Big Storage for Pictures (solution)

As we know you can really eat up some disk space as a active photographer.
Enthusiast home user are in a bind because it is hard to justify the cost of quality , redundant, secure disk space to build your portfolio on.

I have what I think is a near perfect solution at a cost well with in the reach of most home users and is good enough to transition to a entry level Business solution.

There are many brands and styles of NETWORK ATTACHED STORAGE devices on the market. Many of the lower end devices are lacking features and reliability which defeats the purpose.

As a minimum I think you should look for the following features:

The Device should be able to support at least two drives in a raid 1( mirrored array) configuration.

Should have a excellent full features embedded web management utility.

Should support Active Directory ( future proof)

Should Support multiple platforms (Windows, MAC, Linux)

Should have 10/100/1000 Ethernet support.

Should have back up utilities.

Should have hot swap drives

Should have a nice case with external power supply and cooling fan

Should have straight forward and easy to use Documentation.

Should have USB external drive and printer support.

Should have Enterprise class bug free management utilities

Should be cheap enough for the home user.

This has been a TALL ORDER in until recently.

There is a company named Promise, well regarded in the enterprise storage world that has come out with a home user NAS device called the NS2300N.

This device is fantastic and totally meets all of the listed criteria.

The device can be purchased for under 200 dollars. Toss in a couple of 500 gigabyte Samsung Sata Drives and you have a terabyte of spinning storage on your home network, safe secure for under 370 dollars.

Is there an advantage to using a NAS over just adding more HD to computer?

My home system has 6 SATA ports (or 4? do not remember) so i can had plenty more - only have two used so far.

For price of NAS ($200), I can get two 750GB Seagates ($120ea).

I guess if you do not want to keep your system on all the time, it's worth investing in a NAS.

Mystwalker wrote in post #6182557
Is there an advantage to using a NAS over just adding more HD to computer?.

Easy transfer of data when you eventually upgrade your PC, as data simply stays on the existing drives.
...the new PC need not have same harddrive I/F or connectors as the existing drive requires, if you wanted to try to pull old drives and plug them into new PC.

You can change from one O/S to another Windows XP to Windows Vista or to Apple Mac or to Unix derivative, and the data need not be transferred to the new file system.

Advantages? LOL

If you have a network yes. If you understand the potential of shared network resources...yes.

If you value data fault tolarance...yes. If you understand the value of not having huge heat producing raid arrays in your desktop PC...yes

Not trying to be condescending or insulting but it is about mind set and the difference in mind set between a person that looks to a network solution as opposed to a desktop driven one.

The thing is people have not looked in to how easy it is to make a network server/storage box. I only have 3 500 gig drives that I store things on. Now I can keep adding more but Like the above poster said I can keep scaling up and up as time goes on.

Like Cameras it only takes a little time to figure out a NAS and you are good for some time.

I have just relinquished my old G5 mac to be the server for all my files, Being able to have any of my 500gb of music playing, while editing any of my photos, from work, or at any of my computers at home has made keeping the older "spare" tower worth it's weight in gold. not to mention it sits in an climate controlled rack with my home theater/distributed audio gear so I never have to even hear all the hard drives/fans. It was not very hard to set up, and the only problem I've encountered was that it was a little tricky to get aperture to put it's vault on another machine, (mostly because it's running a different operating system)

Erik