Do I need a NAS? And if so, which one?

[jeremyrh]

Like everybody I have a steadily mounting number of terabytes of photos to store and work with. Right now I have about 4TB on simple external USB drives, but findng the right drive, plugging it in and hoping it isn't corrupt (yes, I have backups) is annoying. I'm wondering if a NAS would be better - providing immediate and easy access to all my files, and reducing the chance of loss of data?  Will the connection be fast enough to suck across large raw files to work on, or will there be an irritating lag?

If I do get one, what brand, size, etc?  Synology seem to be the gold standard, but is that overkill?  Are they complicated, for a newbie?  WD are cheaper but reviews say they are complicared to configure. QNAP get good reviews.  How many bays? What size disks?  Few big, or many small?

Thanks for any tips !!

[MDL_SD]

I am not an expert, but I do have a Synology 2 bay NAS that has performed flawlessly.  It currently has 2 HGST 7200 rpm 8 TB drives in it.  I have it connected by ethernet off of my router and setup as a mirrored RAID so that I have internal redundancy.  My "working" photos are on either the computer SSD or an internal 4 TB HGST drive; I have not tried to work on photos that are on the NAS and expect that it might be sub-optimal, but again I have not tried.

If I had to start from scratch I would buy a 4 bay NAS and set it up as RAID for redundancy.  The Synology setup is painless and works well.  Changing disks is trivial (the only hassle is "waiting" for the new disk to format which takes time on a large disk). 

Another option is to purchase a RAID box that connects to your computer either by SATA or Firewire.  I have a SATA box that was given to me, but past checking to see that it works I have not used it.  It is an external 5 bay box that is configure as a RAID. 

Good luck

[degrub]

Look at Joe Towner’s posts.
Visit Smallnetbuilder for performance reviews and discussion
Also, a nas can be slower than direct connected disks.
If you use WD reds, either go with the Pro version or see the article on PcPerspective about issues with smr type drives versus cmr. You want cmr drives in a nas. Seagate does not have this issue in their nas drives.
https://pcper.com/2020/04/western-digital-addresses-wd-red-smr-controversy/

[PeterAit]

FWIW I have had a Buffalo Terastation 4-drive NAS working for 15 years without a glitch. Be sure you have a really fast network!!

[Peter McLennan]

After poor reaction to both sticker shock and proprietary disk formats of the major NAS suppliers, I bought a two bay version of the Oyen Digital drive bay.  I have it configured as RAID-0, so each disk is a mirror of the other. USB 3 connection.

After a few weeks use, I removed one of the drives and inserted it into another computer and it is indeed, a perfect mirror image of a bog-standard W10 data drive. I'm not sure that you can do this with the unconventional formatting used by Synology et al.  I used two 8TB WD 5500 rpm drives and it has worked perfectly for over a year. 

The only disadvantage is that it will go to sleep after long disuse (several hours) and requires about 15-20 seconds to come back online while it loads thumbnails.  If regularly accessed, it performs the same as an internal SATA drive.

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=oyen+digital+mobius&crid=1GRY9B1OCPLWX&sprefix=mobius+dis%2Caps%2C250&ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_10

[Daverich]

After poor reaction to both sticker shock and proprietary disk formats of the major NAS suppliers, I bought a two bay version of the Oyen Digital drive bay.  I have it configured as RAID-0, so each disk is a mirror of the other. USB 3 connection.

After a few weeks use, I removed one of the drives and inserted it into another computer and it is indeed, a perfect mirror image of a bog-standard W10 data drive. I'm not sure that you can do this with the unconventional formatting used by Synology et al.  I used two 8TB WD 5500 rpm drives and it has worked perfectly for over a year. 

The only disadvantage is that it will go to sleep after long disuse (several hours) and requires about 15-20 seconds to come back online while it loads thumbnails.  If regularly accessed, it performs the same as an internal SATA drive.

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=oyen+digital+mobius&crid=1GRY9B1OCPLWX&sprefix=mobius+dis%2Caps%2C250&ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_10

RAID-1 is a mirror, duplicate of each other. RAID-0 is a stripe of the information across multiple disks.

[Peter McLennan]

Thanks for that correction.  It is definitely a mirror, not a stripe.

[Jonathan Cross]

I am an NAS virgin!  One question occurs to me, how long does data transfer take, say transferring 40GB or 100GB of images from a project.  Or does it do it while you are doing other things, like using Lightroom, and then does that slow things down?  Does the speed depend on whether it is done by hard wire or wifi? 

Best wishes,

Jonathan

[degrub]

About the best you can do is around 100 MB/s with gigabit ethernet connection.
If the nas supports SSD caching, the apparent speed can increase some.

An internal ssd can go much faster. TB3 direct connect drives as well.

So if you just want bulk storage, a nas can do just fine, but it is more expensive than just an external drive.
And you still have to back up the nas too. If the nas hardware fails, you usually have to replace with the same system hardware to get access to your data on the drives.

Simplest is external drive direct connected and also backed up.

[Peter McLennan]

If the nas hardware fails, you usually have to replace with the same system hardware to get access to your data on the drives.

That was the killer for me. Proprietary file systems. Either software or hardware failure is a disaster, so you have to back them up somewhere else.
The drives in my Oyen box are bog-standard W10 data drives. 

[BobShaw]

The only reason that you would need a NAS is if you regularly need to access the same data from multiple computers.

If you want to know the basics then have a look at my book "Your Digital Legacy"
Might save you in the long run.
Available at AspirationImages.com  under Services / Books.

[jeremyrh]

Thanks for all the replies. I am thinking that maybe NAS is a solution to a different problem and that continuing with external hard drives is my best bet, at least for a while!

[Joe Towner]

For 4tb, you're in the USB external drive space - no need to over complicate it.  Getting a new 8tb usb3 drive & getting everything organized on to it will make your life better - save your old drives as historical backups & set them aside.  It'll backup fine with services like BackBlaze, and while not the fastest, if you're using Lightroom & your catalog is on a SSD, you most likely won't notice the difference.

If you've got the internal space, doing the initial import of files to your local SSD/NVMe for the initial cull/edit, then moving them to the 8tb once you do the initial edits & such.

Simple is best.
-Joe