Help? External Storage options: QNAP TS-869 Pro vs Synology DS1813

[fxt1]

<p>I'm looking to get a NAS Storage device but pretty behind on best tech on the market.. could use some feedback from anyone who's a bit better versed in the specific needs of a photographer?</p>

<p>I need a large amount of storage, and a really simple system that can be programmed to auto-backup any new or changed files from my main working system.. (I think I can do this via robocopy with the /mir option?).. Got a large amount of data (currently around 12TB but constantly growing.. so needs to be moderately expandable for the next few years - at least up to 16TB).. Not planning to work off the drives, just to archive work and be able to access individual image files moderately easily over the network when I need to access old images.</p>

<p>Really like the look of these two 8 bay drives, and they have good reviews on smartnetbuilder:</p>

<p>http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas/nas-reviews/32157-synology-ds1813-diskstation-reviewed<br>

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas/nas-reviews/32071-qnap-ts-869pro-nas-reviewed</p>

<p>Wondering if anyone has any experience with either, and which you'd recommend? Also - advice on the best configuration? I've not set up any RAID systems before... and I intend to keep copies of all valuable work on another system.. and would be quite content use these in a hot-swappable JBOD configuration.. but I'm guessing that's not advisable?</p>

<p>Any help/thoughts would be greatly appreciated!</p>

[peterbcarter]

<p>QNAPS:</p>

<p>I own one and have used a one drive version as a master configuration server and two 16 drive servers where I worked. I liked the machines.</p>

<p>I have only had two issues with the machines. 1) They falsely down a drive when response time is an issue (consumer version of drives aka cheaper ones) and 2) Mine (TS-412) was lacking in cpu power and could not deliver more than 40 k/s. The unit you are looking at will not suffer from (2).</p>

<p>Fantastic well built units, bar none. They will work as advertised.</p>

<p>One thing you need to look at is the 16 tb file system limit from linux, the OS in the boxes. You may have to split your repository, depending on your raid / drive configurations.</p>

<p>One thing that I had noticed is the buffering is quite good on iSCSI and NFS. On our 16 drive model, we ran 8 drive standard drive and 8 drive ssd. With raid 6, I found not differences between each array with iSCSI or NFS serving. </p>

 

[ellis_vener_photography]

I looked at both and decided on the DROBO 5D, but all three systems are fine.