TimS Loc: GA

I currently PP almost all my photos on an iMac with LR 5 & PS CC when needed. Right now, I save all my photos to my iMac HD and back up to a time capsule. I primarily shoot RAW with an occasional JPEG.

The Time Capsule stinks. I have to reboot it every other day and my HD has only about 60 GB free.

My house is wired with cat 5e cables and my iMac is connected to my gigabit router via cable.

I want to get some external drives and would like some suggestions. My backups are via apple's time machine.

Option 1: external 2 GB HD connected to my iMac via FireWire to hold all my photos. External NAS connected via cat 5e cable to my router via gigabit port to serve as a backup device with a single 4 GB HDD.

Option 2: single NAS unit with two 4 GB drives in a RAID-1 array. This would serve as both my backup drive for my laptop and iMac as well as my storage drive for all photos.

Option 3: Almost same as option 1 except the external HDD would be connected to my network via gigabit instead of my iMac via FireWire.

What do you all do with regard to storing and backing up your files? My main concern is access speed as all options have sufficient redundancy. Option 3 is the most expensive.

Although theoretically, a NAS device with a gigabit connection should be the fastest, real world speed is what I'm interested in. Specifically, loading large RAW files in LR and large PSD/tiff files in PS.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts/suggestions.

Picdude Loc: Ohio

Since you appear to have the background and experience to set it up, I would go with option 2. With the RAID array, you can get multiple drives so you could more efficiently back-up your back-up, so to speak (for if/when a back-up drive fails...).

Just to ask, have you given any consideration to using a SATA drive docking station? My thoughts are that once you purchase the dock itself, SATA drives are cheaper than a stand-alone external drive, and again, could be more easier to swap out for multiple back-ups.

John Howard Loc: SW Florida and Blue Ridge Mountains of NC.

I was where you are a year ago. I connected a 6T remote drive to a Mini Mac, and via a Time Capsule router, to my Mac Pro. The Remote 6T is subdivided to two, 3T drives. Everything I save to it goes on one side, and is backed up on the other side. I effectively have 2, 3T remote drives. When full, I can convert the second side to primary storage and buy another 6T for back up. I have found only two issues. It would be better to connect with a Lightning Bolt cable for more speed, but my old Mac Pro does not have this connection. Second, when I turn off all my system, the computer looses the connection to the remote drive. In LR, I need to go to the top folder and click "find missing folder". This takes about 5 seconds and is not really a problem for me. I also use a lot of smaller remote drives for special projects and travel. I like doing this as each project can get its own drive. However it is a bit of a task to keep a list of where everything is.
Good luck and shoot straight.
JH

TimS Loc: GA

Haven't thought abou that. I'll peruse newegg and see what they have :)

sb Loc: Florida's East Coast

Picdude's thought on using a SATA drive is great. This gives you the option of having multiple drives, one of which you can take to work or a relative's house so that you have physically separated back-up (in case of fire, theft, sharknado, etc...). The SATA docking station is about $45 and the drives are cheap. If you aren't familiar with the www.tigerdirect.com website, check it out - great for parts. Other than the above, the RAID array is great because of the internal backup. As I always remind people, ALL drives will fail eventually!

BboH Loc: s of 2/21, Ellicott City, MD

I have 2 external drives - one with 4 250GB drives using RAID 5 and one with 2 2TB drives using RAID 1. These drives are my PRIMARY storage devices. I use the RAID 5 for documents and the RAID 1 for photography. Memorex backs up my C drive to the RAID 5 device.

skibumpkin Loc: Lakes Region, Maine

I have a similar network to yours with a couple Macs and 1 Windows machine. For years I had a spare computer that I had configured as a Linux backup for everything. When it finally died I considered replacing it, but instead purchased a Synology DS213 NAS device and 2 3 TB drives that I configured in a mirrored RAID arrangement. All wired devices are connected through GB ethernet switches. The Synology will work with Time Machine for Mac backups. I have an old Windows backup software for Windows 7, and the Synology also performs scheduled backups of older files to Amazon’s Glacier service for storage in case of a catastrophe here. The Synology is fast enough to work from directly with both Lightoom 5 and PhotoShop CC, though if I intend to a lot of post processing, I usually move the files to the computer. I have had the Synology for about a year and it has worked flawlessly so far.

Mickey88 Loc: Central Florida

I use 2 dual esata docks, the first one I bought was a Thermaltake BlacX Duet ST0014U USB eSATA Docking Station, great speed easy access for swapping out drives, I recently decided to get a 2nd and bought this one http://www.ebay.com/itm/261207568823?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649

I liked the 2nd one because you can clone a drive simply by putting in your original, putting in a bare drive and hitting the start button, it doesn't even have to be connected to a pc to do the cloning..

TimS Loc: GA

That's slick :)

Thanks for all the thoughts, everyone.

Manglesphoto Loc: 70 miles south of St.Louis

I have been using a Probox with two 2tb seagate internal drives ( the cap. is four 3tb drive which can be added later) connected to an iMac , via usb , one drive is storage and the other is backup. Simple to use after image are loaded from the SD card and edited its simple to drag and drop the file to the second drive.