Image Storage: RAID 5, are you using SSD or hard drives?

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I'm upgrading from (2) 5T Western Digital My Passport external hard drives for MAC (one is a main the other a CC backup) to a RAID 5 system. I watched Steve's Lightroom # 1 video. He uses a Thunderbay product from OWC. I am asking for those using a RAID 5 system are you using SSD or HHD (hard drive). After talking with a sales rep from OWC, I'm looking at the OWC Thunderbay 4 with Thunderbolt 3 connection with 16T of storage. 16T makes ~12T on the RAID 5. Going SSD vs Hard drive on the RAID 5 is a lot bucks. So... I was wondering about performance for the price, Your thoughts? Next question, how are you backing up your RAID 5 system? I will use BackBlaze for cloud storage and I think the OWC Mercury Elite Pro dual 3 port 24T and use RAID 1 as my backup to the RAID 5. That setup will give me a total of 2 backups + 1 virtual for the RAID 5.
 
i do NOT use RAID.

i have backup software that COPIES my areas i wanted backed up to a second drive (and then to other locations). in general i suggest you have at least three copies of anything you care about, one of which is off-site (cloud or physically).

while RAID or mirroring can protect you from the interruption of a failure, remember that it can't protect you from things like accidental (or malicious) deletion.

at this time i've been buying 8TB SSDs and that's enough to hold a substantial portion of my catalog.

i also use use an NVME SSD as my import/editing location and that speeds things up quite a bit and then i move that to a different SSD (within lightroom) when i'm done editing

i should add i do NOT use spinning disks other than as one of my backup locations. you can get a 20TB (spinning) HDD and that's a good backup thing, but it's for backup only
 
I use a Synology DS920+ NAS configured in RAID 5. It's sole use is as storage for my RAW and TIFF files. It is populated with 4x 4Tb drives delivering around 12Tb of storage. I did not purchase additional cache for my NAS. The NAS also utilises BackBlaze for cloud storage. I've had this configuration for over 12 months and are very happy with its reliability and performance.

I would have gone the SSD solution but the cost quickly sorted that out for me. As the network users consist of one person (just me), the lesser speeds that may be a result of the HHD solution versus SSD hasn't been ascertained nor worried about. I import in batches after shooting, but normally process 1 image in Lr/Ps at a time. The speeds appear not dissimilar to if I was undertaking those tasks on my SSD equipped computer.
 
SSDs are really pricy, so I went with spinning drives for mine. Also, always backup a raid 5 array. Although they can rebuild if there is a drive failure, that rebuild will stop if the system encounters a disk error. The numbers of errors allowed per disk are based on size, so there's a chance if one drive goes out you may not be able to rebuild it, especially when using larger drives. Always have backups - if you data isn't in three places, it doesn't exist :).

(Heck, even if you were mirroring - raid 1 - I'd still hav back-ups in case of theft, power surges, falls, etc.)
 
SSDs were too costly so I went with spinning disks. Right now I have DS920+ with four 6TB HDs in Raid 5. I use this as my Time Machine backup from my Mac. Separately I back up my Mac to Backblaze with it currently setup to keep all versions of my files for a year.

I do have a 2 disk raid box directly attached to my Mac with a total of 12 TBs of space (7 TB currently used). My workflow is that I keep the current years images on the Mac (2TB SSD) and offload to the external drive at the end of the year (or if I need space). That drive is also spinning disk since I don't really need it to be super fast. All drives are backed up via Time Machine (to the DS920+) and Backblaze.
 
I'm upgrading from (2) 5T Western Digital My Passport external hard drives for MAC (one is a main the other a CC backup) to a RAID 5 system. I watched Steve's Lightroom # 1 video. He uses a Thunderbay product from OWC. I am asking for those using a RAID 5 system are you using SSD or HHD (hard drive). After talking with a sales rep from OWC, I'm looking at the OWC Thunderbay 4 with Thunderbolt 3 connection with 16T of storage. 16T makes ~12T on the RAID 5. Going SSD vs Hard drive on the RAID 5 is a lot bucks. So... I was wondering about performance for the price, Your thoughts? Next question, how are you backing up your RAID 5 system? I will use BackBlaze for cloud storage and I think the OWC Mercury Elite Pro dual 3 port 24T and use RAID 1 as my backup to the RAID 5. That setup will give me a total of 2 backups + 1 virtual for the RAID 5.

Hi Kris. I'm pondering my setup and I'm wondering why you went with RAID 5 and not just a RAID 1 with additional backup? There is just so much tech in this whole subject it can be hard for me to figure out at times.
 
I am running a Thunderbay 6 (yes, 6 bay drive, they made that years ago) under Raid 5. I use 7200 rpm HDD.
 
I use a OWC Thunderbay Flex with spinning HDD's. I haven't really felt the need for SSD's to be honest. The only thing that makes me want to move to SSD's at some point are noise and wake up time. I use a MacBook Pro and even though I have it set to not turn off HDDs, my drives will eventually sleep so there is a 5 - 10 second wakeup time to spin up all 8 drives when I want to access something on the enclosure.
 
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OWC Thunderbay mini which uses 2.5 inch drives for less noise and heat in RAID 5 with spinning 4x4TB drives. My LR catalog and current year images are on a TB 4 SSD with older years out on the RAID…I have smart previews on the SSD and unplug it and carry it along with my laptop on travels. The RAID is TB as well…and pretty fast but not as fast as the SSD is.
 
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(Heck, even if you were mirroring - raid 1 - I'd still hav back-ups in case of theft, power surges, falls, etc.)

I keep a copy of my raid 5 system in the house, unplugged, and another copy offsite in the bank vault (mostly because I don't have family in the area and not worth bothering friends who don't understand backups). Finally I use back blaze as a final resort though to recover > 20TB will be a herculean effort.

I backup to the house copy after every major shot and to the copy in the bank vault when I remember (every month or two).
 
I don't use RAID 5 (use RAID1 in a Sinology NAS enclosure) and use spinning drives for that. It's purely for back up. So my process is to copy my photo's to a 2TB SSD and back that up to a second 2TB SSD. The SSD is my working drive for Lightroom and as it gets close to being full I back that up to the NAS, wipe the SSD's and start over.
 
SSDs are really pricy, so I went with spinning drives for mine. Also, always backup a raid 5 array. Although they can rebuild if there is a drive failure, that rebuild will stop if the system encounters a disk error. The numbers of errors allowed per disk are based on size, so there's a chance if one drive goes out you may not be able to rebuild it, especially when using larger drives. Always have backups - if you data isn't in three places, it doesn't exist :).

(Heck, even if you were mirroring - raid 1 - I'd still hav back-ups in case of theft, power surges, falls, etc.)
I do raid 1 (mirror) because of the "rebuilding" issues. I use top of the line 8GB rotating disks. 14GB total in my Synology 920 NAS.
 
I'm looking at the OWC Thunderbay 4 with Thunderbolt 3 connection with 16T of storage. 16T makes ~12T on the RAID 5.
I use this exact same product and configuration as my primary working drive. My startup drive is the internal SSD in my iMac Pro. I echo what others have said regarding backups, though, in that RAIDs of any sort are inherently risky for archiving. I have had RAID systems fail completely, no rebuild possible. Several years ago, a gentleman who worked at OWC, who was an expert in such things, explained to me at length that no RAID is a completely reliable backup. Thus, I use Carbon Copy Cloner to back up directly to four individual drives in other OWC enclosures. This structure is known as JBOD (just a bunch of disks). It is more time-consuming doing four individual backups as opposed to a single RAID system, but CCC runs in the background and if a single drive fails, all I need do is buy another disk and copy the files over.

I love my SSD for apps and startup, but personally I see no need to spend the money for SSDs as backup. A good platter drive with a Thunderbolt connection is blindingly fast, which is why I use that for my primary working drive. For backups, some of my old drive enclosures are USB 2.0, slow as molasses by today's standards, but I don't really care since CCC runs in the background and if it takes awhile longer, it doesn't matter. I even have one old external that requires Firewire!

I have several custom backup protocols within CCC, including one that backs up only my SSD to an external drive. I also have an 8 TB single drive using Time Machine to back up both the SSD and my RAID working drive(s). Keep in mind, though, that Time Machine is not archival. It will erase older files as the drive fills.

SSDs can fail, too. I've had it happen. Replacing a platter drive is a lot easier on my wallet. lYou might confirm with OWC, but most of their external enclosures can be easily configured as different RAID systems or as JBOD. Also, I recommend making sure that your OWC enclosure is one that allows easy swapping of drives. When mine get full, I simply replace them with new drives and store the "naked" drives in a fireproof safe. OWC sells a very inexpensive device that allows you to temporarily plug in and read a "naked" drive. Just pull off the old files you want and return the drive to storage.

Hope this helps!
 
My QNAP RAID NAS boxes will take either hard drives or SSD ones and I use only hard drives. The SSD is important for multiple people working on video projects on a fast network connection. The whole point of RAID is that a drive can fail and no data is lost. I keep a replacement drive on site so replacing a drive takes less than 10 minutes and the auto rebuild take about 24 hours.

There are fast 7200 RPM drives for server environments that are not the best choice for a home office NAS. Data I/O is largely determined by the processor and the operating system and internal RAM for buffering. I have 7200 RPM and 5400 RPM drives in my two NAS enclosures and the faster drives run 15-20 degrees Farenheit hotter than the 5400 speed drives. They are all drives engineered for use in a NAS.

From my primary workstation I have a dedicated 10GB Ethernet port and a direct connection to the 10GB port on the NAS. Data throughput is much like I get with my internal SSD drives.
 
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