arshuter
Active member
I've been having zero luck with external hard drives, I have a 10 TB external hard drive that says it's almost full and looking for alternative's. Thanks
How and on what do you guys store images?
- Thread starter arshuter
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OzzySmb
New member
Something like this :
Cameron T
Well-known member
Pairs of 5tb hard drives that I back up in duplicate to (eg each 5tb hard drive holds a single copy, and I have two of them in the event one dies) changing out every year and a half or so when they fill up.
marlowtravelsoften
Active member
I have 5 external SSD drives and everything is backed up online.
I currently have an 8TB external drive and a 2TB internal SSD on my computer. I rarely delete anything, and store everything on the external drive. However, I also copy my best/favorite images from each shoot into a separate folder, both on my external drive as well as my internal drive. Then everything is backed up with a cloud service (Carbonite). When my external drive fills up, I will likely buy a new drive with more storage and/or delete some of the oldest stuff (minus the keepers).
A trio of G-Raid Thunderbolt 3 external hard drives: 24/12/12 TB each. The 12TB drives are backups.
Sounds like you need a large NAS. Will give capacity and backup.
Fenrir
Member
I have a lot less data than you do. It just sits on my internal 3 TB HDD and once in a while I'm backing up the most important footage to an external flash drive.
Chris K
Well-known member
Primary storage: Big internal SSD on my laptop
Backup storage: Giant HDD on a PC elsewhere in the house (which also backs up everything else I have)
Offsite: Backblaze, which backs up the HDD
I tend to prune/thin my LR catalog over time, but if it were too big for my SSD, I’d move old stuff onto an external drive and keep smart previews in the LR catalog.
Backup storage: Giant HDD on a PC elsewhere in the house (which also backs up everything else I have)
Offsite: Backblaze, which backs up the HDD
I tend to prune/thin my LR catalog over time, but if it were too big for my SSD, I’d move old stuff onto an external drive and keep smart previews in the LR catalog.
mdirvin
Well-known member
I use three 6 bay, 10 GB NAS units. Connected with a 10GB switch. Using Raid 5 that gives 30 TB of storage (each). Two are for backup using Rysnc with no other services activated keeping the NAS units from being seen on the local network. A precaution for Ransomeware..
I have a Synology NAS (6TB rotating media) and a 2TB SSD usb drive to go with my 1tb SSD main drive
Replaced my 5 year old 10Tb* external Thunderbolt drive with a new16Tb external Thunderbolt drive. It is linked to the second “backup“ drive which is10Tb. I already had it and it was used only to backup the older 10Tb drive. Carbon Copy Cloner does the backup.
(*My OS warned me that it was not full but was showing signs of failure and new files should not/could not be added to it)
The internal 3Tb is backed up to a 5Tb drive.
I will retire the external 10Tb drive to an off site-once a month role soon, so the main data drive can have a matching drive size.
The storage level on the 16Tb is about 5.8Tb at the moment, so I have 10 Tb free. I really like to have plenty of space to allow for the possible future file storage needs and extra drives.
Two drives make it easy to keep an off site copy. The cloud also has a copy of my internal drive.
I am also considering buying a new 3.5” NAS HD to put in the old Thunderbolt unit. That could be useful as a third drive. It is possible but apparently not an easy rebuild but there are YouTube videos about how to do it. The saving compared to a new drive is not much really.
Mine is not a sophisticated or perfect solution but it works for me. It depends on what you want to do with the data.
Photos are cataloged in PhotoMechanic. Photos for printing also get imported into to Capture One catalogs which are not as useful and I don’t add info in Capture One, but they do display metadata etc from PhotoMechanic and are “OK”.
The issue I face is with backup is the risk of redundancy in catalogs when rebuilding a drive. Folder and drive naming needs to be done carefully. Small catalogs are easy to rebuild but really large ones are NOT good.
(*My OS warned me that it was not full but was showing signs of failure and new files should not/could not be added to it)
The internal 3Tb is backed up to a 5Tb drive.
I will retire the external 10Tb drive to an off site-once a month role soon, so the main data drive can have a matching drive size.
The storage level on the 16Tb is about 5.8Tb at the moment, so I have 10 Tb free. I really like to have plenty of space to allow for the possible future file storage needs and extra drives.
Two drives make it easy to keep an off site copy. The cloud also has a copy of my internal drive.
I am also considering buying a new 3.5” NAS HD to put in the old Thunderbolt unit. That could be useful as a third drive. It is possible but apparently not an easy rebuild but there are YouTube videos about how to do it. The saving compared to a new drive is not much really.
Mine is not a sophisticated or perfect solution but it works for me. It depends on what you want to do with the data.
Photos are cataloged in PhotoMechanic. Photos for printing also get imported into to Capture One catalogs which are not as useful and I don’t add info in Capture One, but they do display metadata etc from PhotoMechanic and are “OK”.
The issue I face is with backup is the risk of redundancy in catalogs when rebuilding a drive. Folder and drive naming needs to be done carefully. Small catalogs are easy to rebuild but really large ones are NOT good.
marlowtravelsoften
Active member
Do you guys just leave all your equipment out on the computer desk when you aren't home or lock it up? Just curious if I'm the only paranoid one lol.
Having an off-site back up drive is a very good idea if you are worried. I always take a drive to a different site if we will be away overnight. Now you know why a third drive has some appeal. The issue is always about how up to date it is and the safety of your backup portable drive (Security / MTBF)
mdirvin
Well-known member
For an off site backup I use Backblaze with a years retention. We spend the winters in AZ, during that time I leave my devices/computer in my office area. While in AZ I keep the images on 3 - 4 TB SSD's using a laptop & 13" iPad. I import my AZ catalog into my main catalog when arriving home in TN in the spring.
joe43
Well-known member
i have a windows desktop. I have two large internal HDD drives I use for storing images. I will likely be adding a third if I have an open slot. Both are 16 TB.
I also use external HDD drives in aluminum external hard drive enclosures. All are 3.5 inch drives and size varies from 12TB to 18TB. Right now I have four such drives.
I do not use cloud backup. I manually use SynchBack SE 10 to make my backups.
I also use external HDD drives in aluminum external hard drive enclosures. All are 3.5 inch drives and size varies from 12TB to 18TB. Right now I have four such drives.
I do not use cloud backup. I manually use SynchBack SE 10 to make my backups.
15Tb Synology DS923+ disc station. That’s 12Tb storage … the extra 3Tb is used by the system for backing up and integrity checking. A disc failure isn’t catastrophic… just plug in a new disc. Also expandable to a huge amount… 45-50Tb not sure. It backs itself up weekly to my old Disc Station in my garage- a totally separate building. It’s also a personal cloud. I can access it from anywhere there’s an internet connection.
Rene
Active member
I use a 8TB Samsung SSD to access my images connected with my Mac Studio. Back up is with 2x 4 bay 16TB OWC drives in raid and 1 extra Back up on OWC mercury dual SSDs and I keep a large drive with my files offsite .
I recently added a 10TB LaCie d2 Pro HDD to my workflow as the local storage of my LR/LRC images on my MacBook Pro’s 1TB SSD was at its limit. I usually import and edit my images (stored as smart previews) on my iPad Pro with LR which is backed up to my 1TB Adobe account which is about 75% full currently.
In the process of trying to move my laptop images to external storage, I somehow de-synced my folder structure on my ipad from the LRC version, now all my ipad images are loose… that is to say all of the folders that I have carefully organized over the years are now empty; in LR Classic, however, they are still organized in the folders. Still trying to process how I’m going to deal with that ha. And I still have a ton of older images in the Apple Photos catalog, along with a smaller catalog of images in Aperture to bring into LR…
The Synology solution is looking attractive, too. Will do more reading up on that soon.
In the process of trying to move my laptop images to external storage, I somehow de-synced my folder structure on my ipad from the LRC version, now all my ipad images are loose… that is to say all of the folders that I have carefully organized over the years are now empty; in LR Classic, however, they are still organized in the folders. Still trying to process how I’m going to deal with that ha. And I still have a ton of older images in the Apple Photos catalog, along with a smaller catalog of images in Aperture to bring into LR…
The Synology solution is looking attractive, too. Will do more reading up on that soon.
I use two 16 tb 3.5 HDs in an external enclosure. I also have several other smaller external drives to back up the those drives.