External Hard Drive Recommendations?

[Larry S.]

I am currently using a G-Drive 2TB ext/hd with 2017 27” iMac Retina display computer. I’ve had zero issue. Recently I watched A Scott Kelby video about organizing photos in LrC and he is adamant about 2(+?) ext/hds. I only have 15,300 photos. I’m a hobbyist, not a working professional so I don’t anticipate my library growing by leaps and bounds. Do I need or would it be wise to get a 2nd ext/hd? Do I really need more than 2TBs? Do the ext/hds need to be the same? All the ones I viewed on Amazon had USB/C connections. My iMac has the older USB ports which shouldn’t be a problem with an adapter, or is it? Kelby also said that ext/hds will die on you and then you lose everything unless you have the “cloud”, which I do… thoughts please…

 

[Archibald]

I can only tell you what I do and what my method has been for many years.

Current photos go to my C: drive (Windows system). It is an SSD. By "current", I mean last few years. From time to time (roughly weekly) they get copied over to an offline 8TB USB hard drive. That drive gets hardly any use because it is only used a couple hours a month.

Every couple weeks or so all that current content gets copied to a third USB hard drive. That gives me 3 copies. And every few months, it gets copied again to one of two offsite hard drives that are rotated to my bank safety deposit box.

Older stuff (more than last few years) is moved from the SSD to a hard drive that is online (connected to the computer all the time). Sometimes that older stuff gets edited. Those changes are backed up the same as the current stuff.

I know there are special hard drives with better reliability and RAID rigs, but don't own one. My stuff is backed up multiply on media that spends very little time connected to the computer. So far, there have been no problems, no failures.

As for LrC performance, theoretically it should be faster if the program and files are on an SSD, but in practice, the difference is negligible in my experience. Just in case, as mentioned, current files are on the SSD.

 

[NorthernFocus]

It's wize to back up at least one copy. So at least two drives. I use three. One is primary and I alternate backup copies on the other two.

 

[PhotoLover]

I am currently using a G-Drive 2TB ext/hd with 2017 27” iMac Retina display computer. I’ve had zero issue. Recently I watched A Scott Kelby video about organizing photos in LrC and he is adamant about 2(+?) ext/hds. I only have 15,300 photos. I’m a hobbyist, not a working professional so I don’t anticipate my library growing by leaps and bounds. Do I need or would it be wise to get a 2nd ext/hd? Do I really need more than 2TBs? Do the ext/hds need to be the same? All the ones I viewed on Amazon had USB/C connections. My iMac has the older USB ports which shouldn’t be a problem with an adapter, or is it? Kelby also said that ext/hds will die on you and then you lose everything unless you have the “cloud”, which I do… thoughts please…

Not quite clear what Kelby is worried about from that description, though I can make guesses.

I currently have one largish (4TB) SSD for photos. The contents of that drive are backed up to a local HDD. There is also a cloud backup of that data -- so three copies. Whatever storage solution you have, there should be a backup of that data in case the drive fails. In general, you want three copies of the data -- local backup, original data, and a cloud copy is desirable.

Maybe Kelby is just suggesting 1 drive for your data, and a second drive for backup of that data?

How big an external drive you need depends upon ... how many photos you have. I need more than 2 TB.

Your older USB ports won't be as fast as newer ones, but still might be fast enough. Yes, you can use an adapter.

 

[PhotoLover]

I can only tell you what I do and what my method has been for many years.

Current photos go to my C: drive (Windows system). It is an SSD. By "current", I mean last few years. From time to time (roughly weekly) they get copied over to an offline 8TB USB hard drive. That drive gets hardly any use because it is only used a couple hours a month.

Every couple weeks or so all that current content gets copied to a third USB hard drive. That gives me 3 copies. And every few months, it gets copied again to one of two offsite hard drives that are rotated to my bank safety deposit box.

Older stuff (more than last few years) is moved from the SSD to a hard drive that is online (connected to the computer all the time). Sometimes that older stuff gets edited. Those changes are backed up the same as the current stuff.

I know there are special hard drives with better reliability and RAID rigs, but don't own one. My stuff is backed up multiply on media that spends very little time connected to the computer. So far, there have been no problems, no failures.

As for LrC performance, theoretically it should be faster if the program and files are on an SSD, but in practice, the difference is negligible in my experience. Just in case, as mentioned, current files are on the SSD.

While editing a photo, it doesn't much matter if the photo is on HDD or SSD; it's read into memory and no I/O while processing, except to the LR catalog. But for importing, looking at different photos (requiring an I/O to read a picture and render the full size image) I do find the SSD quite a bit faster. I'd notice when looking at photos from older shoots that was on an old HDD how much slower it was than looking at photos from newer shoots on an SSD. (So I bought a bigger new faster SSD and put everything on it!). But SSD prices continue to drop, so that is cheaper than it used to be.

A good SSD with a high speed interface (or an internal SSD) should be faster and cheaper than a RAID solution with HDDs.

 

[pnbarne]

I use a 4T Samsung T9 external SSD for all things LRC. When I am done for the day I copy the working drive to a second T9. Supposedly, Time Finder can backup APFS file system external drives but I have had very mixed results so I am sticking with full disk copies. A full copy of 1T+ only takes about 20 minutes.

 

[Vincent_VdB]

How I shoot:
* Copy the NEW files from the card to two external hard drives.
* When coming home from the trip import the pictures in Lightroom and let them copy onto my NAS
* Delete one of the external drives (SSD by the way)
* When the one SSD is full will that go in storage at an external location

 

[PhotoLover]

I use a 4T Samsung T9 external SSD for all things LRC. When I am done for the day I copy the working drive to a second T9. Supposedly, Time Finder can backup APFS file system external drives but I have had very mixed results so I am sticking with full disk copies. A full copy of 1T+ only takes about 20 minutes.

I've had pretty good luck with Time Machine backing up external drives.

 

[John Navitsky]

Specific size and usage questions aside, recently I’m very keen on USB4 and NVME type drives.

This guy is of particular interest:

OWC Express 1M2

Ultra-fast, compatible, and reliable portable USB4 NVMe SSD with speeds up to 3151MB/s. Build your own or choose ready-to-run solutions for your Mac or PC.

eshop.macsales.com

USB4 allows you to use Thunderbolt on systems that have it, but retains compatibility with USB for systems that do not.

NVME has the performance to max out Thunderbolt, which provides performance similar to internal drives when using TB.

And lastly, this particular drive is passively cooled, and also has a LOT of passive cooling so it’s going to keep the drive cool but also be silent.

 

[John Navitsky]

Do I need or would it be wise to get a 2nd ext/hd?

this really depends on what/how you are planning to use it.

from a backup perspective, i think one should have at least three copies of everything, with at lease one of those being off-site

another use case is to allow you to move content you don’t use often to slower storage to free up space on faster storage

Do I really need more than 2TBs?

totally depends on your usage

Do the ext/hds need to be the same?

no

All the ones I viewed on Amazon had USB/C connections. My iMac has the older USB ports which shouldn’t be a problem with an adapter, or is it?

does your system have thunderbolt? if so i would recommend getting a drive that can take advantage of thunderbolt (see my other post). but in general you don’t have to worry too much about compatibility, although some older usb will run slower

Kelby also said that ext/hds will die on you and then you lose everything unless you have the “cloud”, which I do… thoughts please…

it’s a good idea to assume/plan on all drives failing. this has been my experience more or less for all traditional spinning disks, and not my experience with high quality ssd drives. however there is always a chance any given drive will fail

with regard to the cloud, in my opinion it is important to have an off-site copy of files, but imo you should have at least one additional copy (at least three total)

 

[Archibald]

While editing a photo, it doesn't much matter if the photo is on HDD or SSD; it's read into memory and no I/O while processing, except to the LR catalog. But for importing, looking at different photos (requiring an I/O to read a picture and render the full size image) I do find the SSD quite a bit faster. I'd notice when looking at photos from older shoots that was on an old HDD how much slower it was than looking at photos from newer shoots on an SSD. (So I bought a bigger new faster SSD and put everything on it!). But SSD prices continue to drop, so that is cheaper than it used to be.

A good SSD with a high speed interface (or an internal SSD) should be faster and cheaper than a RAID solution with HDDs.

Logically speaking, an SSD should be faster than an HDD, and it probably is, but in practice, I don't notice any difference working from the SSD or the HDD.

 

[John Navitsky]

Logically speaking, an SSD should be faster than an HDD, and it probably is, but in practice, I don't notice any difference working from the SSD or the HDD.

SSDs come in a couple of flavors.

For a long time they've shared the same connection: SATA which, at 6 Gb/s, is slower than the most common USB in use today at 10 Gb/s.

So basically, SSDs that use SATA are basically going to be about the same speed (there are caveats of course) as traditional spinning HDDs.

However, more recently there have been NVME drives which are much faster (i guess around 32 Gb/s for the slowest version, and there are newer versions). These drives drives tend to be MUCH faster than old SATA drives when used internally, and they can even be faster than SATA drives when used externally via USB, however in practical terms they are similar.

So internally, M.2 NVME drives will be much faster than traditional SATA based drives, be they traditional spinning disks OR SATA connected SSDs.

Externally, USB tends to be the bottleneck but the new NVME drives are a bit faster. HOWEVER, with emerging technologies like USB4, the same NVME drive can be much faster, but again, will still not be quite as fast as used internally.

 

[Archibald]

OK - my SSD is a 2 TB M.2 NVME drive and the HDD is an external USB3 drive.

If the SSD is ten times as fast but we are talking milliseconds, we are not going to notice that.

 

[PhotoLover]

Logically speaking, an SSD should be faster than an HDD, and it probably is, but in practice, I don't notice any difference working from the SSD or the HDD.

I actually do, even with my older SSD (SATA interface) versus an HDD. But my imports range in size from 100 photos to two or three thousand at times ... so that really matters.

I notice this difference at import, when browsing old photos on the slow drive, and also when invoking plugins. Say I invoke photoshop from LR, then bring up Topaz there, and save. That's all faster due to the fact I'm writing a large Tiff file.

Also, the big difference a user notes is often latency rather throughput. My slow SSD has only two or three times the throughput of my HDD ... but latency is probably a 10th or less.

But if I'm just doing LR edits on a small set of photos, the performance difference is of course barely noticeable.

 

[RecalcitrantRon]

I have the same iMac you do (although when the M3 Mac Mini comes out I will probably upgrade and buy an external monitor). I also have a M1 Pro 16 inch MacBook Pro. This is what I do.

1. All photos and LrC catalogs are stored on a Samsung T7 Shield 4TB external SSD (Photo Drive). It is rugged and nice and small. This way, I can move from computer to computer without issue. Whether or not you need 2 or 4 TB will depend on how much data you have but you always want empty space for expansion and overhead. Another good option is the Crucial X9 or X10 SSD's.
2. I have multiple external spinning drives that are connected to my iMac. Two of them are dedicated to Photo Drive backups.
3. I use Carbon Copy Cloner to schedule and run automatic overnight backups of my Photo Drive to each of the 2 external spinners which gives me 3 copies.

This leaves me vulnerable in case of a house disaster. I intend to start using a cloud backup in the near future to eliminate this vulnerability. The other vulnerability is if I am working on the MacBook Pro and the Photo Drive somehow fails between when I reconnect to the iMac and the overnight backup is run. I protect against this in two ways. First, if at all possible, I do not erase the CFExpress card until after the backup is run. Second, I temporarily store the RAW files on my MacBook Pro until the overnight backup is done.

I cannot recommend Carbon Copy Cloner highly enough. On the Mac side of things, it is simply best in class and the folks at Bombich Software provide excellent customer support. I also use it to clone my iMac and MacBook Pro to to separate external drives and for other backups.

Mac Backup Software | Carbon Copy Cloner | Bombich Software

bombich.com

Hope this is helpful.

 

[Larry S.]

this really depends on what/how you are planning to use it.

from a backup perspective, i think one should have at least three copies of everything, with at lease one of those being off-site

another use case is to allow you to move content you don’t use often to slower storage to free up space on faster storage


totally depends on your usage


no


does your system have thunderbolt? if so i would recommend getting a drive that can take advantage of thunderbolt (see my other post). but in general you don’t have to worry too much about compatibility, although some older usb will run slower


it’s a good idea to assume/plan on all drives failing. this has been my experience more or less for all traditional spinning disks, and not my experience with high quality ssd drives. however there is always a chance any given drive will fail

with regard to the cloud, in my opinion it is important to have an off-site copy of files, but imo you should have at least one additional copy (at least three total)

Thank you for the advice and suggestions…… Think I can wrap my head around this now….

 

[BarkingBeans Coffee]

Carbon Copy Cloner is one of the best pieces of software out there for automating backups on a Mac. I like the Samsung products in the non - Shield variety as they are so small they are easy to take with you. Those would be a good choice. Not all adapters are the same. As I recall the Samsung comes with both USB C and USB A cables.

 

[Larry S.]

Carbon Copy Cloner is one of the best pieces of software out there for automating backups on a Mac. I like the Samsung products in the non - Shield variety as they are so small they are easy to take with you. Those would be a good choice. Not all adapters are the same. As I recall the Samsung comes with both USB C and USB A cables.

Thanks Michael……

 

[Ralph]

I am currently using a G-Drive 2TB ext/hd with 2017 27” iMac Retina display computer. I’ve had zero issue. Recently I watched A Scott Kelby video about organizing photos in LrC and he is adamant about 2(+?) ext/hds. I only have 15,300 photos. I’m a hobbyist, not a working professional so I don’t anticipate my library growing by leaps and bounds. Do I need or would it be wise to get a 2nd ext/hd? Do I really need more than 2TBs? Do the ext/hds need to be the same? All the ones I viewed on Amazon had USB/C connections. My iMac has the older USB ports which shouldn’t be a problem with an adapter, or is it? Kelby also said that ext/hds will die on you and then you lose everything unless you have the “cloud”, which I do… thoughts please…

I use one SSD and two HDD for backups. The SSD is of equal size to my primary drive. The HDDs are large, 12 tb each. I use CarbonCopyCloner.

 

[Archibald]

Carbon Copy Cloner sounds like a good product! I currently use a free copy utility for Windows that does a similar job but relies on Windows Task Scheduler to do its scheduling. The Task Scheduler is a miserable piece of software that is hard to configure. I would love to find something that works better. Maybe GoodSync?

 

[BirdDogDad]

I've had pretty good luck with Time Machine backing up external drives.

Time Machine is an excellent program, essential for Mac users, but keep in mind it is not intended to produce archival backups like Carbon Copy Cloner does. TM is designed to allow a "point in time" restoration of individual files or a complete system from the last several weeks of computer use. At its default settings, TM will overwrite the oldest files as the disk gets full.

 

[PhotoLover]

Time Machine is an excellent program, essential for Mac users, but keep in mind it is not intended to produce archival backups like Carbon Copy Cloner does. TM is designed to allow a "point in time" restoration of individual files or a complete system from the last several weeks of computer use. At its default settings, TM will overwrite the oldest files as the disk gets full.

It's not super flexible (I might take a look at CCC for example). But it is free and seems to work. My post was responding to someone that had trouble with TM an external drives. Whatever its quirks, I've no problems with TM backing up external drives.

Deleting the oldest backup is fine with me.

 

[BirdDogDad]

It's not super flexible (I might take a look at CCC for example). But it is free and seems to work. My post was responding to someone that had trouble with TM an external drives. Whatever its quirks, I've no problems with TM backing up external drives.

Deleting the oldest backup is fine with me.

I agree, no arguments here. I've seen a number of other posts in the past, though, from people assuming that TM is archival. I always try to point out how it works so someone doesn't unknowingly lose files or photos.

 

[Patrick M]

I am currently using a G-Drive 2TB ext/hd with 2017 27” iMac Retina display computer. I’ve had zero issue. Recently I watched A Scott Kelby video about organizing photos in LrC and he is adamant about 2(+?) ext/hds. I only have 15,300 photos. I’m a hobbyist, not a working professional so I don’t anticipate my library growing by leaps and bounds. Do I need or would it be wise to get a 2nd ext/hd? Do I really need more than 2TBs? Do the ext/hds need to be the same? All the ones I viewed on Amazon had USB/C connections. My iMac has the older USB ports which shouldn’t be a problem with an adapter, or is it? Kelby also said that ext/hds will die on you and then you lose everything unless you have the “cloud”, which I do… thoughts please…

I too use a 2017 iMac 5k with 64GB RAM but I’ve upgraded my home network to 10Gbps and have a Synology disc station. I use a Synology Disc Station, the DS933+ with 4 HDD 4 Tb drives. Fast, powerful and for me, near future proof. If I need more storage I can swap out any drive for a larger one, and even add another cage.

I have a second Disc Station in a detached building where my primary disc stations backs itself to automatically.

 

[Larry S.]

I too use a 2017 iMac 5k with 64GB RAM but I’ve upgraded my home network to 10Gbps and have a Synology disc station. I use a Synology Disc Station, the DS933+ with 4 HDD 4 Tb drives. Fast, powerful and for me, near future proof. If I need more storage I can swap out any drive for a larger one, and even add another cage.

I have a second Disc Station in a detached building where my primary disc stations backs itself to automatically.

Thanks Patrick! That’s one wild dude and his video provided more info for the direction I will chose….