Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2024/07/27
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]The project is done.? Tina now has a new, working library of her images on her NAS.? I have turned over the NAS to her to use as she see fit.? I will do the ongoing maintenance of it as required. It is now organized into a simple to use seamless storage space of one big HDD. or so it looks to her.? All her images are stored by country and in alphabetic order.?? This is in contrast to the before, when all the images were scattered in multiple HDD, and she woud install whatever HDD she needed to get to images form this or that country.? It is a massive step forwards. The reason I am writing this is to warn you that it is not as easy as it looks... and that there are a lot of considerations to be made that are techie.... and some pitfalls... It really is a straightforward operation...? Setup the new box, copy all files there, done. The one thing I learned was that there are more considerations to be made, and you should think those through first, rather than in the middle of the conversion.? ( I will cop to the fact that the long time of doing this project was because I did not check out all the items needed, and needed to repeat several operations as I ran into dead ends. How nerdy are you?? To run a NAS, and especially in this instance to MAINTAIN it..... will require a different pool of knowledge than the average home computer hack.? It runs differently.... it requires some different thinking....? NAS also has its own language.... (Nerd?)?? Its own programs.? If you are not comfortable with that, get something different.... or get your IT person at work to help you.... If you have spare HDD you wish to include in your NAS, you should figure out the SMALLEST one... then install that one into the original array, and use SHR Raid array design. That allows you to use different HDD sizes and use all of the available space on each.... If you wait till you are done, then try to install the smaller HDD, it will not accept it as additional storage.? ( Larger, yes, smaller, NO) Backup of the NAS.... the easiest way ( Synology based ) is to use Hyperbackup and an external HDD array.? ( means external USB HDD.) So plug one into the NAS, setup the SW, and life is good..... Until it is time to do your BackBlaze off site backup.... which will NOT WORK with NAS storage, even for the USB connected HDD you use for backup locally,? for their $99/year cheapie plan..... Off to Amazon to get a USB switch. It is a push button affair that switches your USB backups fro m the back side of your NAS to the Computer, which BackBlaze will accept.? When your BB backup is done, push the switch again, and back it goes to the NAS.? Not totally elegant, but it works. There is a more elegant automatic programmed solution, but that requires a $700 piece of hardware to replace the $20 switch. Plus some fairly esoteric programming and messing around with your computer. NAS requires *wired Ethernet.*? There is really no way around this.? There are a few cheats.... and caveats....This can be done using a simple wireless repeater (slows down the work, but is cheap and easy)? or a wire, which is fast, but might mean tearing into the walls to run.? If you have your computer already WIRED to the Internet, you could use an Ethernet switch box ($20) and also meet this requirement. The only reasons to go to a NAS is if you are a computer geek and like to play with this stuff, you are in a real networked environment with multiple users ( read that as in an OFFICE environment), or you just have so many images or records and you need fast access to any one of them 24/7. If it were me, and I had less developed computer knowledge, my best suggestion is to use a big, USB HDD array... up to 8 HDD in a? single box for around $300. HDD extra. And with that, I will no longer be telling you about Tina's NAS.? She appears happy.? That is all I wanted to accomplish. Mission Success! Frank Filippone BMWRed735i at gmail.com