Inspiring

Question

Video Archival - NAS or Hard Drive Enclosure

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
September 13, 2018
3 replies
970 views

I've been getting into videography (just on a hobby level) and desperately need to update my storage. Right now I have a 250GB SSD (OS/programs) and a 1TB WD Blue on my desktop. No external HDDs - nothing.

Now I want to make it clear that I am trying to upgrade my storage on a budget. I'd like to keep this under $400-$500. Cheaper the better (of course I don't want to buy complete junk though).

I've been researching for several days now and I am starting to beat a dead horse here ha. I originally thought I would just get a SATA dock/WD Reds and simply archive my video footage and store the WD Reds in my safe. I would then backup with BackBlaze. The more I have read, the more I have realized that storing bare drives on the shelf may or may not be a very reliable solution. Also, BackBlaze requires external hard drives to be hooked up at least every 30 days otherwise it will assume the data is gone and delete it from their cloud. So...I am thinking it might be best to get something that is externally hooked up all the time. That way I don't have to worry about plugging and unplugging hard drives sitting on the shelf.

So now I am debating whether or not I want to go with a Synology NAS or just a Hard Drive Enclosure like a MediaSonic 4 bay (http://www.mediasonic.ca/product.php?id=1515799029) or something from OWC (more expensive) (https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/MEQCTJBT00/)

If I am going to go with an NAS then I want at least a 4 bay. I would likely go for the DS918+, which is $539 with NO drives included of course. It's truthfully way outside of my budget and I am not sure if an NAS is really the way to go for simple video archival.

Keep in mind, I could always add and NAS down the road. In the meantime I could use a nice 4 bay Hard Drive Enclosure for video archival and keep it backed up with BackBlaze. If I started with a 4 bay enclosure now and added an NAS later, it would put me in a pretty good position, as I would essentially have three backups (NAS, 4 bay hard drive enclosure, BackBlaze).

What do you guys think? Am I on the right track here? Are there any other 4 bay Hard Drive Enclosures I should be looking at?

Thanks!

This topic has been closed for replies.

J

JEShort01

Inspiring

Late to the party, and...

My suggestion would be to have an on-site and off-site backup solution. You should be able to do this within your budget with:

- 2x large 7200 rpm drives (you will not be using a NAS, but I would still suggest buying NAS drives - they seem to be a good bang-for-the-buck and possibly a bit more reliable vs. the cheapest drives; my personal preference for drives that I use for backup is HGST). Keep one in your home and one across town somewhere. We are talking about real "backup" here for worst case scenarios like fire or theft. If someone takes your workstation, don't you think they will like the Drobo sitting next to it!

- Beyond Compare software - WONDERFUL stuff. Beyond Compare does file comparisons and selective sync'ing. So, for example, you can sync all your files from your D:\ drive except the d:\Adobe_cache\* folders to your backup drive (or in my case drive array).

Get way bigger drives than you need - that will give you a solution that will last longer (growing room) and also keep your 7200 rpm drives from getting full (over 70% full starts into increased Windows file fragmentation in addition to the smaller diameter data space being slower vs. the outside larger tracks).

Cheers,

Jim

CC268Author

Inspiring

Thanks a lot for the feedback. This is exactly my plan, so I am glad to see you suggested it as well. My plan is to purchase two 4TB NAS drives and a nice SATA dock. Keep one backup on site and another off site.

I have heard good things about HGST, but I've had a heck of a time finding those drives, so I was going to go with WD Reds. Some of the places selling HGST are limiting the sale to only one drive (meaning I couldn't buy two 4TB drives, only one).

I will checkout Beyond Compare! Could you explain more about how to do this process?

That's a good point on growing room. I'd love to get 8TB+, but that is overkill for me at this point and outside of my budget (there are some internal storage upgrades I would like to do to my desktop as well.

J

JEShort01

Inspiring

Re HGST NAS drives... I'm on Newegg's deals email - push sales stuff daily, and less than 1 week ago they had a $149 / drive deal on 6TB HGST NAS drives. I think that's pretty fantastic.

Personally, I really like good old fashion (cold-swap) 5 1/4" mounted SATA bays. When you say "nice SATA dock" if you're thinking anything USB, people see to have strange non-repeatable issues with many of those.

Re Beyond Compare, they have a 30-day eval. period - just download it and you'll see how easy it is.

John T Smith

Community Expert

A possibility for backup is this USB3 dock with fan to swap drives http://www.amazon.com/StarTech-SuperSpeed-Docking-Station-Cooling/dp/B0055PL2YI or http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147511

I use the StarTech dock and "several" bare sata drives which I rotate

CC268Author

Inspiring

Thanks - I have had a fair amount of people recommend the dock and bare drives as the most cost effective solution. It looks like I will likely be headed down that route.

Thanks!

Stan Jones

Community Expert

Due to budget, I went with this:

Amazon.com: ZyXEL [NAS540] 16TB Personal Cloud Storage [4-Bay] for Home with iOS & AndroidRemote Access and Media Stream…

No longer available; I think it was about $500 (with drives).

16 TB as Raid 5 gives me 12T. My goal was uses as backup and as a media server (not editing).

I have not worked it hard enough to recommend it, but it is working well for my purposes after about 9 months.

NAS as media servers place extra emphasis on the NAS processing, if you want high speed, high quality playback. This one might not cut it, but I have never configured it to run the media software (Plex) on it. Just using it as storage over my home network.

R

Richard M Knight

Community Expert

I have a 4 and an 8 bay Drobo that I bought on ebay. I have WD red drives in them. The older Drobos are not fast enough to edit from but seem good for backups. If you run out of space you can just change to larger drives one at a time and the array will rebuild.

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded