Thank you
My MacBook Pro is at capacity and I cannot save any more media to the device. I could move everything to iCloud, but I am conscious of the risks associated with cloud storage. Can anyone recommend external storage devices that you use or have used to store/back up local media content (photo's, videos, music files etc)?
How much space do you need? Apple makes an Air Drive, although I have never used it. At home, I have an external SATA drive that has more than enough space. Eventually, I'm thinking of upgrading to a 2-bay NAS for redundancy purposes...
I prefer Western Digital brand. And I also prefer redundant storage of my important things. I copy all of my data from my computer to my external drive, then clone that drive to another identical drive.
2 Terabyte WD is 109CHF.
I bought a Western Digital "My Cloud" 4TB disk for 215 CHF from the Swiss Post online shop.
It has a media server built in to it (Twonky) and full root/telnet/ftp access but I usually just turn it on for an hour or so every few days so that the TimeMachine (Apple automated backup) can do its stuff and keep me backed up.
It's networked (wired), very stable and 4 TB is a wonderful amount of storage to have on tap.
How noisy is it? I have an old NAS, which I hardly ever use because it sounds like a hovercraft, which has put me off upgrading. It actually drowns out the noise of the Horizon box.
Which risks do you mean?
For me, using the cloud is a good strategy. Using external drives is fine, but what happens if it fails? And would you stored it at the same place as your main computer? What happens if that place burns down?!!
Having said all that, I do use external drives, but I use the cloud as well. More backups, the better!!!
Thanks. I think both external device and cloud might be the most robust option. The main concern with cloud storage is security/unauthorized access (i say this as someone working in cloud technology for the past nine years). No solution is perfect of course. I agree the more backups the better.
Can't tell it's on apart from the LED on the front. It's almost totally silent.
I have the same WD network storage. It is completely silent.
A Synology NAS. I have 2, they're excellent
Both are close to silent, one has 2 x 2Tb in and the other 4 x 3Tb in SHR mode. I have half-filled the available 8Tb. And I back up to the cloud.
The packages available for Synology are excellent, iTunes server, media server which works with smart TVs, PS3, etc.
I've heard a few people recommend Synology NAS. Could you recommend a particular model? I like the idea of dual disks to provide redundancy if one fails. I also know nothing about hard drives - if I want to start with 2 x 2Tb drives, what would be a good choice?
Also, at the moment we run two computers over wifi only, so would this work by plugging into the wifi router?
Thanks.
i sync to cloudy storage and encrypt to avoid security issues with files being stored over the internet.
We have a DS212 and it's great for home use. It's 2 years old now so I think the new models might be faster. The 2 disks are in RAID configuration so if one fails you can swap it (in theory). Remember your storage size will be the size of just 1 disk, as one is redundant. You can also plug in external disks and we store stuff that is not so critical on the external one. You simply plug it into your router and any PC on your network can access it. The software is really good and we use many of the packages, such as media server, web server, download manager (download your movies in the background without leaving your PC on!), SVN & VPN server etc. As our TV is also on the network, it detects the NAS and will play movies and music from there.
I'm sure there are other makes just as good but I can only comment on the one I have.
For documents, I use Dropbox so I can have everything on hand. For photos, I sync everything to Flicker as storage is unlimited. Then to be double safe, all is backed up to the NAS and another external drive. I use SyncBackPro to automate everything in terms of backups.
Just to reinforce one of the themes here, I would strongly suggest both a physical and cloud back-up.
The physical (external hard drives etc.) is great in that it is "right there" but at the same time in the case of a break-in and it is sitting beside your laptop, it will be going out the door as well.
second that. Amazon S3 is really cheap, fast and reliable. You can even set up a synology nas to auto-backup to amazon s3.
The swap in RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) will only work if the storage technology used is RAID 1 since this would mean that whatever data is written onto one drive & is mirrored onto the second drive. Thus, offering the swap in case one drive gets corrupt.
Incase it's a RAID 0 set-up, then the swap of drives will not work since the data is split across both the drives when written to the backup device & thus, if one of the drive fails, the other is equally useless since you won't be able to retrieve the complete data.
I have a DS212 and a DS413j. I use WD Red disks - they're designed to run 24x7. You can hack some of the Green disks to run 24x7 if you're tech-savvy....but for long-term storage, I wouldn't. I ran SpinRite several times on one of the disks as the DS212 (WD Green) but there was absolutely nothing wrong with it....so I've cancelled the SMART testing on the drives as I don't know how accurate that is.
They will serve your files to you in many ways. Smart TV will also play video, audio and display images (well mine would if I did not shoot in RAW format).
I also have two printers (one is also a scanner) connected to the DS413j. I can scan across my network.....shame I have to walk to the darn thing to put the stuff to scan into it
Pre-Internet encryption you mean? Where you hold the key and not the provider?
I have two machines syncing files regularly plus I backup my music, pictures and personal files to CrashPlan+. 420Gb of backup right now.
I also have people backing up to me across the Internet. I back up those backup sets in turn.
Have you looked at Amazon Glacier storage? Even cheaper - if you're not requiring JIT restore. This is where I'll head next, I'd say.....even though CrashPlan is pretty decently priced.
I had problems with Western Digital, specifically, a MyBookLive -- didn't work, had it replaced, and it still didn't work.
Furthermore, in the meantime, it installed something that ran processes constantly in the background all the time, which took up a huge amount of memory, and kept on doing so for years, which I didn't discover until recently, at which point I uninstalled the hidden files that were doing that.
I've had G-Drives for the past 10 years or so and have never once had a problem with them.
Just to chime in, I have a 5-bay DS-1512 from Synology, loaded with 5x3TB WD Red drives in SHR-2 (2-disk redundancy). I back up the most important stuff to an external 4TB WD Mybook, connected to the NAS via USB3.
If you go with RAID (or SHR which is the synology twist) I highly suggest 2-disk redundancy, especially with today's drive sizes.
Also, buy your hard drives from different suppliers to avoid getting them from the same batch.
Apple's "Time Capsule" is expensive (CHF 329 for 2 Tb and CHF 449 for 3 Tb) but it's easy to set up and good (and it looks ok as well).
It does what it says on the tin. However, as someone has already said it's always wise to have a Cloud back up too.
Good luck!