Lenovo IX2-DL Review A Photograph Storage Solution

I’ve been using a Iomega NAS storage for about 5 years now and my first one is still working today. Today we will be reviewing the newest version out the Lenovo Iomega IX2- DL. They make an inexpensive network attached storage solution which can be purchased in a few different configurations. You can buy it diskless and add your own disks, or you can buy it with the disks already installed. I purchased the diskless model and installed two 2TB Western Digital RED Network drives. Installation of the drives is pretty straight forward just slide the front panel up, put the drives in the carriers and slide into place and make sure they snap in. After powering the unit on the lights will begin to flash and you can access the setup.

I set my unit up as Raid 1 or mirroring which means the disks are copies of each other, this only gives you half the space available but you’re less likely to lose any data in case of a disk failure. Back a few years ago my old version of this which is a Storcenter ix2  had a drive failure while using the mirroring feature, basically you have to remove the drive which has failed and replace it. Then when you restart the unit it will reconstruct itself and you will be protected once again. This is a very important feature for anyone with valuable files, photographs that you don’t want to lose. The new IX2-DL gives you even more options with the addition of Amazon S3  allowing you to setup a folder or folders on your storage device to be automatically backed up to Amazon S3. This allows you to have your photographs backed up at a second location which is always a good idea. 🙂

Once you setup your account at Amazon Web Services you can create your bucket and link you Lenovo with the S3 service. I personally set mine up with a rule to keep my files in Glacier which is a cheap storage solution for your files.

Some of the other cool settings this storage device has is the Flickr application in which you can link your Flickr account to a folder and whatever you save in that folder in uploaded to Flickr,  there’s also one for Facebook and YouTube. If something is wrong with your drive it can send an email to you telling you that something isn’t right. It’s a very good solution for photographers who are looking for a descent low cost storage solution with some good features that I like.  If you plan on getting one I recommend going the diskless route as the Western Digital drives are the way to go for network storage.