Computer Hope
Internet & Networking => Networking => Topic started by: jirehphotos on May 02, 2018, 04:13:23 PM
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Hello. I hope someone can help me. I have a laptop that only has 512GB SSD. I have been told by HP that there is no option to convert to a HD. Larger SSD drive with m.2 form factors are expensive so I'm trying to find some less expensive options. I have been using an external but it is too cumbersome to work with unless I am at a desk. I am a photography and use photoshop a lot so I want to be able to access 500gb of photos. Since the external drive is not working out and a HD is out of the question, I need to explore home networking option. I want to be able to access and upload files as large as about 40-50MB (photos) at home and away from home. I've tried googling but I can't determine which is the best option for what I want to do. What are my options? I don't need anything really fancy as I can always upgrade later. I really need a workable solution that will not be too difficult or time consuming when accessing files. Thank you in advance for all of your help.
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I use Google Drive for 15GB cloud storage that allows me for free to work on the road on stuff. 15GB might only be a drop in the bucket as you need in excess of 500GB, but I am thinking that you can update this 15GB space with a project your working on and when done download it to a external hard drive and then upload the next work to be worked on to google drive for up to 15GB of data for free.
Other option is to buy into cloud storage where you can get as much space as you want but the greater capacity the more the monthly fee.
I am surprised that your laptop cant be given a hard drive in place of the SSD. Never heard of this before. Its not like its a Chromebook with only 32GB of onboard storage which is not able to take a Hard Drive or SSD upgrade.
What make/model laptop do you have so we can double check on this so called cant upgrade to large HDD?
Other alternative for storage is to have a NAS ( Network Attached Storage ). This acts like cloud storage but there is no fee beyond that of buying and setting up the NAS. The NAS connects to your network and then you mount a drive mapping to the NAS where your system then gets a drive letter of your choice such as X: . NAS solutions with drives are usually a couple hundred dollars for the good ones. Only thing to be aware of with NAS's is that their core operating system that makes them function as a NAS is based on a Linux kernel and so the drives in the NAS are sometimes XFS file system. These drives in the NAS with XFS file system if the NAS failed and you need your data off of the drive(s), you would need to install the drives into a computer running Linux to address the XFS file system and then hopefully get your data back. SO external hard drives connected via USB are better in that if the external drive fails its usually using the NTFS file system so you can install the drive internal to a desktop computer and access the data that is on it easily, as long as no encryption used and drive is healthy.
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Thank you for your response.
My laptop is a HP Spectre x360 Convertible 15-bl1XX. I would appreciate anything that you can find out.
The Google Drive would cool for working on files within a project but it is preferable to access to all the files without having to stop and connect the external hard drive.
I'm not totally against the idea of a NAS. I had previously read up on NAS, one of the cons listed is "In case of failure it may prove difficult to recover the data without professional data recovery service". It makes me nervous but I guess I could soften the blow by doing daily backups. Are the backups from NAS drives to a backup drive on Linux file system? Any feedback regarding my concern about a NAS is welcomed.
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If you copy from XFS NAS file system files to a NTFS File system, the files copied to NTFS are NTFS file system. Files copied from NTFS file system to NAS would be stored under XFS which is tricky to get access to your data if you crash the NAS it then involved Linux usually to regain access to the data.
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What is your budget? What do you consider as too expensive?
You might try looking into a wireless external drive. With a wireless external drive, you don't need to connect/reconnect a cable, the computer connects to the drive via wifi. Depending on how much you want to spend, there are 250GB, 500GB, 1TB and larger drives available.