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Hi, lengthy post here. I’m looking for a second opinion on my storage plan, would love to hear people’s thoughts. I’ve only started to look into storage solutions in the past 2 weeks. And I’m a student, on a student’s budget. I’m willing to spend up to $1000-1500 AUD.

Previous system:

I stored all my personal work on a 2TB Toshiba external drive. I also worked off this drive. I backed this drive up onto a 2TB Seagate external drive using Time Machine.

This is the new system I’m planning on implementing (I haven’t bought any of these items yet):

PROJECT DRIVE:

Samsung T7 SSD (1 or 2TB).

Edit all current projects on this drive – when the projects are completed they will be deleted off the drive.

PERSONAL WORK_VOL. 1:

10TB Seagate Iron Wolf 3.5” HDD in 2 or 4 bay enclosure.

Back-up current projects regularly to this drive, which is always connected to the computer. This drive contains all my past projects as well as my libraries, stock footage and other archival materials.

ARCHIVE_PERSONAL WORK_VOL. 1:

10TB Seagate Iron Wolf 3.5” HDD

OR

10TB WD My Book desktop drive.

This is a duplicate of the Personal Work_Vol. 1 drive. Either manually or using a program like Time Machine I’ll back up the 10TB Seagate Iron Wolf to this drive. This drive will then be disconnected and placed in another room in a waterproof and shockproof storage case. Back-ups will be at weekly or monthly intervals, depending on the rate I’m working at.

If I use the Iron Wolf, I would be using a docking station like the Sabrent USB 3.0 to SATA External Hard Drive Lay-Flat Docking Station for 2.5 or 3.5in HDD, SSD (Original w/Fan).

I had originally considered just using 2x 3.5” HDDs in the enclosure with a RAID 1 configuration, but I wasn’t comfortable with the idea of the only 2 drives containing all my past projects and archival material both living in the same enclosure, always running, always connected to my computer. Thus the 2nd drive living in a protective case in another room.

Also I just can’t afford to have 2x 10TB drives in the enclosure AND have a 3rd external back-up drive.

For the enclosure, I’m considering options from QNAP or Icy Box, specifically the QNAP TR-004 or the Icy Box IB-RD3640SU3. Again, I don’t think I’ll be needing hardware RAID capabilities as I want the back-ups to be physically separate for safety.

Not sure whether to go with 2 or 4 bays, as I will want to always keep the Personal Work_Vol. 1 (and onwards) drive in the enclosure to allow me to access archival material, which I re-use.

https://www.amazon.com.au/TR-004-Storage-Drive-Enclosure-Black/dp/B07K23ZJFN/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1GD6U7GQ76ITC&keywords=qnap+004&qid=1656381171&sprefix=qnap+00%2Caps%2C826&sr=8-1

I should also note that I’m currently working on a late 2013 Mac Pro with a 3.5 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon E5 processor, 32GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD.

Apologies for the rambling post, thanks for reading all the way to the end. Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

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I’d suggest the QNAP. I’ve worked with them previously but they were NAS versions instead of the DAS version you have. I’ve never heard of Icy Box before.

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List out your requirements.

  • Capacity
  • Performance
  • Portability
  • Redundancy

What kind of work are you doing? Video editing? Are USB external drives a requirement for portability/faster, more local storage?

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Cool, thanks. Also (I believe) having the ability to attach the QNAP to a NAS in the future is nice.

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Capacity: Given my budget, the project SSD couldn’t really be higher capacity than 2TB, which for most of my short film work should be enough. Again, for the back-up drive am looking at 10TB which with the current codecs and resolutions I’m shooting in could take me up to 5 years to use up. Once the back-up drive and archive drive are full, I’ll just move on to a new drive, Vol. 2 etc.

Performance: Will be editing UHD/DCI 4K H.265 10-bit video.

Portability: Not so important, can bring the project drive with me if I need to edit on location, which I almost never do. For larger projects in future, I could purchase something like a LaCie Rugged 5TB to store rushes.

Redundancy: As much as possible, given the budget. I’ll be storing current projects on top of the only copies of the last 10 years of my personal work.