommon and only needed in a business where an admin only comes around once in a blue moon.

all in all its not that huge of a deal to have two network ports but if you can utilize it I think its really nice to have the higher throughput.

in closing if you would choose between the two listed, I would suggest the newer as it will be updated more often and supported for a longer period of time.

An NAS is considerably slower than a DAS for accessing any photos with Lightroom...I can see a considerable difference (drop in speed) if I Import photos to the NAS (even with the LR Catalog remaining on the internal HD regardless of where the photo RAW files reside). So I only use an NAS for inactive projects, leaving active projects on a direct access (no network) drive.

Wilt wrote in post #17118749
An NAS is considerably slower than a DAS for accessing any photos with Lightroom...I can see a considerable difference (drop in speed) if I Import photos to the NAS (even with the LR Catalog remaining on the internal HD regardless of where the photo RAW files reside). So I only use an NAS for inactive projects, leaving active projects on a direct access (no network) drive.

Most of the performance hit is in the overhead that is created with the network share that resides in a NAS environment. If one and only one computer needs to access a set of data its best to connect it via iSCSI (most NAS boxes support this) which takes all the overhead away and communicates in a block protocol. Latency is further reduced when using this. I use a iSCSI on my HTPC (From my server) and works great. I would highly recommend this if only one single computer needs to access the content.

I see no problem with your current setup. If you need more space buy bigger disks. Of course you have an offsite backup right? If someone stole your computer or your house burned down would you lose everything?

tim wrote in post #17119294
I see no problem with your current setup. If you need more space buy bigger disks. Of course you have an offsite backup right? If someone stole your computer or your house burned down would you lose everything?

Yes, I do have an hd that I keep at my office that has a current backup of my work on it. My setup is working, but I am beginning to run out of space on all my drives, which has brought me to this point. I am going to be in need of larger drives in the near future and instead of having 4-5 separate hard drives I am leaning towards a NAS setup of some sort that will allow me to keep them all together and then I can replace drives within the box as needed, or in my case I will add more drives as I go.

I've photographed 120+ weddings, I can keep all the keeper images from all of them on a 2TB hard drive. I wonder how people manage to use up so much space. Perhaps not deleting the rejects?

NAS is slower and more expensive than internal drives. Moving a desktop around is a bit crazy. Just buy more/bigger drives.

That's the beauty of this field, there are so many options out there and what works for some may not work for others and vice versa!