Economical ways to save your Photos?

I am curious what the less fortunate hobbyist here do to save their photos? Over the last several years I have built up to 4 hard drives. I started with 2-500 GB hard drives, one drive being a mirror image. After filling up those drives I bought a pair of 1 TB drives, again, one is a duplicate or mirror. All of my drives are internal and are installed in some McCally Hard Drive Enclosures.

 

Anyway, I went back to one of my older drives to retrieve some photos and noticed it was working pretty slow. So, I bought a 2 TB drive and plan on keeping both of my 1 TB units, thus retiring the older 500 GB drives. I plan on putting all of my photos on the 2 TB and duplicating that drive with the two 1 TB drives. At the moment the weakest part of the system is the McCally Hard Drive Enclosures. Three of the enclosures are old 2.0 USB, while one is more up to date 3.0 USB and SATA. So I am considering changing from the enclosure to a single or dual bay dock. Or, maybe a simple usb 3.0 hard drive converter cable. When not in use I will store the hard drives in some anti static cases.

 

Really curious what works best for you guys, unless you have a $2000.00 Drobo? And, if any of you just keep it as simple as a dock/hdd cable?

 

Thanks,

How many photos do you have? Thats a lot of storage.

New WD 4T Passport as a Christmas Gift!

Well, I started shooting in January 2007. I would say I have 1.4 TB's of photos. I save in RAW with a post processed JPEG. I have always been pretty picky on what I keep but do think I can downsize what I have to about 1.2 TB's.

I've personally got more than 11 TB of storage, plus backups to other media.

 

Fortunately, as my files add up, the prices of really large storage have gone down,

 

my "image" folder has 663.99 GB on disk for 93,956 items.

 

Am I cautious or am I anal?

I've personally got more than 11 TB of storage, plus backups to other media.

 

Fortunately, as my files add up, the prices of really large storage have gone down,

 

my "image" folder has 663.99 GB on disk for 93,956 items.

 

Am I cautious or am I anal?

 

So how do you store your hard drives? Are they external, internal, in individual enclosures, in a system?

Hmm... I deposit all my

photos in an interest-

bearing savings account...

http://bayouline.com/o2.gif

So how do you store your hard drives? Are they external, internal, in individual enclosures, in a system?

The 11 TB (5 and 6, respectively) drives are hooked up all the time to the main computer and backups are done by Apple's Time Machine.In addition i have a bunch of of Western Digital USB drives that I back up to at longer intervals and keep in safe place(s).

The 11 TB (5 and 6, respectively) drives are hooked up all the time to the main computer and backups are done by Apple's Time Machine.In addition i have a bunch of of Western Digital USB drives that I back up to at longer intervals and keep in safe place(s).

 

So you are saying that you have (2) external hard drives, one 6TB and one 5TB. And, you keep a third copy of each image on a WD USB? Are your external drives like the WD Passport or did you purchase an internal drive and install it in a external Enclosure? I take it Apple Time Machine is some sort of software used to copy the images to the Hard Drives. I have always just physically downloaded my pictures to each hard drive from my desktop. I use to keep a third copy on DVD. I am now thinking about keeping a third copy on an SSD Drive. They have really come down in price over last couple of years.

For external drives I use this Vantec enclosure:

 

NexStar 6G

 

For HDD USB 3.0 will more than suffice for speed. Cost is approximately $25 (US). Check Amazon and Newegg.com.

Thanks bgelfand. I actually have considered that exact unit and another from StarTech. I have just heard so many positive things about the docks being great for reading/writing photos. The only thing that bothers me with the dock is there is a greater chance of messing up a raw hard drive with static if not handled properly. Not that I have ever handled one improperly.

I have always just physically downloaded my pictures to each hard drive from my desktop. I use to keep a third copy on DVD. I am now thinking about keeping a third copy on an SSD Drive.

 

I used to do that, but it became too cumbersome. The only 'manual backups' I do now are on the WD 'Passport' drives that just the size of a pack of cards and can be put away in safe places from theft and fire. So far I've been able to find them all (I think). :rolleyes:

 

Time Machine is Mac OS's automatic back up

You could build a RAID from as few as two drives. That gives you redundancy, and an early warning when to replace a drive. You can do the same thing with a Drobo, starting with two drives. The advantage over a RAID is that you can increase storage by simply adding drives, or replacing them one at a time with a larger drive, without shutting everything down and re-striping a new disk or reconfiguring the entire setup. You can hot-swap drives in a Drobo. The downside is, a Drobo is somewhat slower than a single drive or RAID, and you pay more for the basic box.

 

A Drobo 5D and two 4 TB drives will give you about 5 TB of redundant storage, for under $1000.

 

Backups to a single disk, stored off line, is not necessarily archival. A hard drive continually renews itself when running. Errors can develop if it is taken off line. I do that with audio/video projects, going back to about 2010. When a drive is filled, I replace it with a clean drive and store the old one in archival boxes. Only one (of over 40) has refused to mount, but I was able to recover the data to a fresh drive.

 

Prior to 2010, I used DVDs or BDs (25 GB) for archives. That is no longer practical with memory cards 64 GB and up, and video files approaching 1 TB for 2 hours of 4K in ProRes 222 format. On the road, I still do daily photo backups to BD discs, which usually fit on one disc (two at the most).

Edited December 25, 2018 by Ed_Ingold

I used to do that, but it became too cumbersome. The only 'manual backups' I do now are on the WD 'Passport' drives that just the size of a pack of cards and can be put away in safe places from theft and fire. So far I've been able to find them all (I think). :rolleyes:

 

Time Machine is Mac OS's automatic back up

 

Thanks for the help JDMvW and Happy Holidays!

I use external hard drives and internal hard drives on my desktop for backing up images. Right now I have two 8 TB external drives and about 4 4 TB external hard drives. Internal drives are 4 2 TB drives and one SSD drive for operating software. For my laptop I use western digital 2 TB and 4 TB drives. I try and keep three backups of my processed images.. No drive is allowed to get more than 80 % full. You need to assume that one or more external drive will not turn on when you need to turn it on. And never remove an external hard drive from a windows PC without clicking on the remove drive button on your task bar. For big trips or projects, I use a dedicated external drive just for those files. I do not use RAID.

I bought enclosures to hold 3.5"s in IDE days. - Not very happy; PSU sockets would have benefited from either bigger or at least secured screws.

Later I bought cheap ready made external USB drives with failing PSUs and stuffed the HDDs into my regular PC. Right now I have a pair of contemporary external ones that I am filling.

 

My New Year's resolution is to get my hardware on a most humble kind of professional level. - I want to get a bunch of elderly handmedown PCs going, to be really backed up and also able to evaluate which leftovers of my main machine will be still alive & kicking when I'll fry it the next time. Having a dispensable test platform at hand seems essential for that.

Derek, when I travel I have used dual 1 terabyte USB 3.0 passport drives with my pc lap top that has a 1 T ssd that I installed. That is barely enough. In the last 7 years I have gone from 12 to 24 to 36 Mp bodies to fast 20 and 46 mp per file bodies. I have tripled my storage requirement. My PC work station at home has an internal 1T ssd and I currently save my work permanently on twin 8 T western digital SATA hard drives that mirror each other in a cheap Sabrent dual hot swap 2.5/3.5 USB 3.0 docking station. Startech makes similar products. I currently have 6 terabytes on each drive. Its slow but I don't require speed for this process. I can leave it overnight. I am building a new system and going with a M.2 ssd internal storage and will use a more sophisticated more permanent storage set up with Thunderbolt interface that will better acomodate Lightroom file management. It is going to cost me. Hot swapping is less than ideal if your using Lightroom and have smaller drives that you have to move in and out to access your files. I have kept graduating to larger and larger SATA spinning hard drives for storage and until ssd drives come way down in price I will be compromising speed for capacity for basic storage. Prices are slowly coming down. I am an amateur but I know that professionals who are shooting a massive number of images have a much greater problem keeping up. I pay for my equipment without justification. Forget about "the cloud" that was an unfulfilled promise. I do everything manually on my PC. I also have a MAC with a time machine back up but only use it for work, internet and educational purposes. With the pc I always check my back up but with the Mac and time machine I am much more lazy. It's more of a right brain machine. Since transitioning from Photoshop to Lightroom on my PC i want a large fixed storage system. I don't think that Lightroom was designed with the idea that the average user would need fast hardware solutions for the massive storage that is required for current cameras that shoot 46 mp images at 9 fps. You really need serious storage space. I think the hot swap docking station is a good way to start but relatively slow. Anyway Sabrent and Startech make inexpensive USB 3.0 hot swap docks that can handle large hard drives if your looking for a quick and dirty fix. Merry Christmas. Stay frosty. Edited December 27, 2018 by 2Oceans

I use WD Passport. You can get 4tb for about $95. 2tb for about $70.

https://www.amazon.com/Black-Passport-Portable-External-Drive/dp/B01LQQH86A/ref=dp_ob_title_ce?th=1