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#63883 by lmlowery
Tue Apr 29, 2014 10:24 am
So I decided to try NAS because I'm now working from home and an office. (Thank you economy for picking up a little bit!) But I have zero experience with network attached storage and I have no idea how to set it up. Ideally I think I would like to be able to work with drawing files right off of the server as if I was still working from only one computer. Is that a good idea or no? And what DCAD files/folders should be on the NAS? Drawings folder only? Or folders with reference files too? What about symbol folders?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks!
Lori
#63889 by Neil Blanchard
Tue Apr 29, 2014 3:11 pm
Lori,

NAS units that can be purchased off the shelf work just like any peer-to-peer shared drive / folder in Windows. You typically set them up initially with a browser window from your computer; and typically you accept the default settings, including RAID 5. This is a parity setup that protects your data even if on of the hard drives in the NAS unit fail - you just replace it with a similar drive, and it rebuilds the RAID 5 array.

Another excellent option is to (later?) buy a second NAS unit, that backs up the main unit, and if the main one fails, you have a second copy of everything all set to go.

An alternate less expensive way to go is to buy (or build) two external hard drives and use those instead. These would attach with USB cables; rather than with a LAN cable. So they would be physically close to your computer, and you can set these up as alternating backups for your computer hard drive, or to store the primary files on one and back them up to the other. Backups should be done with a program (like Second Copy) so they are done regularly; and then you can (and probably should) take the backup unit out of the office each time you leave the office for the day.
#63891 by Aaron Ben-Avraham
Tue Apr 29, 2014 3:51 pm
Hi Lori. It would be helpful if you could tell us a little more about how things are set up at the office, such as are you working on a stand alone pc with all the files on that PC, or are you (and others) working from a network share with the drawing files, xrefs, symbols/templates, etc hosted on a "server" (either an actual Windows server in a Domain or simply another peer PC fucntioning as the Server)?


Thanks,

Aaron
#63892 by lmlowery
Tue Apr 29, 2014 9:56 pm
Thanks for the tips Neil! I actually already bought a Synology NAS drive with two bays, but just one disk to start off with. Maybe I will get the 2nd disk for a backup drive.

Aaron, right now it's just me and I have one main computer where all my DataCAD drawing files are, and also an external hard drive that I have affectionately named FlatFile on which resides closed jobs dating back to whenever I first started using DataCAD. Additionally I have a laptop at my cute little downtown space I leased last fall. (In the interest of full disclosure...I am not a young person, I have never worked at a large firm and I have always done my own IT through a process known as "winging it")

What I would like to do is have all of my drawing files accessible on one drive, including everything on FlatFile and work directly from that drive from wherever I am and whatever computer I happen to be using that day. And if I worked a couple hours on a drawing from one location, hopped over to the 2nd location for a meeting and happened to make a couple quick revisions to a drawing using the computer I have there..everything would be in one place as if I was working from one hard drive that can somehow magically be anywhere I want it to be without me having to actually lug around an external drive and probably lose it somewhere. (Voilà! Network Attached Storage! Mind boggling.)

In the end I think what I did was OK, I got the synology drive, and installed it per their instructions and got it set up like a little server. I'm able to access it just fine from my remote location and experimented today with opening drawing files and modifying them right from the server folder and it worked great. Apparently I can even access the files from my phone with an app, but that was more than I could handle today. Baby steps.

My question is, what DataCAD folders should I install on the NAS, other than the drawing folder? But I think I figured out I should put my default drawing folder, XREF and Bitmap folders on the NAS. Is that right? Anything else? Is that the dumbest question ever? I've been working with two independent setups for so long it's hard for me to wrap my ancient brain around network storage. Yes, I am archaic. In my defense, the last time I looked into network storage it was out of my price range. That might have been 15 years ago but whatever. :-)

Lori
#63914 by Neil Blanchard
Fri May 02, 2014 8:47 am
Hi Lori,

Does the Synology NAS unit attach via a USB cable or to a LAN switch?

I would put your drawing files on the Synology NAS unit, and your default files and your symbol files. And I would add the second hard drive and back it all up to that.

I would also put all your photos on the NAS.

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