James Rushforth

Background

Specialising in adventurous travel, James Rushforth works as an author, photographer, public speaker and guide. His latest two-volume set of photo-location guidebooks to Iceland recently won four publishing awards during 2022 – Travel Category winner at the Best Indie Book Awards, Guidebook of the Year at both the British Guild of Travel Writers and Outdoor Writers and Photographers Guild annual awards, and Travel Guidebook of the Year at the Foreword INDIES. James has also written titles on rock climbing, via ferrata, ski mountaineering and photography.

Challenge

Storing data for six illustrated publications, a map and an interactive mobile app, along with associated video content for advertising took up a lot of disk space – especially given the ever-increasing file sizes of digital media. Previously James was using sixteen external hard drives of varying sizes, then backing them up manually – a laborious process that made finding specific files a time-consuming process. Additionally, James spends roughly half the year abroad leading workshops and researching new guidebooks. A nice lifestyle perhaps, but one that makes accessing essential data back home at the office problematic, especially at short notice.

Solution

For such demanding requirements, James opted for the TVS-h1288X, populating all eight of the 3.5-inch bays with Seagate 16TB IronWolf Pro SATA Hard Drives in a RAID6 configuration, providing 96TB of theoretical usable disk space. Two 1TB IronWolf 525 NVMe SSDs were attached to the M.2 slots for hosting the system drive, whilst a further two 2TB Seagate IronWolf 125 SSDs were placed in the 2.5-inch SATA bays to deliver increased read and write performance for current video projects. Finally, a QSW-M804-4C 10GbE managed switch was utilised for more efficient networking. 

Result / Benefit

Optimised for a RAID environment, James has reported read and write speeds in excess of 1200 Mbps for the eight Seagate IronWolf HDDs. James states "the original idea was to use the 3.5-inch SATA SSDs for current projects before transferring the files onto the HDDs for storage. In reality, the HDDs are fast enough for everything but real-time video editing in 4K and I find myself working directly off them more and more whilst connected via Thunderbolt™ 3. This centralised high-capacity storage has greatly increased my productivity, allowing files to be found quickly whilst simultaneously providing peace of mind. The ability to access the NAS from anywhere in the world has also proved invaluable, allowing me to send time-sensitive files whilst working away from home."