Thank God I bought a NAS!

[rodw]

Been on the forum most days for a week or two now but have not been able to post much as My laptop HDD had died and I've been really busy. I dropped it off to my local PC shop to get it fixed (cos I did not have the time).

Picked it up tonight on the way back from work and have been busy installing stuff back on it. After installng MS Office and Adobe Master suite and 4 printer drivers (yeh I know but I work in the industry -- 1 x Black and White Multi Function, 1 x 6 colour Epson, 1 battery operated portable and one label printer), and the Synology Data replicator client, I restored 100 gb of data (including 30 gb or so of photos) I have got it pretty much all up and running again with no data loss!

Bad news is the replacement drive is only 500 gb (but is a faster RPM) and it only has 291 gb free but who really cares when I have 2.3 TB free on my Synology NAS AND 3 empty drive bays that can hold another 3 TB each!

Very glad I added a NAS to my home network over Christmas.... I think it has just paid for itself!

Now just have to decide if I should reinstall Nikon NX2 and was wondering if I should buy a copy of Lightroom or the Nikon Capture software while I was at it. Any ideas? Lightroom is fairly cheap for me as I am entitled to purchase a teacher/student version through work.

[ricktas]

Buy whichever suits you. Download a trial copy of both and give them a go. I use lightroom, but that does not mean you will like it, and want to use it. Really this is a personal choice.

[crazymorton]

good news about the NAS. about to head down this road myself so i'm pleased to read this. will now show the finance minister this excellent result to get budgetry approval. :lol2:

[Bax]

I'm tempted to jump down the NAS path myself, I've been thinking about it for a long time, but I kind of want to avoid the constant power consumption, do they have a sleep mode?

[rodw]

I'm tempted to jump down the NAS path myself, I've been thinking about it for a long time, but I kind of want to avoid the constant power consumption, do they have a sleep mode?

Yes, they do. Mine only draws 51 watts and it has a setting to put the drives to sleep after a specific time. They do a lot more than just store files so it is well worth having a good look at their specs. For my needs, Synology won hands down but QNAP is another brand. Netgear also does them but they are not as feature rich.

Mine stores files, does backups from PCs automagically, publishes printers to ipad, shares photos, music and video, acts as a DNLA media server to my TV etc, surveillance station for IP Camera security, acts as a web server and using Netdrive (which is free for personal use), I can map a drive at work to my home network.

[rodw]

I'm tempted to jump down the NAS path myself, I've been thinking about it for a long time, but I kind of want to avoid the constant power consumption, do they have a sleep mode?

Yes, they do. Mine only draws 51 watts and it has a setting to put the drives to sleep after a specific time. They do a lot more than just store files so it is well worth having a good look at their specs. For my needs, Synology won hands down but QNAP is another brand. Netgear also does them but they are not as feature rich.

Mine stores files, does backups from PCs automagically, publishes printers to ipad, shares photos, music and video, acts as a DNLA media server to my TV etc, surveillance station for IP Camera security, acts as a web server and using Netdrive (which is free for personal use), I can map a drive at work to my home network.