Small firm file server 3

[glass99]

Has anyone tried using a Network Attached Storage (NAS) for a small engineering office with some remote freelancers logging in?

We have been using Dropbox, which works very well in most respects. It has zero maintenance and setup, it allows access to anyone with an internet connection, and its backed up. The thing that DB does badly is it doesn't lock out other users when someone is working on a file.

I am thinking to have all our files on an NAS which is then backed up with Dropbox.

Does anyone have experience with this?

 

[zdas04]

I'm in the middle of moving my network storage (about 950 GB) from a computer that is dying to a new WD My Cloud NAS. Started Friday afternoon and I'm not quite to 100 GB moved. Hopefully the problems are with the dying computer and not with the whole "cloud" process. Some of the files are pretty old and some early attempts to scab on metadata were pretty primitive and that is what is crashing to process. Hopefully once the move is over life will be better. I'm hoping to use the WD cloud manager for the remote access thing so I can't help with dropbox questions.

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

Law is the common force organized to act as an obstacle of injustice Frédéric Bastiat

 

[glass99]

zdas04 - awesome, hopefully NAS is the way to go. Do you know if you can work on a CAD file directly sitting on the NAS, or do you have to download it locally first? Let me know how it goes with the WD My Cloud. It was on my short list of NAS possibilities.

 

[zdas04]

I will let you know as soon as I get the damn files over. So far I'm learning not to take too big a chunk at one time (my first cut was to grab the whole drive and drag it to the NAS, ran for 15 hours building file structures before it crashed the old server without copying a single file). Now I've build the first level folders and am coping the second through 25th at the second level folder level. When I crashed this after noon after 10 hours I had successfully moved 100 GB. Should be done by Wednesday.

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

Law is the common force organized to act as an obstacle of injustice Frédéric Bastiat

 

[glass99]

Yes, small chunks are key with big file transfers. It always screws up. The thing that always gets me is the 250 character filename limit. If it chokes after 1 hour and you come back 10 hours later, you have just wasted 9 hours

950GB is a lot, btw...what kind of files do you have?

 

[IRstuff]

Not sure what you're using, but that sounds awfully slow. I just copied a USB3 drive to another, no RAID, no nuthin, and copied everything (1.4TB) in about 16 hrs from start to finish. This was straight brute force copy using GoodSync

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[Ron]

I use Dropbox and WD MyCloud. Both work fine for my purposes. My group and I have access to almost everything from anywhere. My goal is to get to the point where I have only executables on my laptop and little or no data storage...at least long term.

The biggest drawback I've seen to Dropbox is that if you sync it with any of your computers, you need a lot of free space on those computers. I ran out of space on my laptop from Dropbox taking it all! I changed the hard drive and went to a 1tB drive, which solved that issue but have an occasional windows snafu from the OS transfer.

I did the same as IRstuff...used a dedicated synchronizing program for transfer. Faster and more reliable.

 

[glass99]

Ron - with your WD MyCloud, can you work on a file like a Word file or ACAD directly on the NAS, or do you need a local copy? I ask because I am sick of the conflicted file copies we get with Dropbox.

 

[zdas04]

I've been an "active" photographer for over 40 years. I've scanned all the pre-digital negatives to jpg. That is about half of the space. The rest is project files from 11 years in business. I keep everything (I converted the mainframe PROFS archives to Outlook so I have every non-spam e-mail I've gotten or sent since 1980 on there). When I first did the conversion It was on "Bernoulli drives", migrated to CD, then DVD, then as space got cheep (3 TB for under $200, the first 10 MB Bernoulli drive I bought in 1985 was around $50/platter ($5/MB, $5 million/TB) to digital media. When I look back at the old e-mail, we were just as facile 34 years ago as today (most e-mails are simply worthless, but every now and then a search will turn up a discussion that bears on a current project or reminds me of a way to solve a current problem).

IRStuff,
I'm copying over a dedicated ethernet cable which is advertised to be about 100 times the speed of USB3. I think the problem is the dying server I'm coming off of. When stuff works right, this is the fastest copy I've ever seen, problem is that when it craps out, it sits there for hours looking like it is working and then crashes. I'm betting that my transfer should have been under 8 hours without this wonky computer. Day 3 is going better than Day 2 (the copy I started at 8:00 last night is 70% finished at 7:30 this morning, It is over 200 GB copied.

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

Law is the common force organized to act as an obstacle of injustice Frédéric Bastiat

 

[Ron]

glass99..direct access in My Cloud. I believe you can control editing to allow file to only be opened and changed by single user at a time. Check sharing options.

David...I have similar problem of keeping lots of stuff. Not pleased with dedicated scanner results on my negatives. How did you do yours?

 

[zdas04]

Got a high-end slide/negative scanner from Nikon. Great results.

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

Law is the common force organized to act as an obstacle of injustice Frédéric Bastiat

 

[glass99]

Thanks Ron.

Seems like you don't really need Dropbox if you have an NAS plus syncing software like GoodSync to give you a local copy. Dropbox would only then be useful for backup and web access.

 

[brandonbw]

We are using a Synology NAS with Google Drive. The files we work on are local. Not sure if Drive works exactly the same as Dropbox, but it does have the option to use Dropbox instead. Synology automatically syncs any time a file is changed. But you can always just map the network drive and work right off of the NAS.

A mapped network drive setup could involve making a freelancer account that sees specific folders. Synology is pretty easy to setup for either method.

I just put together a freenas server to see how that can work too. In case you want to research some other options out there.

I prefer working off of local files and letting everything sync in the background.

B+W Engineering and Design
Los Angeles Civil Engineer and Structural Engineer

http://bwengr.com

 

[Ron]

David...I have a Nikon 4000 slide/negative scanner, but I didn't like the results...but then I hired a college student for the summer and that was one of her tasks. I'll do a few myself and check.

 

[zdas04]

Mine is the CoolScan V ED. I've had it a few years and the results have been exceptional

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

Law is the common force organized to act as an obstacle of injustice Frédéric Bastiat

 

[Ron]

Thanks, David. Does that one operate on a 64 bit system? Problem I had with my CoolScan IV (4000) is that is will only run on 32 bit system, Windows Vista or earlier.

 

[zdas04]

It is running on a 32 bit system, but that is the server that is on its last legs. I never even thought about that, I'll look into it tomorrow (or whenever the copy completes).

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

Law is the common force organized to act as an obstacle of injustice Frédéric Bastiat

 

[FreddyNurk]

zdas04, can't shut the server down, pull the drive and copy off that way?

As for backups, versions and file locking, there are a multitude of software development tools that do exactly that, the biggest problem with them is that they're not designed for project recording, and thus the configuration and operation tends to be a bit confusing. SVN is one such tool, also solves some of the storage space issues as it only keeps differences in versions of files rather than complete iterations. Of course, a huge issue with them is that they don't run on a NAS system (at least not that I'm aware...).

 

[beej67]

Have you considered just continuing to use Dropbox with a better internal communication system between your employees to ensure they're not simultaneously working in the same file?

I use Dropbox for my entire body of corporate files. When I work with other folks, I merely share the project folder with them, not the whole thing. Then I back up everything once a week to a local drive simply using an old DOS batch file I wrote with "XCOPY" (yeah, I know). To make sure me and my subs or collaborators don't step on each other's toes when working on a project, I make sure everyone has an email account with my server (which is run through the google aps 'gmail' style interface) and then I just shoot them a gchat every time I want to work in the same project they're working on, to find out which files they have open.

One thing I will say about backing up to Dropbox - don't do it. It's slow as all get out to have a weekly backup file try to sync through the cloud, because then every week your entire server's contents have to be transferred through your internet connection to the cloud. Huge pain in the rear. I found it much, much more efficient to host all my corporate data on Dropbox, allow it to sync in bits and pieces throughout the week as files change (as Dropbox was intended to be used), and then 'backup' all my corporate files to a local external drive. This gives me redundancy in four locations. One, my main computer, two, my laptop which stays plugged in all day when I'm not out and about catching the Dropbox cloud updates, three, the local external drive, and four, the cloud itself.



Hydrology, Drainage Analysis, Flood Studies, and Complex Stormwater Litigation for Atlanta and the South East -

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[glass99]

beej67: I love the convenience of Dropbox. Its really quite amazing how easy and powerful it is for distributed groups and for working on the road. However, the file locking and occasional 24 hr delay in syncing gives me heartburn. Someone not working on the latest file version is potentially very expensive. I am time poor, and this feels like something which should be automated. The other small problem with Dropbox is that file references in AutoCad do not have the same path. File references seem to work half the time.

I understand there are some higher end cloud systems like Huddle and Egnyte which deal with file locking, but they are much more expensive. So: I am thinking that remote staff should do a VPN into an NAS in the office, and we keep Dropbox for backup and for occasional working when offline.