Photography backup solution NAS?

[simon.deighton]

A friend of mine was asking me about a backup solutuion for her photography business, she backs up online but wantss a physical backup too.

I suggested something like a small NAS setup

Some of her friends are sending her allsorts of links to dodgy brands with single drives which to me doesnt sound great if it dies... Id assume youd need multiple drives for a nice raid setup?

Ive seen seeing some small nice looking QNAP products (2 bays) which seems to get good reviews

Can anyone recomend something multi-drive with about 8-10tb of storage

Cheers

 

[Armageus]

Any 2 bay QNAP or Synology will be fine, and as you say you would then run it in RAID1 (Mirrored) mode, so that if a drive fails you do not lose everything.

RAID/NAS by itself isn't a backup, but the fact she has online backup as well is perfect in terms of having at least 2 different copies in different places.

You then just buy any 2 identical NAS spec hard drives, e.g. Seagate Ironwolf range, or WD Red Plus or Red Pro (avoid the standard WD Red as these despite being NAS rated use an inferior technology).

4+ bay units are also an option, but tend to be a bit of a cost jump, but give you a bit more flexibility in terms of capacity and upgrades (and give you some other RAID modes e.g. 5 and 6)

 

[Snapshot]

QNAP devices are suffering from ransomware attacks at the moment so, whilst they can be prevented, it might be better for the less able user to look at other brands which means Asustor or Synology. Asustor makes great hardware but doesn't have the depth of app support that Synology does. This doesn't sound like an issue for your friend so I'd go one up from bottom and look at the Drivestor 2 Pro. If funds allow the Nimbustor 2 is even better - FWIW I have a Nimbustor 4.

Then add a pair of WD Red Plus or Seagate Iron Wolf of your chosen capacity to run in RAID1.

I was going to type more but Armageus has beaten me to it....

 

[EsaT]

If she has only one work PC also USB connected storage device could be solution.
Some of them like WD My Book Duo hold two drives for RAID1 ability.

Also Drobo's product range has beens more focused on expandable external storage for single PC.
Though they have also network connected models.


As for getting drives for some reason external USB drives are much cheaper than separatel bulk drives leading many people to "shuck" them.
(WD Elements Desktop is easy to open)

 

[Minstadave]

Budget is key here and the level of risk she will tolerate.

For me a 2 Bay Synology in RAID1 is what I'd go for (what I'm using currently) and a 4 bay Synology if money isn't a big problem.

I suspect they may baulk at £700-800 for a 2 bay Synology and a couple of shucked 12TB drives. Add a few hundred more if shucking isn't an option.

 

[Mcnumpty2323]

A simple method though obviously use multiple methods
Assuming their pc has spare sata connectors
Is use Windows storage spaces
It has redundancy options in it
Though I also use online backup
And removable usb too
For a photography business I wouldn't be comfortable
With less than 3 separate backups
Since I assume the photographs are important
And also make sure the backups have ransomware protection
You can also make image backups
Which I also store in multiple places