External Storage

rctneil

rctneil

rctneil

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31 Jan 2007
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I currently have an iMac with a 1Tb drive within it. Externally I have a 1Tb WD drive and a 250Gb separate drive. The drives are used as follows:

Internal 1Tb: OSX and pretty much everything
External WD 1Tb: Time Machine backup drive for the internal
250Gb separate: Stores a few movies and other large documents that I can;t fit on the internal drive

I basically need to shift everything around as I am totally running out of storage.

Firstly, whatever changes I make, I must have a way of backing those files up.

I was thinking of more external storage in the form of maybe a multi drive enclosure.

Can anyone:

1. Reccomend me a multi drive external enclosure for drives.

2. offer some suggestions as to a nice reliable way of backing all my content up.

I was thinkingt hat on my internal drive, keep as little as possible, OS, main documents and software, then externally my picture (increasing like wildfire) and then media like music and videos, podcasts etc


Basically, I would like to hear any thoughts you guys have on this.

Neil
 
Buy a previous gen 1TB Time Capsule off fleabay, get a 2/3TB Barracuda off the OCUK clearance section to upgrade it. Buy an N54L Microserver and load it with a couple of WD Reds. Jobs a goodun', Mac backup and network storage. That's what I did (except I've got 3 Microservers, can't resist them).
 
durbs: Could you explain that setup in a bit more detail.

I'm not terribly bothered about network storage as other machines on the network should not be allowed to access the content on those drives apart from my laptop. But i'm not terribly bothered about that having access to it to be honest.
 
rctneil said:
durbs: Could you explain that setup in a bit more detail.
Click to expand...

Not much to explain really, I've just found that if Mac backup is the priority then a Time Capsule is by far the most painless solution that works consistenly. It also gives you an additional wireless extender which is handy (my Time Capsule always has a far stronger signal than my BT Homehub).

If getting a standalone NAS then be very careful which one you buy, a cheap NAS is false economy as it will perform appallingly (I know from experience from owning a crappy Iomega StorCenter which was 10x slower to write to than the Microserver beside it on the same switch).

So do your research well, there ARE very good standalone NAS boxes out there, my preference however is for a Microserver as it has the grunt to be a good NAS but also allows the flexibility of installing any application you want on it.
 
Ok, Thanks guys,

I liked the look of the WD Duo but have just been looking into the Synology.

Overall, i'm not too fussed about it being network attached. Are they speedy enough as I'll be storing Raw images on it and accessing them from inside Lightroom and need it to be fast.

Do Synology do a local USB version or a version that could be used as both?
 
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