NAS vs SAN for picture and video

[WTFH]

It depends on your requirements and budget.

[WTFH]

OK, just re-read the OP's post. The last paragraph contains 2 very different requirements.
1. Photo/video storage.
2. Photo/video editing.

For storage use NAS/SAN/cloud/whatever. The requirement is to store data, just so happens to be photos & video, but it's a data store. I use a couple of backup drives, a NAS and Flickr. When I'm shooting, I'll backup to iPad/iCloud on a daily basis until I get home (or run out to memory)

For editing, you don't want network traffic. Ideally you want two hard disks on your computer, one for the programs & some data and one as a scratch disk. Using photoshop/GIMP/lightroom/etc will require lots of memory/space when processing files.

[eek]

Ignoring the array thing, because that's just being pedantic - the confusion is still there. Do you go and buy something advertised as a NAS, or go and buy something advertised as a SAN array when they both (on the face of it) do very similar things.

But I can see you're moving to a pissing a contest, so I'll leave you be while I go and do this stuff for real.

There is no need for a SAN here its a NAS of some form that is actually required.

The options are as others have said are a NAS (either a prebuilt box or a HP microserver with FreeNAS or Unraid) or a Drobo device plugged into the single computer.

Given the price of Drobo's nowadays and the price of a HP microserver see HPE ProLiant Gen8 4GB RAM MicroServer | Ebuyer.com I would go for the Freenas, a usb stick to put Freenas on and the latter. For a bit more cash I would go for Unraid but that's just personal preference (and its now very good now unraid supports docuker and linuxserver.io create so many good docker containers).

As for the editing - you need 2 hard drives or a 2 SSD drives on the computer you are working on. Use one for the programs and another for the data as WFTH states.

[vwdan]

There is no need for a SAN here its a NAS of some form that is actually required.

Yes, I know - I said that yesterday

[jonnyboy]

I have a setup at home with twin QNAP Ts410 NAS boxes - box 1 has all my movies on it (ripped from BR and DVD and 'other' sources) and box 2 has all my photos and music (mine and families) on it. In my movies I have 4 x 3Tb drives and on my photos I have 4 x 1Tb drives. Both are set up to run RAID 1 (mirror) - for no other reason than drives fail from time to time, so the videos and pictures are protected.

For watching movies (streaming via Twonky or Plex) the drives are perfectly fine. And for viewing pictures or attaching to emails, the 2nd drive is again way fast enough.

But for editing, whilst it is fine for a single picture (processing HDR, general CS6 work, etc) when you go into review mode (for selection, reviewing, deleting etc) it grinds.

My setup tends to be.... take the photos, SD into laptop, copy the SD contents onto laptop, work on photos on laptop (mostly when I am on the train), when done, copy from laptop back onto NAS (2) for backups and streaming to photo frames dotted around the house. I keep a separate directory on my laptop for a few thousand hand picked photos for my laptops screen saver (good holiday photos, memories, etc).

I dont stream movies from the cloud, or store my photos on the cloud, or store my music on the cloud. I am old school - I like to own my content and have it local. I am old school, I hate relying on a cloud based service which may (a) be hacked, (b) go bankrupt or (c) do something with my photos/content that I dont want them to.

Just to complete the picture, my photos and music is backup up once a month to a portable 2GB drive (runs overnight, I dont have to do anything other than plug the disk in) which I keep in my car. I dont backup my movie collection as its too big - the only thing that would mean I lost the movies is either (a) burglers stealing the whole NAS units or (b) a house fire, and I have the original DVD/BR and could rip them again (but it would take ages, as there are thousands of them).

[Einstein Jnr]

I guess my original post may have been abit confusing ie storage vs editing, but i was looking to use it similar to what jonnyboy has described. I use lightroom to edit photos and sometimes I find myself going to photos 2 years old to reedit using new skills and they come out really well. So I don't want a place to "dump" data per se, but need to be able to work ideally from the "store". I have a 2014 Mac book pro with flash memory and local editing is enjoyable, but only have 256GB on there. Working from the server on the files over wireless can be abit of a drag sometimes. Maybe I should just replace my 4 x 1 TB drives with 4 x 4 TB drives and forget the NAS. From the costs it looks like it would be about £500 for the NAS and another £500 for the 4 x 4TB disks. A grand seems much to spend on a local storage solution.

[stek]

I guess my original post may have been abit confusing ie storage vs editing, but i was looking to use it similar to what jonnyboy has described. I use lightroom to edit photos and sometimes I find myself going to photos 2 years old to reedit using new skills and they come out really well. So I don't want a place to "dump" data per se, but need to be able to work ideally from the "store". I have a 2014 Mac book pro with flash memory and local editing is enjoyable, but only have 256GB on there. Working from the server on the files over wireless can be abit of a drag sometimes. Maybe I should just replace my 4 x 1 TB drives with 4 x 4 TB drives and forget the NAS. From the costs it looks like it would be about £500 for the NAS and another £500 for the 4 x 4TB disks. A grand seems much to spend on a local storage solution.

Go for a Thunderbolt 2 external, I've got 2 12gb ones, pretty nippy (and full already)...

LaCie something I got....

[scooterscot]

Which means either, he is extremely fussy what he keeps, or he is totally useless at photography.

Took over a 200 RAWs I'm sure the other month when snapping the milky-way. Now down to 4 files!

[sal]

If you already have a server that's running 24x7 and don't need the fancy stuff most NAS offer, but only basic fileshare your best bet is to just upgrade the storage on the server with larger drives, as for working over WiFi is your WiFi Router 802.11ac or 802.11g and does it have 1gig connection to your server? A decent 802.11ac WiFi should get you in the gigabit range.

[jonnyboy]

Nice picture... mind sharing the technical aspects - ISO, A,S, etc. I see you tone mapped - what did you do with the post processing of the raw image?