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Vanilla 1.1.10 is a product of Lussumo. More Information: Documentation, Community Support.
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Hi guys n girls,
How do you guys who work in a studio with multiple people handle your file storage? We currently have a 1Tb drive in a bay in one of our MacPro's and everyone works off that drive on the local network, and that drive is backed up to a 1Tb Time Machine. It works, but the drive is rapidly filling and if the Mac has to restart no one can access any work.
Does any one have any experience using a network drive for storage? And any recommendations one a simple on to use? Been looking at a drobo but the one that goes on the network isn't cheap. Looking for something that is straight forward to set up and that we can ignore for the rest of the time.
Any help appreciated!
Cheers,
Ben -
If you want a simple file server, Drobo FS is about as simple as it gets. If you don't mind adding a little complexity and a LOT more power, the Synology DS1010+ is the one currently at the top of my list.
There are a couple reasons I personally am not focusing really hard on the Drobo FS:
1. No USB ports for expansion or initial backups and so forth.
2. Apparently, there's a hardware limit to the size Drobo FS drives can hold. Other NAS have it as well, but there's a real difference between 16TB and 16EB (one being 1,000,000 times larger).
The thing is, both are pretty close in cost so it comes down to how much you are willing to do.
If you want hassle free though limited functionality then the Drobo FS is the way to go. If, however, you don't mind having to manage things yourself and want more options for further growth and usage cases, the Synology DS1010+ is probably a better way to go.
Either will do basically what you need. -
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CommentAuthorJamieKnight
- CommentTimeJul 29th 2010
Hiya,
We have a buffulo drivestation with 2 x 1tb drives in in in a RAID0. Its fast and has the backup on it (though the thing is also backup up offsite). From there we have a few shares and it works really well.
The biggest thing we found when it came to performance was to use gigabit rather than 10/100 base. We can get reads at about 30-40mb/s over the network to the NAS, and writes of a similar speed, we using a netgear gigabit router and it has a static IP :)
Hope that helps,
Jamie & Lion -
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One thing I would caution against is using RAID-0 for anything data-sensitive. If you go Drobo you don't have to worry about this (it uses something akin to RAID-5).
RAID-0 is known as "Striped RAID" has increased performance since you write to every drive in your RAID array at the same time. This means if you're uploading 5 files to a RAID array with 5 hard drives, each drive receives a file. However, the problem is if any one of those drives fails, the entire array fails and you will likely lose all data. I learned that one the hard way.
Instead, if you have control over it, use RAID-1 if you have only two hard drives in your RAID array and otherwise use RAID-5. RAID-1 provides redundancy, though at half the capacity. So if you have two 1TB hard drives and one fails you don't lose any data.
RAID-5 works in a similar fashion but it combines RAID-1 with RAID-0. If you had 4x2TB hard drives and you used RAID-5, drives 1+2 and 3+4 would act as if RAID-0 while the pairs together would behave as if RAID-1. You get all the speed and redundancy you need and if one drive dies you simply replace it with one of equal size.
That actually brings me to the main reason I'd say go with a Drobo FS if you don't want to deal with managing anything. With any Drobo, you just drop hard drives in and it will figure out how to make it redundant, processing everything for you. With any other NAS RAID you have to figure it out.
That's not that big of a deal if you go out and buy an enclosure and a few 2TB drives with plans to upgrade maybe sometime in the next decade, but if you plan on starting small and moving up when you can it can be an annoying problem. -
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CommentAuthorJamieKnight
- CommentTimeJul 29th 2010
Hiya,
@doug - that my mistake, i meant a RAID 1, not a RAID0, it mirrored not striped :D I understand the pros and cons each way.
The drobo does make it easy (we have a client with one, over FW800 its crazy fast!) but they are also very expensive. The Buffulo we have was £130 on amazon, then we brought some drives for it. As a note on hard drives, be careful of the warrenty. Many of the chaper drives are sold as "consumer" drives, they are only warrantied to be run for 8 hours / day for 12 months and can fail after that. Keep an eye out for the WD server drives (i forget the brand name) they are faster platters (10k) and are warrantied for 3 years and 24 / 7 running. They are also damn fast!
Hope that helps,
Jamie + Lion -
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Western Digital black label drives are pretty good. The eco-friendly ones (green label) aren't as good on performance but they use less power.
Avoid the Seagate 2TB drives, they have an abnormally high failure rate. Samsung makes a good 2TB, they have the lowest failure rate, at least they did when I was looking for mine.
If you buy in the 1TB area... They're all about the same to be honest. WD and Seagate tend to have the best, Samsung comes in a very close second and Hitachi brings up a close third.
@Jamie: The 10K RPM Western Digitals are the Raptor drives, they're a bit over-kill for basic file servers. They're better for gaming and video-editing rigs. A standard 5,400RPM drive is going to be more than enough (they also tend to be the higher capacity drives).
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