# External Raid Solutions for Lightroom 3.5



## hannawr (Jan 9, 2012)

I would like to get opinions on External Raid Solutions for my iMac. Currently I running Lightroom 3.5 on my 2.4GHz iMac with 4GB and have @ 12,000 pictures in my catalog. I backup everything with Time Machine and store everything on the iMac internal drive. 

I have looked at the following manufactures solution:

Drobo
Western Digital 
G-Technology

I believe a Raid 1 solution (with (2) 2TB drives) using Firewire 800 would be the best solution, however I wanted to get everyones real world experiences to help me with the decision.

Thanks 

Bill


----------



## clee01l (Jan 9, 2012)

I have a RAID solution in place and have had several NAS RAID file servers over the years.  I have a mixed opinion of their benefit.  Raid1 is the simplest and cheapest and any of your choices will do the job.  If you have a Thunderbolt connector the Promise Pegasus solution looks appealing. 

I would opt for a network file server rather than a locally attached RAID drive.  With a NAS you can locate it anywhere in your (home) network out of sight on a shelf, in a closet, etc. If your desktop is a cluttered as mine, you will appreciate the uncluttering your workspace. 

There is a downside And this I learned the hard way.  RAID1 is simple mirroring with two identical drives storing the same identical information.  If one fails, the data is preserved on the other.  RAID consists or two parts:  Two or more RAID Drives and a single RAID controller.  RAID Drives use proprietary filesystems, Not HFS, FAT32, NTFS or EXT3.  Unless you have an application or a duplicate controller that can read your RAID file system, you can not get your data off of the remaining Harddrive.  Corporations can afford expensive RAID recovery Software or Redundancy.  Finding a cheap/free File System application that can read your drive can be a challenge. 

In spite of this, I still have a RAID NAS but I also have cloud backup of all of my critical data through Carbonite  I have my own redundancy in that I have a true off-site backup in realtime and network backup with Raid redundancy.


----------



## johnbeardy (Jan 9, 2012)

Drobo is the obvious possibility. But it isn't something you simply buy and forget - I could give you a very cautionary tale of disc problems which didn't result in the loss of data but made large numbers of files effectively inaccessible to Lightroom (restoring the Drobo wiped lots of accented European characters in filenames) until the cavalry arrived.

I would also be cautious. I have chosen not to get into raid myself as I prefer the simplicity of lots of hard drives controlled directly through the OS. Do you really want to skill up in raid technologies? 

John


----------



## Brad Snyder (Jan 9, 2012)

I'm with John. The improved performance of RAID will never repay me the time invested in its administration. I prefer stock hard-drives as well.

That said, those are *MY* preferences. Your mileage will certainly vary.


----------



## clee01l (Jan 9, 2012)

Brad Snyder said:


> I'm with John. The improved performance of RAID will never repay me the time invested in its administration. I prefer stock hard-drives as well.
> 
> That said, those are *MY* preferences. Your mileage will certainly vary.


My NAS RAID drive required connecting to the network and turning it on.  Occasionally I need to reboot the OS when there is a power failure (I do not have an uninterruptable Power supply).  If I have a drive fail, I will need to replace it.  If the controller fails, I'll need to attempt recovery (as I explained earlier).  More likely If the controller fails, I will replace it and let the new system rebuild itself from my primary HD.  Note that with RAID1 you have two mirrored drives that are backing up a HD on a PC.  So at any one point in time you will have 3 copies of your critical data.  the administrative overhead of a NAS RAID system is nil.


----------



## Duncanh (Jan 9, 2012)

Carbonite looks interesting. The homeplus pricing says it does one external drive, can that be a NAS drive ? ( your post appears you are using one ). Thanks for the link.

I have a Netgear ReadyNAS NV+4 with 4 x 2TB drives giving me 6TB useable.  It was recommended to me by a friend and I'm very pleased with it, I'm not technical so can't really answer questions about it but proves it's easy to setup if I'm using it. Reasons I went down the NAS route were to keep it away from computer (space & if there was a theft hopefully they'd take the computers but not see the nas), loads of capacity and can share it between Mac and PCs I have. Should mention not using with LR at the moment but that's the plan.


----------



## clee01l (Jan 9, 2012)

Duncanh said:


> Carbonite looks interesting. The homeplus pricing says it does one external drive, can that be a NAS drive ? ( your post appears you are using one ). Thanks for the link...


 I only have Home not HomePlus and my version won't even backup locally attached external drives.  This package is one reason that I moved my LR drive from a NAS to internal.  I currently have ~350GB at Carbonite.  A great deal for $59USD per year.

One of the three NAS that I run is a two year old Netgear ReadyNAS.  The others are NAS enclosures that I populated myself from surplus HD I had around.. 

I don't think you can use Carbonite with a NAS since it would violate their 1 computer license.  Carbonite also recognises Symbolic Links as System files and ignores those too.  Also the specs list Mac for Home but not HomePlus version.


----------



## Duncanh (Jan 9, 2012)

clee01l said:
			
		

> I only have Home not HomePlus and my version won't even backup locally attached external drives.  This package is one reason that I moved my LR drive from a NAS to internal.  I currently have ~350GB at Carbonite.  A great deal for $59USD per year.
> 
> One of the three NAS that I run is a two year old Netgear ReadyNAS.  The others are NAS enclosures that I populated myself from surplus HD I had around..
> 
> I don't think you can use Carbonite with a NAS since it would violate their 1 computer license.  Carbonite also recognises Symbolic Links as System files and ignores those too.  Also the specs list Mac for Home but not HomePlus version.



Thanks, I'll look into it further. Allowing use of a NAS would open it up to abuse, shame.


----------



## hannawr (Jan 10, 2012)

Guy's,

Thanks for the quick response and options. I agree with the RAID Controller concern on failure and scrambling of data, I have seen it personally happen @ work. Not a big fan of NAS because most my house is wireless (802.11N) and I would take a substantial performance it when accessing Ligthroom images. I agree simpler may be a better approach (attached external storage via Firewire & USB) along with an offsite backup (Carbonite or Crashplan).

Here are my thoughts:

2TB - Firewire 800 (Primary Lightroom Storage)
2TB - Firewire 400 (Secondary Storage) 

Clone the the Primary to the secondary with Carbon Copy Cloner

2TB - USB(1) Time Machine Backup
500GB - USB(2) 
Clone the Internal 320GB with Carbon Copy Cloner
USB(3) - HUB to Epson 1400 printer & scanner

Move USB connected Keyboard to Bluetooth along with mouse

Any concerns ?????

I would like to solicit feedback on everyones experiences with Carbonite or Crashplan.

Thanks

Bill


----------



## clee01l (Jan 10, 2012)

hannawr said:


> ...Not a big fan of NAS because most my house is wireless (802.11N) and I would take a substantial performance it when accessing Ligthroom images...


I don't think so. My wireless network includes a DLNA NAS, GoogleTV and AppleTV.  Both TV devices are wirelessly connected. I stream movies and slideshows from the DLNA NAS to both TV devices and in the case of the AppleTV the movies and photos are stores on the NAS and served by iTunes on my PC.  And for streaming movies from Amazon to my GoogleTV, the slowest port in the house is the 100 mbit port on my DSL modem. 802,11n is much faster.


----------



## hannawr (Jan 10, 2012)

Cletus,

I agree with your comments on streaming music and video, however I shoot with a D7000 in RAW format (each image is @ 20 Megabytes). My concern is that a 2x2 802.11n radio performs @ 300 Megabits per second /2 (half duplex communications) or 150 Megabits best case versus USB or Firewire that are several times  greater in raw thru put. If I went with a NAS solution I would hardwire it @ 1Gigabit per second, however wiring the room my iMac would be a pain to wire. Believe me I love the flexibility of wireless.

Thank you for your thoughts !!!!

Do you currently use any offsite backup strategy ?

From my research on the subject, Crashplan seems like a good solution for multiple computers and external drive, not sure about NAS.

Bill


----------



## Hal P Anderson (Jan 11, 2012)

Bill, 

I bought a set of DLink gadgets that send and receive ethernet through standard house wiring. Totally replaced my wireless for my desktops. I don't know how fast they'll run, but my internet connection is running as fast as my DSL will pull the bits in. Faster than my former wireless, anyway. Flexibility of wireless, but wired. I think I paid about $40 Canadian for each one. Need one at the modem/router and one at each computer. Totally easy to set up: basically plug them in and run. No drivers to install.

Hal


----------



## hannawr (Jan 11, 2012)

Hal,

Thanks for the suggestion.

Bill


----------

