Image storage

In the past I have written about storage for images and since its been a while since I was routinely on the forum, I thought I would provide an update. I've been using Synology storage products since 2010 and the Rackstation since 2015 or thereabouts. I find them reliable and bulletproof which is what you want for storing your data.

Its currently equipped with 12TB of disks in a RAID configuration, specifically Synology's Hybrid RAID configuration. This provides about 11TB of network attached storage which also contains my digitised CD and video collections amongst other things in addition to the images.



This has been a reliable arrangement containing what is now decades of images, but recently there was an event that brought home the need for redundant data storage, just to be sure. If data does not exist in multiple locations, its always at risk of being lost. We all know this, but maybe don't always act until its too late, or some crisis forces action.

The equipment in the rack is powered from a UPS. For some reason I needed to power it all down and I felt this would be a good opportunity to clean the dust from the disk trays.

When everything was powered up again two disks did not come back and the volume was broken. Long story short, I installed two new disks and was able to recover the volume without data loss. But it took a week and required poking around inside the device operating system to do so. I took the backup before doing any work on recovering the volume since there was a good chance I could have broken it completely. But I was lucky enough to recover the whole thing intact.

Now I have another NAS as a backup device in the shed (not your average shed it must be said). Effectively an off site backup.

What has been learned:

RAID alone is not a bulletproof data safety mechanism.
You should ALWAYS have a backup, and preferably off site.
Hard drives have a finite life span. Plan ahead to minimise the risk of losing a disk through age.
Never touch anything that's working.

Actually nothing has been learned, this was all known. What has happened though its that all of these thing have now been put in place as they should have been long ago. Don't let this happen to you.

The rack in the image above comprises an Untangle powered edge device in a rack mount mini server chassis, a small unmanaged switch and the NAS itself. Internet access is a 100M fibre connection. Power conditioning and backup power is from a rackmounted APC UPS. Its in the bottom of the rack out of the picture because these things weigh plenty. It's a long way from what was in place years ago but works well, unless you touch something you shouldn't. The "Shed" is an IT hub in its own right with wired internet, Cisco aironet powered local wireless network and is airconditioned. Not your average shed and hence why a suitable location to host the backup NAS.

Synology Rackstation 815 data sheet