External Hard Drives

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sh1209 said:
Lol I know exactly what you mean I got into a real mess the first time I tried moving my Lightroom originals to an external disc. I was the better part of a week getting that mess straightened out. That’s one of the reasons I’ve been apprehensive about going to an external drive again honestly. I’m still contemplating getting an OWC raid system which I’m sure would be safer than what I’m doing now. I suppose as long as I left my catalog on my iMac, then I’d still have decent performance.
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I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one who has learned the hard way. At least we learn, no? I'm not a Lightroom user, but it appears that your experience confirms that the days of drag and drop any sort of application are long gone. I don't think you would see any great drop in performance when using external drives. As mentioned, USB is plenty fast for backups, but if you intend to work on files directly on an external, it might be worth the extra $ for a Thunderbolt-connected enclosure. I edit 4k video files that reside on a Thunderbolt enclosure, and I can discern no difference in speed compared to if they were on my Mac's primary internal drive. I'm no expert in such matters, but I suspect that processing might actually be a hair faster, since I'm not asking my internal drive to constantly search back and forth.

Your Lightroom experience is one reason I'm a big CCC fan. The cost is a pittance, and while as with any software there is a bit of a learning curve (minimal), the effort long-term is well worth it. This is because CCC, configured properly, makes an exact clone. You don't need to worry about hidden catalogs or nebulously-named files buried in the bowels of the library or OS. My startup drive could die tomorrow, and all I would have to do is replace it, start up from my external clone with CCC, and press "restore" while I drink a cup of coffee. Or scotch.

Yes, a good RAID from OWC is highly reliable and provides great peace of mind. You can specify whatever size and brand of drive you prefer, even "industrial-strength" models. I still prefer non-RAID individual disks for straight backups, but that might not be practical for everyone. By the way, most OWC enclosures let you specify the RAID system you prefer, and they include SoftRAID, their proprietary RAID management software which I've found to be extremely good and well supported.
 
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BirdDogDad said:
I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one who has learned the hard way. At least we learn, no? I'm not a Lightroom user, but it appears that your experience confirms that the days of drag and drop any sort of application are long gone. I don't think you would see any great drop in performance when using external drives. As mentioned, USB is plenty fast for backups, but if you intend to work on files directly on an external, it might be worth the extra $ for a Thunderbolt-connected enclosure. I edit 4k video files that reside on a Thunderbolt enclosure, and I can discern no difference in speed compared to if they were on my Mac's primary internal drive. I'm no expert in such matters, but I suspect that processing might actually be a hair faster, since I'm not asking my internal drive to constantly search back and forth.

Your Lightroom experience is one reason I'm a big CCC fan. The cost is a pittance, and while as with any software there is a bit of a learning curve (minimal), the effort long-term is well worth it. This is because CCC, configured properly, makes an exact clone. You don't need to worry about hidden catalogs or nebulously-named files buried in the bowels of the library or OS. My startup drive could die tomorrow, and all I would have to do is replace it, start up from my external clone with CCC, and press "restore" while I drink a cup of coffee. Or scotch.

Yes, a good RAID from OWC is highly reliable and provides great peace of mind. You can specify whatever size and brand of drive you prefer, even "industrial-strength" models. I still prefer non-RAID individual disks for straight backups, but that might not be practical for everyone. By the way, most OWC enclosures let you specify the RAID system you prefer, and they include SoftRAID, their proprietary RAID management software which I've found to be extremely good and well supported.
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That’s probably what I’m going to do. I have used carbon copy cloner for about a year now and I share your sentiments it’s definitely a good program. I already have a couple smaller OWC drives that seem to be really good drives. I probably will get one of the enclosures but I’m not sure if I will use it as a raid I might use it as rated zero to get the best performance then clone it to a couple other drives. But you’re not kidding when you say it’s a nightmare getting your images out of work Man I feel like that took years off my life LOL.
 
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sh1209 said:
That’s probably what I’m going to do. I have used carbon copy cloner for about a year now and I share your sentiments it’s definitely a good program. I already have a couple smaller OWC drives that seem to be really good drives. I probably will get one of the enclosures but I’m not sure if I will use it as a raid I might use it as rated zero to get the best performance then clone it to a couple other drives. But you’re not kidding when you say it’s a nightmare getting your images out of work Man I feel like that took years off my life LOL.
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Wise decision. I can't afford to donate any more years from my life to computer issues. I running short on years as it is.
 
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BirdDogDad said:
Wise decision. I can't afford to donate any more years from my life to computer issues. I running short on years as it is.
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Even going through all that and spending hours on the phone with Adobe which are just atrocious in every manner when dealing with their representatives I still to this day don’t know the best way to move the images from one drive to the other without a fiasco. I gives me anxiety even thinking of it lol.
 
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This whole discussion is enlightening, and has me reevaluating my setup. I use a OWC 24TB raid 1 setup as my primary storage, using an esata connection. Currently have two other external hard drives as backups. When I leave the house for extended trip, take one back up with me, put one in fire safe, and hide one in the barn :)
 
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Viseguy said:
This whole discussion is enlightening, and has me reevaluating my setup. I use a OWC 24TB raid 1 setup as my primary storage, using an esata connection. Currently have two other external hard drives as backups. When I leave the house for extended trip, take one back up with me, put one in fire safe, and hide one in the barn :)
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Sounds like you have all aspects covered for sure.
 
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Ralph Bruno said:
That system seems a little pricy and possibly overkill. This one https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC...MIsd3vmLuB8gIVCJfICh1gjgMoEAQYBSABEgIR3PD_BwE has 2 drive bays and you can use it as a Raid setup or as individual drive. You can also use 3/12 inch drives or 2.5 inch drives. I’m using two 8 tb drives for a total of 16tb. But you can go much larger or smaller. And the enclosure only cost $150. It also include
  • (1) USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C Port up to 10Gb/s (1250MB/s) - USB 2.0/3.0 backwards compatible
  • (2) USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A Ports up to 10Gb/s (1250MB/s) - USB 2.0/3.0 backwards compatible
It’s worth a look.
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So Ralph, your OWC system would be this, including the enclosure, correct? https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/MEDCH7T16/
 
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Ralph Bruno said:
I set them up as independent hard drives. No RAID. I use CCC to backup.
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So you clone one drive off another in the enclosure? I’m considering getting the 4 bay OWC unit but not sure if I’ll just use it as raid zero to get the full speed and amount of storage or not. The raid software is also sorta expensive and just another thing to worry about. I already have CCC.
 
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sh1209 said:
So you clone one drive off another in the enclosure? I’m considering getting the 4 bay OWC unit but not sure if I’ll just use it as raid zero to get the full speed and amount of storage or not. The raid software is also sorta expensive and just another thing to worry about. I already have CCC.
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I have two internal HD so I clone each to one Of the 6 tb drives in the enclosure. I also clone the internal drives to separate external USB drives. I also have 2 separate 4 tb seagate drives in which I copy my photos to.
 
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sh1209 said:
So you clone one drive off another in the enclosure? I’m considering getting the 4 bay OWC unit but not sure if I’ll just use it as raid zero to get the full speed and amount of storage or not. The raid software is also sorta expensive and just another thing to worry about. I already have CCC.
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You may already know this, but...

RAID 0 does not have any redundancy. If any drive in the RAID fails you likely lose all the data on the drives. Striped RAID 0 will give you a performance benefit in trade for lower reliability.
 
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sh1209 said:
Like I said I’m not exactly sure what route I will go but definitely would not go over raid 1.
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Some people like living dangerously :) I've had more than one HD (at least 2 spinners and one SSD) fail over the last 30 or so years. It made me paranoid about my data. I use a Synology. The OS/Raid software is included.
 
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DBS said:
You may already know this, but...

RAID 0 does not have any redundancy. If any drive in the RAID fails you likely lose all the data on the drives. Striped RAID 0 will give you a performance benefit in trade for lower reliability.
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Yes I’m aware of that but it’s honestly no different than my images being on 1 disc internally on my iMac, same outcome. Like I said I’m not even sure I’m going to go that route but raid 1 would certainly be all I would do because even that half the storage is gone.
 
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It could be we are talking about 2 different scenarios. If the images are only stored in one location, either internally or on the external drives, then I agree. The danger is pretty much the same. I always have my images stored in at least 2 different locations. Only my recent shoots live in my computer.
 
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SandyW said:
It could be we are talking about 2 different scenarios. If the images are only stored in one location, either internally or on the external drives, then I agree. The danger is pretty much the same. I always have my images stored in 2 different locations. Only my recent shoots live in my computer.
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I’ve been shooting over 15 years and in the beginning I only did minor edits the apple photos. I started using Lightroom and photoshop in 2011-2012 sometime in the timeframe and until about a year ago, always had my originals on my internal drive. Over the years I offloaded images to external drives. I suppose I’ve been lucky but I’ve always relied on time machine backups and a good deal of my images are backed up in adobes cloud that were uploaded thru the mobile app. I’m definitely rethinking my workflow and wanting to get all my images centralized on one unit. Recently we purchased a 27 inch iMac with a 4TB internal drive which is where all the originals that aren’t on the other hard disk are located now. I am contemplating buying a multi desk unit but I’m just not sure I wouldn’t want to do anything more than raid one. And you’re right I’ve probably been extremely lucky over the years not to have lost anything but honestly I’ve never had an an SD card or external hard drive failure.
 
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Yep. Two different scenarios. Cloud storage is not an option for me due to internet speed. I'm using a PC desktop tower except when traveling so adding internal drives is easy. I do use external SSDs with my laptop when traveling. I still thoroughly love my Synology NAS for my backups. It also doubles as my "media" center.
 
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SandyW said:
Yep. Two different scenarios. Cloud storage is not an option for me due to internet speed. I'm using a PC desktop tower except when traveling so adding internal drives is easy. I do use external SSDs with my laptop when traveling. I still thoroughly love my Synology NAS for my backups. It also doubles as my "media" center.
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I only have about 5k images in the cloud and honestly the only reason for that is whenever I travel, I upload images directly into my phone or iPad so I can do edits when away from home. It all syncs back to LRC thru collections which is really nice. The programs work very good together and honestly the only time I’ve had issues and using the programs together meaning Lightroom mobile and Lightroom classic is whenever you move images it is a little more complicated than just moving images in Lightroom classic only. Moving meaning moving originals to an external drive. I am most likely going to get a Ford Drive unit from OWC because it sounds like that is a good way to move forward and then I can clone that drive to one of the external drives I already have through carbon copy cloner and at least have more redundancy than I have now.
 
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sh1209 said:
So what’s you recommendation for someone like myself that keeps images internal on my Mac? In your opinion is two or 3 copies of time machine backups enough? Like I said earlier in the thread, I might at some point go to a large external drive but for now really like having everything integrated.
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This years images on internal SSD along with the catalog for speed. Older years images moved to an external thunderbolt mini OWC RAID…and catalog and this years images bet backed up daily to the RAID as well as several 2.5 inch Seagate USB drives since they are quiet and low heat output. Everything gets to BackBlaze as well…and more Seagates that live in the cars, one in garage and one in driveway.
 
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Neil Laubenthal said:
This years images on internal SSD along with the catalog for speed. Older years images moved to an external thunderbolt mini OWC RAID…and catalog and this years images bet backed up daily to the RAID as well as several 2.5 inch Seagate USB drives since they are quiet and low heat output. Everything gets to BackBlaze as well…and more Seagates that live in the cars, one in garage and one in driveway.
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That sounds similar to what I’ve been doing over the years. I think I’m ready to simplify and have everything in one location as far as the originals. My plan is to get a four bay owc raid unit and most likely do a raid 1 as well as copy that drive to at least one other external disc. I’m going to leave my catalog on the iMac since I have two copies of time machine backups for the iMac and MacBook. I run catalog backups every time I exit which is probably overkill.
 
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