Ok, well it may not be that exciting.  But, I finally have that extra storage space that I need.  Friday, my Drobo and two 1TB hard drives came in.  I was going to get more hard drives but I figured that there would be better sales come July 4th weekend.  So this should hold me over for a while.

Sad Part… after installing the drives and trying to format them, my computer indicated that one of the drives failed.  So now, I’m going to have to send it back and wait for them to send me another.  So I’m a little bummed out.

Oh well, I freed up some space on my computer by ensuring I have backups on my NAS and I burned additional copies to DVD just in case.

Currently on my computer, I work off of a 500GB hard drive that is mirrored (RAID 1) with another 500 GB hard drive.  I also have a 1TB network attached server (NAS) that is also mirrored.  So every night, my NAS automatically backs up whatever is on my 500GB hard drive inside my computer.  As shoots are completed for editing, I burn them to 2 DVDs and make sure they are completely backed up on the NAS, then I delete from my computer hard drive.

These days, unfortunately, my NAS is reaching its capacity; I only have 30 GB free.  So that means I have nearly 900GB worth of data stored, the remaining 70GB is occupied when the drive was formatted.  Bad part is that I also only have about 20GB left on the hard drive inside my computer.  What does this all amount up to?  I need another NAS or long term backup storage solution.  Ideally, I’d like at least a 4 bay NAS that is hot-swappable, like a Drobo or Lacie.  This solution will also have to compatible with both windows and macs, so I’m probably going to have to format it as FAT32. With about 4-6 shoots coming up in the next 3-4 weeks, I need something soon.

Below, you’ll see some of the options compiled onto a spreadsheet to help compare what units/drives are better bang for the buck.  The highlighted portions show a comparable packaged unit versus a unit that I can be together myself.  With the Drobo, I can potentially achieve a higher capacity.  But get larger sized hard drives (2TB+) are not that cheap.  But the Drobo can grow with me as drives become cheaper.

But… I’m still thinking about my options.  This is just a start of shopping.