Storage for LG image files?

[chris jordan]

Hi guys, just checking in to see if anyone here has come up with a satisfactory solution for storing and accessing huge amounts of digital photographic image data? I have about a terabyte of files here, divided among a whole bunch of hard drives, and I'm not confident that any of the drives will last very long. I'm thinking about buying one of those expensive RAID arrays that has eight or ten drives all mirrored together. Any suggestions or recommendations? Is there one company that is known for making top-quality hard drives that outlast everyone else's?

Cheers and happy August,

~cj

[QT Luong]

I don't think any of the companies has a definitive edge on others. In general, I try to buy drives that come with the longer warranty period. All Seagate drives have a 3-year warranty.

1TB is no big deal, those days you can buy 1TB drives from several manufacturers. You certainly do not need a large RAID array. Once your data is consolidated in one or two big drives, you can just use inexpensive software to mirror them. Keep a third copy of any live drive that you rotate to an off-site storage, and you are covered against any catastrophe.

If you prefer to go the RAID route, there is a device called the drobo that is supposedly simpler to use than conventional RAID arrays. If you stuff it with 4 1TB drives, it will cost you less than $1500 and should fulfill your needs for a white. However, remember that you still need a off-site backup.

[Michael Chmilar]

I recently got a Drobo, which is a very easy-to-use raid unit, and no too expensive. You can install into it whatever hard drives you need to get the space you need.

It is important to remember that raid only protects you from hardware failure of one (or sometimes more) of the hard drives. It will not save you if the unit is completely destroyed (eg. fire) or from a software failure (eg. the filesystem is corrupted, or an errant software application corrupts a file).

So raid is generally more useful as reliable storage for work in progress than as archival data storage.

[Frank Petronio]

Join PhotoShelter - for $600 per year per Tb -- about what you'll pay for a couple of drives -- they will be redundantly backed up at multiple locations that will likely survive nuclear war. And you can access them from anywhere you are at any time, and allow others to access them through secure encrypted access.

Buy a couple of cheap slow Tb harddrives and store them for local backups, but online storage is the long term answer.

[darr]

I recently purchased a Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ (http://www.netgear.com/landing/en-us/nasad) with 2-500 GB drives. It came with a 5 year warranty and has 4 bays. I also considered a drobo, but did some research and found the ReadyNAS+ to be better suited for my needs and cost. The ReadyNAS+ is a X-RAID single volume auto expansion hardware platform. It will support RAID 0, 1, and 5 multiple volumes. I use it for in-house redundancy backup. My computer platform is three internal HDs, the ReadyNAS+ network and two portable 500G HDs off site. So far, everything is good.

[Peter De Smidt]

Why not simply get a couple of terrabyte external hard drives, using eSata if possible?

[Struan Gray]

You should really talk to someone in the music business, or who runs a large data centre. Places like CERN and JPL produce a terabyte a minute, 24-7, and have worked out reliable ways to store it. There again, they are spending other people's money :-)

But if you don't want to go the whole hog and set up a rack-mount storage farm, G-tech and Glyph have been recommended to me as manufacturers who use better components and design for hot-swapping and redundancy.

www.g-technology.com
www.glyphtech.com

[Huib]

Chris,

As others already wrote: raid only protects to some levels of harddisk failure without the system/fileserver going down. It does not protect you against errors in OS or application software corrupting files. It does not protect you against failure of other hardware like the power supply unit, memory chips or the CPU itself. And backup's are still needed. That leaves the question open: if not used in a professional setting: does backup/restore not suffice? and how likely is a harddisk failure? maybe the power supply fitted fails upon you before.....

However, some kind of NAS (Network Attached Storage) is a nice thing to have as it seperates/frees the data from the PC and OS that you currently are running, it's easier to share data and no need to convert/move data if you get a new PC or buy a 2nd one, or e.g. change the platfom from OS-X to Vista.

Also have a look at real performance and connectivity of these systems, even though some have a gigabit network interface that does not mean they will be chucking away 80-100MB/s of data when saving or reading files....most of these 2 to 4 disc NAS/Raid consumer boxes are build around less powerfull (and less $$) CPU's like the ARM and have substantial less throughput

If you are technically inclined: building a system on stock PC components yourselves is shurely feasable: I did build a PC server: 1TB available for storage in RAID-10 running FreeBSD as OS and Samba as fileserver software. In terms of $$ this was 600 Euro's for hardware and about 3 hours to build and install software. It actually took longer then 3 hours but this was because of some experimentation on my behalf....

[Lenny Eiger]

Is there one company that is known for making top-quality hard drives that outlast everyone else's?


I do this myself and save a bundle. I purchased a Sonic 5-bay multiport SATA case and a Sata card. I filled it with 5 1 TB drives. Presto - a 5 TB raid... I back it up with a couple of inexpensive LaCie 2 TB drives. These are also RAID's, so they shouldn't be used as working drives, but it is almost impossible that both systems will go down at once...

Saves a bundle. The hardest thing one has to do is screw an internal hard drive to a bracket. Anyone can do it - and save thousands...

Lenny
EigerStudios

[Milton Tierney]

My son turn me on to BlacX device that uses internal hard drives like a huge CF card. I got mind from Tigerdirect.com. I use 500 GB drives, but it will take a 1TB. I love it. If you use a new hard drive it will need to be formatted first.

(http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/search.asp?keywords=blacx&searchbtn.x=18&searchbtn.y=10)
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Just out: Energizer Bunny arrested - charged with battery.

[jim kitchen]

Dear Chris,

I have several files locked away in a few Burly Four Bay containers, with 4 one TB Seagate eSata drives in each...

The four bay container kits are well made, but may be a bit pricey. You did not mention which OS you are using, but I do not believe that matters, and the containers I have are available here: http://www.macgurus.com/

The one TB Seagate hard drives I buy are located here: http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/PID-MX18814(ME).aspx

I hope this helps. :)

jim k

[Milton Tierney]

Thanks for the links; I’ve bookmarked them for future use. For now I use 500GB drives for storage; don’t like to keep all my eggs in one hard drive. I will be installing a second hard drive on my computer to help with the management and work flow. Next year I want to start scanning my LF film and will need more space. The BlacX seems right for now.

When I become rich and famous I’ll have my son build me a super computer.

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A pessimist’s blood type is always b-negative.

Milton