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Taku_Kumabe

Company:Taku Kumabe Photography and Design

  • Company: Taku Kumabe Photography and Design
  • Location: Toronto, Canada
  • Industry: Photography
  • NAS Model: Lockerstor 8

With greater capacity and faster hard drives, spare bays for adding HDDs in the future, or using ASUSTOR’s unique function- My Archive, I am confident this solution will be able to meet my needs for the foreseeable future.” - Taku Kumabe, Nikon Canada Ambassador, freelance photographer, and art director

About Taku Kumabe

Taku Kumabe is a Nikon Canada Ambassador, freelance photographer, and art director based in Toronto, Canada. His photography includes everything from large-scale events, editorial portraits, weddings, and landscape and nature photos wherever possible. With an enthusiasm for educating, he conducts photowalks and photo workshops, and offers consultations to businesses.
https://www.smaku.com/a-photographers-nas-setup/


The Challenge for space and speed

His current storage solution is an accumulation of several hard drives stored in two separate NAS devices as well as a few external hard drives used for backups. Over the years he simply kept adding hard drives to his setup without consideration for performance. His current setup was not only slow, but also disorganized.

Taking thousands of 45 megapixel images each year and with upcoming video projects that he anticipates doing, he knows his current setup is no longer sustainable, given he currently is using 90% of his total storage capacity. Videos can easily take up more than ten times the amount of capacity that one raw photo uses, ensuring he will run out of capacity quickly.

He needed something that would be reliable with large amounts of storage declutter his workflow but also accelerate the transmitting speed. Since his current off-brand NAS is older, it only supports Gigabit speeds. As his needs grow, he is finding that he is wasting time with slow transfers.

The Solution

To upgrade his current setup, he is looking for a solution that is fast enough for him to be able to transfer large files from his computer to his NAS. Additionally, he would need more storage space to cater to create video content. His old NAS was eventually relegated to a backup in another location. While the ASUSTOR makes up his primary storage solution, he uses the many backup features on it to ensure data is safe while decluttering his desk of the myriad of external drives.

Taku knows that backups are important to keep his data safe from data loss. To help protect his data from malware, he uses ASUSTOR’s myriad of backup features, including, but not limited to MyArchive cold storage drives. He also increases protection by using snapshots to essentially turn back the clock in the event of unintentional or unauthorized changes to data. MyArchive lets him insert a hard drive into an empty slot of his NAS to create backups or archives of his data onto that one drive. He can then keep that external backup drive on or offsite as an ideal backup solution, allowing him to keep data safe from malware, fires, floods, and other hardware damage.

Why an ASUSTOR NAS

The ASUSTOR Lockerstor 8 provided an ideal setup for his needs. It was not only large enough to house his upgraded 10TB hard drives, but he was also able to keep four bays free for scalability in the future. He also has the option of using the empty bays for MyArchive, allowing him to insert and remove drives as needed. This is perfect for off-site backup solutions, ensuring his data is safe from almost all practical risks to his data.

Taku really likes the two 10GbE and 2.5GbE connections on his NAS. This would allow for much faster transfer speeds when connected directly to his computer. At the moment he is using the ASUSTOR AS-U2.5G2 to more-than-double his speeds when using the 2.5-Gigabit Ethernet ports. This is already a big improvement and he is glad to see that he can upgrade at any point in the future should he need faster transfer rates. All he had to do was to plug the adaptor into the USB-C port of his MacBook Pro and he was up and running at 2.5GbE after installing the driver.

What Changed After using Lockerstor 8

After changing from his previous setup to the ASUSTOR Lockerstor 8, his data storage solution is more organized as he essentially combined the data from two separate NAS devices into one NAS. His direct connection to the NAS has more than doubled with the ASUSTOR from approx. 100 mbps to nearly 300 mbps. He loves the improved speed with the ASUSTOR 2.5GbE adaptor—and with a Wi-Fi 6 capable router he can take advantage of different ways to easily connect to his NAS.

Now once he’s done with a shoot and saved all those related files on his laptop, he transfers all of them onto his NAS. He is grateful that he still has a fast direct connection to the NAS in case he needs to access older files. This helps in keeping a steady workflow without having to wait for his older files to load on his screen.

With the addition of an SSD for caching, he can be assured that he’s getting the most out of his NAS as well. All in all, he loves how the NAS just sits quietly in his office and he can rely on it whenever he needs it. For the following several years, it will alleviate the stress of having to worry about his data being in a safe place and he knows he can access and back up his data anytime, anywhere.


ASUSTOR NAS Advantages

  • Backup Plan
  • MyArchive
  • USB external backups
  • Scheduled backups
  • Easy-to-use UI
  • Photo Gallery 3
  • Easy sharing
  • Wide variety of apps
  • Quiet and efficient
  • Streams videos to web browser