External Hard Drive Recommendations?

[wotan1]

My current setup is a Mac Studio M2 entry level with 1 tb internal drive.

I use a G Drive Professional studio enterprise level NVME SSD for all photo processing and storage. That drive has more than 7 tb in storage. space.

I back up the G drive to an OWC RAID 5 thunderbird DAS drive. using Carbon Copy.

Finally I maintain cloud storage with Backblaze, it backs up both the internal hard drive and the G drive.

In practice the G Drive is quite rapid in working with Legroom Classic as the internal drive. Handles all aspects of importing, sorting and loading files for developing smoothly with little or no lag time.

 

[MikeInMI]

Sharing my experience, I've had many hard drives fail over the years, so yes, a second external drive which is a clone of your first external drive is a good idea. And t today's prices and with the size of your photo library, you aren't talking very much money.

I have my photos on an external drive, and then each night at about 1 a.m. I have an automated clone job run. You can use either Carbon Copy Cloner or ChronoSync to do this. It only copies the changes since the last backup so it really doesn't take long to run. And then you have your Cloud backup. With the two local drives the situation where you need your cloud backup should be rare (fire or flooding in the house, theft of your drives, power surge frying your drives, etc.). But it is a good idea.

I'm very OCD on backups given my 50 years of working in IT and seeing more disasters than I care to recount. I have a Synology NAS with four drives configured so that if any one drive fails, I won't lose any data. I just replace the drive and keep on going. So that should be good unless the Synology unit itself fails, which is why the data on the Synology drive is also backed up to another external drive each night using ChronoSync. I also use TimeMachine (and use a partition on my Synology for my TM backup). And then yes, I have my Synology unit backed up to the cloud.

I buy Western Digital RED drives, which have a three year warranty and are designed for servers. Yet, I once had a drive fail in six months, and another fail in 18 months. In both cases WD replaced the drive under warranty and it was a simple process; however, I was without that drive for more than a week, and had I not had a backup external drive, I would have lost a lot.

 

[Marsha Jane]

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

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.

Very helpful! Thanks!

 

[Anjin San]

Sharing my experience, I've had many hard drives fail over the years, so yes, a second external drive which is a clone of your first external drive is a good idea. And t today's prices and with the size of your photo library, you aren't talking very much money.

I have my photos on an external drive, and then each night at about 1 a.m. I have an automated clone job run.

Amd the drive local clone should be setup to keep the old versions on the destination. CCC does this easily and I believe ChronoSync as well. The old command line Windows app robocopy does as well assuming it’s still being maintained by the author and I can’t believe there is t a Windows equivalent of CCC.

 

[alecdann]

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…

The reason for the second drive, is that hard drives fail. I recently had a LaCie for TB rugged Drive die without any warning. I tried a couple Dr. recovery programs without any luck. It was just dead, only three years old. Fortunately, I had mirrored the LaCie Drive to another drive, a G-Drive, so no problem.

 

[mslmdr]

I followed Steve’s advice on this forum and got the following in 2021:

32TB OWC ThunderBay 4 RAID 5 Four-Drive Enterprise HDD Storage Solution with Dual Thunderbolt 3 Ports. Powered by SoftRAID. RAID-5 Pre-configured. Thunderbolt 3 cable included.

https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/TB3SRE32.0S/

I use two 8 TB SSDs to backup my MacBook Pro with 4 TB hard drive using Carbon Copy Cloner and Time Machine when away from the RAID system:

Oyen Digital U32 Shadow 8TB USB-C Rugged Portable SSD (DU32-C-SS-8T-G)

With large image size, don’t underestimate the need for ever greater storage capacity!

 

[mdingel]

I did not watch the video so this may be redundant.
Whatever you do make sure your are using a cable that handles your top transfer speed. I have used a Samsung T5 (2TB) for 6 years or so. I was frustrated at first until I found out that I needed a cable that could handle the transfer speed. From Samsung's website: "To reach maximum transfer speeds of 540 MB/s, the host device and connection cables must support USB 3.1 Gen 2". Not all USB-C cables are created equal.

 

[RecalcitrantRon]

I did not watch the video so this may be redundant.
Whatever you do make sure your are using a cable that handles your top transfer speed. I have used a Samsung T5 (2TB) for 6 years or so. I was frustrated at first until I found out that I needed a cable that could handle the transfer speed. From Samsung's website: "To reach maximum transfer speeds of 540 MB/s, the host device and connection cables must support USB 3.1 Gen 2". Not all USB-C cables are created equal.
View attachment 85589

USB could not have made a bigger more confusing mess of its “standard” if it tried. Add in power delivery and it’s even worse. It won’t even require that the cables be labeled.

 

[Larry S.]

The reason for the second drive, is that hard drives fail. I recently had a LaCie for TB rugged Drive die without any warning. I tried a couple Dr. recovery programs without any luck. It was just dead, only three years old. Fortunately, I had mirrored the LaCie Drive to another drive, a G-Drive, so no problem.

Thanks, I also have the 2TB G-drive and it works well as a “fail safe” for my 2017 iMac and iCloud storage. Regardless, I continue to be encouraged via videos, such as Scott Kelby’s, to have more ext/hds….and put one in a safety deposit box, or entrust a family member to safe guard the device… The law of diminishing returns kicks in somewhere and the fun and excitement is replaced with technology disciplines, steep learning curves, and alphabet soup acronyms that needs a reference index.

Every responding member to my post has bent over backwards to be helpful and used their valuable time to make suggestions about ex/hds. I’ve learned a lot from the feedback and made decisions that fit my needs. Thank you ALL…

 

[CJC2]

I also use a variety of Synology NAS systems as my backup photo storage. Lots of ways to parse this out. Best of luck.

 

[RecalcitrantRon]

My current setup is a Mac Studio M2 entry level with 1 tb internal drive.

I use a G Drive Professional studio enterprise level NVME SSD for all photo processing and storage. That drive has more than 7 tb in storage. space.

I back up the G drive to an OWC RAID 5 thunderbird DAS drive. using Carbon Copy.

Finally I maintain cloud storage with Backblaze, it backs up both the internal hard drive and the G drive.

In practice the G Drive is quite rapid in working with Legroom Classic as the internal drive. Handles all aspects of importing, sorting and loading files for developing smoothly with little or no lag time.

How do you like Backblaze? Any experience with any of the other online backups? Thanks.

 

[Ken Miracle]

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.

I use two of these 4TB and 2 of the little brother 4tb envoy. I use carbon copy cloner to make exact copies and have only one lRC catalog and keep the images and catalog on the external drive and presets with the catalog. I can use the drive on any computer I have LRC on. I keep one drive in a safety deposit box, rotate out about once a month.

 

[wotan1]

How do you like Backblaze? Any experience with any of the other online backups? Thanks.

I really like the backblaze. Easy to set up and works flawlessly so far. I worked with a consultant who recommended this system.

In the past I used Onedrive in the PC system and it was horrible. Backblaze is simple and quick and it does not bog the system down.

Also someone mentioned recommendations for OWC RAID drives with Softraid. I got a smaller one of those at Steve's recommendation but when I tried to move it from PC to Mac I had a devil of a time getting everything reformatted and mounted. I eventually got it done but since have heard the Softraid is sensitive and can be difficult to work with. I finally did get it going after several fits and starts.

I ended up getting a G Drive professional studio ssd. This drive is significantly faster than the RAID so I moved the RAID to on site backup. The G drive is reportedly an enterprise class SSD with a five year guarantee. It is screaming fast and Lightroom on a Mac studio M2 is amazingly fast.

 

[RecalcitrantRon]

I really like the backblaze. Easy to set up and works flawlessly so far. I worked with a consultant who recommended this system.

In the past I used Onedrive in the PC system and it was horrible. Backblaze is simple and quick and it does not bog the system down.

Also someone mentioned recommendations for OWC RAID drives with Softraid. I got a smaller one of those at Steve's recommendation but when I tried to move it from PC to Mac I had a devil of a time getting everything reformatted and mounted. I eventually got it done but since have heard the Softraid is sensitive and can be difficult to work with. I finally did get it going after several fits and starts.

I ended up getting a G Drive professional studio ssd. This drive is significantly faster than the RAID so I moved the RAID to on site backup. The G drive is reportedly an enterprise class SSD with a five year guarantee. It is screaming fast and Lightroom on a Mac studio M2 is amazingly fast.

Thanks for the info.

 

[Bikeman]

Scott Kelby was probably Talking about the 3,2,1 Backup Strategy that many professional and data protection experts recommend for any valuable files. It means:
3 copies of the files
2 different types of media they are saved to
1 copy in a different location than the others.

for instance you would have copy of the data on a spinning hard drive, a external ssd drive or in the cloud and a third copy on a ssd or spinning drive at a different location in case of a natural disaster in the primary location.


Most external ssd‘s are usb c but come with a separate cable or adapter for usb a.

I used to swear by sandisk extreme ssd’s but then I had one refuse to mount after shutting down the computer and found there was a batch where this was happening. I have gone back to Samsung ssd’s because of this. It was interesting that the Sandisk variety always seemed warm tot he touch when plugged in and not being accessed where as the Samsung drives stay cool unless in use. I have no idea why but wonder if it relates to the failure issue.