NAS Drive Recommendations

[Joe Sporleder]

Do any of you use NAS Drives for production workflow? I currently use a Mac mini Snow Leopard server with a dual hard drive external firewire box to store our production data - customer files, artwork, etc. I am considering moving away from the Mac mini for file storing and towards a NAS, such as the 4-drive systems offered by Buffalo Technologies (which can also be used as Time Machine backups). The Buffalo models came recommended by a tech expert at our state press convention. Our production workflow consists of folders for each advertiser, organized like a virtual filing cabinet, with Creator files and artwork from various sources, so that one person can open an existing ad for modification or building a new ad from scratch, and then someone else can later on open that ad again for corrections and/or for EPS'ing into our pagination workflow.

If you use NAS in your workflow, what brand have you had the best luck with, and how many drive bays does it have?

Joe

[Don Foy]

Joe.

We've had some pretty nasty experiences with Western Digital NAS devices. I don't know about Buffalo's models, but if a WD box fails, not because of a hard drive failure, but because of a box failure, you just can't get the data off of it.(That's not completely accurate. DriveSavers can get your data, but it takes a lot of money) So whatever way you go, make sure to keep adequate backup. I actually just replaced a NAS with just the setup you're looking to get rid of. 

They're not always easy to set up (again, Buffalo may be different that WD) and be sure to check on their support. WD not so good. Two years ago, I bought one for a remote location and took it up there, where it wouldn't work with the OS, which had been out for six months. The firmware needed to be updated to deal with Snow Leopard, which had been shipping for about 7 months at the time. But the firmware update was not available yet. Again, don't know about Buffalo, just WD. 

We're staying as far away from NAS as we can. But if you do go with Buffalo, let the rest of us know how it goes, as it might be a good alternative is some areas.

--
Don Foy
Herald-Citizen
Cookeville, Tenn.

[Mehlhorn, Jeff]

Joe,

We had some nasty experiences too!, but with LaCie NAS Drives. Pretty similar experiences to what Don had with WD, but the customer email support at LaCie is excellent. They do all they can to help. But we had to replace failed drives because after a year they would start to get slow and cause problems. And using AFP to search NAS drive worked awesome, then after a year, the searches would take longer and longer, just inconsistent for our needs. But yeah, its important to backup when using these NAS devices. We still use LaCie products because we also had a lot of success with them, and controlling the drives over the web is excellent. But good luck with Buffalo.

_______________________________________________

Jeffrey S. Mehlhorn
Systems Administrator
Pittsburgh Bronze Division - Graphics
Matthews International Corporation


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From: Don Foy <dhf...@gmail.com>
Reply-To: <multiad...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Sat, 28 Apr 2012 07:27:17 -0400
To: <multiad...@googlegroups.com>
Conversation: NAS Drive Recommendations
Subject: Re: NAS Drive Recommendations

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[Eric Tietze]

Joe, we are using a NAS drive for our storage.  We use a Snap server by Overland and have had pretty good luck with it.  We had Snap many years ago and upgraded for space to a Buffalo.  We started having quite a few problems with the Buffalo concerning file permissions, losing data structure and things like that.  It would only be when connected from a Mac using AFP if I remember correctly.  When I contacted Buffalo about the problem, they told me that while they listed the NAS as Mac compatible, there were some instances that it wasn't and they didn't really support anything related to the Mac interface.  This has been a couple years back, so it may have changed now.  We ended up replacing it with another Snap and have been happy ever since.

As everyone else suggested though, be sure to backup regularly.

Eric Tietze
Vice President of Operations
Ozarks Farm & Neighbor
1-866-532-1960 • Fax: 417-532-4721
www.ozarksfn.com • er...@ozarksfn.com

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[Alan Rogers]

Gidday Joe,

We use a Drobo device built by Data Robotics. I believe it's similar
to a RAID 5 device: that is, it backs up the contents of each drive on
the other three drives, so it doesn't matter which drive might fail,
they're all covered.

Our four Western Digital 800GB drives combine to give us 1.73TB,
though the drives don't have to all be the same size or speed.

Plus the Droboshare device handles all the cross-platform handshaking
since we mostly use Macs, but need a couple of PCs to handle duties
necessitated by 'unenlightened' hardware manufacturers.

We had trouble with our first Droboshare, which allowed us to read
files, but not to write to the Drobo. Since that was identified and
resolved, we've had no more trouble.

Look on the Drobo website <www.drobo.com/>. We bought the smallest
four-bay Drobo, but check out the capacity calculator (Products tab:
Capacity Calculator) to see how your drive choices affects your
device's total capacity.

Naturally, a large capacity server is only as good as your filing
system. We standardised our filing system fifteen years ago when we
were still using Mac SEs, so it's grown with our needs. But a large
capacity device would be impossible to use if everyone had their own
system and one artist couldn't find another artist's work or another
client's account.

Alan
______________________________________

_________________
Alan Rogers
PO Box 1921,
Humpty Doo NT 0836
Australia
+61 8 8988 9616
+61 488 034 487
ci...@ozemail.com.au

[Mehlhorn, Jeff]

Thanks Gidday Joe

I’m not the original poster but I been keeping my eye on this post. Was always looking for something that work good cross-platform. Like, we are mac based but have a couple PC’s for whatever reason that need to tap in. So, it’s good you found something that works.

I will have to bookmark their site for future needs.

Thanks again.

_______________________________________________

Jeffrey S. Mehlhorn

Systems Administrator
Pittsburgh Bronze Division - Graphics
Matthews International Corporation


CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This message, together with any attachments, is intended only for the addressee.  It may contain information which is proprietary, confidential, legally privileged and/or exempt from disclosure.  If you are not the intended recipient of this message, you are hereby notified that any disclosure, copying, distribution, use, or any action or reliance on this communication is strictly prohibited.  If you have received this e-mail in error, please notify the sender immediately by return e-mail and delete the message, along with any attachments.

---

From: Alan Rogers <ci...@ozemail.com.au>
Reply-To: <multiad...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Sat, 12 May 2012 04:07:26 -0400

To: <multiad...@googlegroups.com>
Conversation: NAS Drive Recommendations
Subject: Re: NAS Drive Recommendations