In article 2014081208474139936-savageduck1@REMOVESPAMmecom,
Savageduck wrote:

I have 4TB of images and a 1TB MacBookPro. Images are at present on
several external HD. What is best way to store images for ready
retrieval? Anything more efficient/suitable than "network attached
storage" (NAS) like the units sold by Buffalo?
http://www.buffalotech.com/products/network-storage

A external USB RAID should be faster.I would have asked this in
comp.sys.mac.system...

Agreed, a RAID would probably be best If not USB3 then consider FW800
or Thunderbolt. I usually got to OWC for my drives and stuff Mac, they
have quite a few options.

raid is not needed unless he needs high availability, which he more
than likely does not.

if he doesn't, then a normal network share + good backup strategy is
*much* better and less expensive.

raid is not a backup.

his question is also not mac specific.

What part of "I have 4TB of images and a 1TB MacBookPro" isn't Mac specific?

the original poster may have a mac, but the answer is not mac specific.

the answer would be the same for someone with a 1 tb windows laptop
(other than afp being highly desired).

It sounds to me that he is looking to consolidate the 4TB of image
files from the several external HDs he is currently using, and a good
RAID with some redundancy can provide that storage with easy retrieval.
He didn't ask anything about back up, that is a different question.
That said having the RAID as part of a network server is also a viable
possibility.

raid is high availability and most people don't need that.

raid is not a backup.

he didn't ask about a backup but he absolutely needs to consider that
because if the server fails and there is no backup, the images are
lost.