Some
Background
Since
the mid-1990's photographers have relied on hard drives to store their
scanned or digital original photographs, not to mention all of the other
files that anyone who uses a computer relies on for their business as
well as personal records. And, as Photoshop files get larger and larger,
(my archived images with Adjustment Layers now typically run 100 to
400 Megabytes each), we all find ourselves buying ever-increasing numbers
of hard drives in ever increasing sizes.
Many photographers
archive their raw files as well as their completed image files to DVD.
These are inexpensive, but can be slow to access, bulky to store, and
slow to index and retrieve. Instead, many professionals are paying the
moderate additional cost of using online hard drive storage instead.
500GB to 1 Terabyte outboard Firewire and USB2 drives are priced at
about $1 / GB, and the convenience of having immediate access to ones
files at any time is not to be underestimated, especially for the busy
pro.
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This
a RAID
RAID
stands for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks. Simply put, it's
a technique for linking together multiple hard drives so that
they appear to your computer to be a single drive, but which spread
the data across these multiple drives so that if any one of them
fails the data on the remaining drives can be used to rebuild
the files.
RAID
comes in multiple flavours but the RAID level that offers the
highest level of reliability, combined with most efficient capacity
utilization is RAID 5.
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| With
RAID 5 and three or more disks, if any one of the disks fails the
faulty drive can be removed, a new one installed, and all of the
lost data restored, automatically. And if you configure the system
this way, by only using 3 of the 4 drives, with what is called a
hot standby, when a drive fails the system takes the failed drive
offline, fires up the spare, and recreates the data, all automatically. |
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ReadyNAS
RND Series
With
a quick overview of RAID behind us, we're now ready have a look
at what the ReadyNAS RND Series is, and what it offers. This device
is made by Netgear and their web site can provide considerable
additional information.
This
is a one Terabyte drive (one thousand Gigabytes) in an enclosure
about the size of a large toaster. Within the enclosure are in
fact four 250 Gigabyte drives. But to your computer they appear
as one large drive. As it comes from the factory the ReadyNAS
RND Series is configured as RAID 5, offering almost total protection
against data loss, excepting theft and physical destruction. Being
configured this way reduces available data space to about 650GB,
but one can change the RAID level to O, and this gain access to
the full Terabyte, but with no redundancy.
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Computer
wonks will now be asking themselves – what's so special
about this? Looks like Reichmann has just discovered RAID; big
deal!
Well,
no, I didn't just discover RAID. I've been involved in developing
computer, software and telecom systems for more than 20 years.
What caught my interest about the ReadyNAS RND Series though is
that in addition to being a 1 Terabyte drive with built-in RAID
5 level controller, it is also a network drive. In other words,
instead of attaching to your computer via an internal bus connection,
or Firewire, or USB2, it sits on your LAN. Since many people now
have home routers for high speed Net connectivity, and home and
small office LANS are commonplace, so that family members and
co-workers can share files, printers, and an Internet connection,
a Network drive can make sense for many people. Let's see why. |
What
is a Network Storage System?
1.)
A disk system that is attached to the network rather than to a PC
2.)
It is used to store and retrieve data using PCs that have access
to it
3.)
From the viewpoint of a PC, Network Storage appears as a Network Share
device in “My Network Places”
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Feature |
Key Benefit |
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Protection:
» Redundancy
» Built-in
system monitoring
» Hot-swappable
HDD
» LCD
Status Panel |
» Never lose
data due to a HDD Failure
» Actively
working to keep data safe, email alerts with automatic shutdown
» Eliminate
downtime when replacing HDD
» Displays
useful system information |
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Access:
» Cross-platform
client compatible
» Gigabit
Ethernet
» HTTP,
WebDAV and FTP support
» Windows
Active Directory Integration
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» Seamless
support for Windows, Macintosh, and Linux Clients
» Ensures
quick file transfers even during simultanous operation
» Remotely
access data across Internet
» Set
file access permissions on NAS via AD |
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Upgradeability:
» Patent
Pending X-RAID™ Technology
» Online
firmware updates
» Unique
firmware plug-in architecture
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» Automatic
RAID management and volume expansion while maintaining redundancy
» Quickly
update the ReadyNAS firmware via 2-mouse clicks
» Incorporate
new NAS technologies as they become available |
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Digital Photography |
ReadyNAS
delivers digital photographers network-enabled storage for all
of their high-resolution images. From RAW files to JPEGs, the
custom Infrant network storage microprocessor, built into ReadyNAS,
was specifically designed to handle large files and has the ability
to store, share and serve all of the images along the digital
workflow process —giving photographers the freedom of fast file
serving and data protection with hardware RAID. |
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Digital
