How do you manage photo Storage devices?

[jay_huse]

<p>Ok, i know this has been beat to death but I been ingoring a problems for a while about storage space.<br>

Funny thing is I hate to even think about the bigger cameras with 24mp full frame.<br>

Anyway, how are you folks managing you pictures. I have about 200G of photos and will be taking alot more soon.<br>

Now, I can go back through and really redit delete some of my old photos on things but that seems to be alot of work. Plus I feel like if I delete the photo i might want some form of it back later. For example 2 very similar photos but 1 has a certain element that i might want.<br>

Are you guys buying S 2 Terabyte drives and just editing then saving to that or how do you folks do backup incase 1 drive goes down or breaks ?<br>

THanks<br>

Jay</p>

[Charles_Webster]

<p>I use Lightroom to catalog and manage my collection of ~9,000 photos. The files go into directories based on location and date when I copy them from the CF cards. Then I assign keywords as I import them into Lightroom, without copying or moving them.<br>

I back everything up onto two external hard drives that I swap in and out on a weekly basis, with one in my desk drawer at work, between uses. The scheme means that both drives are home on one night a week, but that's a risk I'm willing to take.</p>

<p><Chas><br /></p>

[torin_olsen]

<p>Jay,</p>

<p>There are several options. My suggestion would be to purchase more storage since hard drives are very cheap.</p>

<p>Online, there are services like Carbonite which will safely store your images at a separate location. For around $50 a year, it's a steal. Plus you don't need to even consciously think of backing things up, the software will backup the folders you designate. Currently it's PC only, but the MAC version should be out soon.</p>

<p>I run a network storage solution (DNS 323) with 2 1TB drives in a mirrored RAID array. That addresses your "1 drive failure" problem. With the DNS 323 (d-link), you can access the hard drive from anywhere on the network (or anywhere in the world with an internet connection if you set it up as an ftp server). It doesn't respond quite as quickly as an internal or USB/firewire external due to the data contraints of the cat5 cable. If you can get 1000/mbs throughput on the network though (gigabit router/switch), that problem should be somewhat mitigated.</p>

<p>A simpler solution would be to install RAID mirror drives internally on you desktop computer. But if there's a warranty involved on the computer, realize that you'd most likely be voiding it by opening the case.</p>

<p>Some people also record a backup to an external drive and store it in a bank safety deposit box. *shrug* Not my preferred method, but to each his own!</p>

<p>~Torin</p>

[tonybynum]

<p>good suggestions. . . There are no secrets, not special devises, edit carefully, and if you want to save everything just buy more drives they are cheap. . .<br>

I too use LR, therefore i dont have to have 2, 3, 4, 5 or more versions of a file, and I dont store tiffs. . .<br>

some guys are going over to DNG format and that alone will save you huge on data usage and still give you the benifits of RAW. . .</p>

<p>Tony</p>

[errol young]

<p>I store by date folder on my cpu, back up to cd in my office and a hard drive in my safty deposit box twice a year.</p>

<p>I use Filemaker Pro to catalogue the date folders. </p>

[garrison_k.]

<p>You aren't safe or archived until you have two copies on two mediums in two locations.<br>

The first good habit to get into is to immediately burn your raws the second they come off the CF card. This "Un-edited NEFs" copy goes into my "Disaster Recovery" location. I then edit, delete, and convert to DNG. When I am finished a project, I burn two copies "Edited DNGs" to dvd's. One copy for the office, one for Disaster Recovery pile. Every month I bring home a hard drive to the office and mirror my drives. In my off-site disaster location, I have the same two copies of everything. One on dvd, one on hard drive.<br>

You can't trust either dvd's or hard drives so you have to do both. Fire or theft, I'd only need to build a computer and install and OS and be back and running the second I attached sata cables to my disaster recovery hard drives.<br /> <br /> A dual layer dvd burner is $30 from newegg. Good quality DL dvd's are down to $0.40/each now. Burning 8 gig at a time is nice. Blu-ray will be cheap as well by summer.</p>

[david_henderson]

<p>I have a 500GB internal drive that I use only for digital photographs in DNG form. This is mirrored by a 500GB external drive which I use to back up everything imported into my computer as raw files. Lightroom does this automatically, and which holds backups of my Lightroom catalogue. I check over files at random every time I'm making backups, otherwise the external drive is switched off and disconnected. </p>

<p>This is not a strategy for life. Its a strategy that will get me through the next 2/3 years at which point I'll probably want to upgrade the computer. I should and will have yet another copy of the raw files and catalogue on another external HD off site. I'll do so as soon as I've worked out the logistics of having the drive here when I need it and away as soon as I've updated the back-up since I don't have a remote office. I could use dvd for this, but its not a route that particularly attracts. </p>

[aginbyte]

<p>Because drives are cheap, I believe in redundancy. Lightroom puts all our photos (35,000 in the Romanesque collection) onto one 1TB drive, all other photos on another. Have two more 1 TB drives to back up each of these, and then a 2TB external drive to back up again. We have, therefore, three copies of each image at all times, with the library managed by Lightroom2.</p>

 

[christian_odell1]

<p>I store personal photos in directories broken down by Family / Friends / Misc / Travel and then each shoot or group of pictures is stored in Subdirectories by date. <br>

For clients, I create a Folder titled their name and date of shoot. Inside that are three subdirectories. One is for raw files straight from camera. The second folder is files that I picked as best from the shoot and did pre-process work in Lightroom. The third directory is for the final pictures, fully edited that they either purchased or I did for a commercial job.<br>

All files are backed up daily between two identical RAID-1 external cases. Each one is 1.5TB, mirrored to a second drive inside the same case. Since I have two of those, one stays at the office, one goes home and they get swapped every other day. I also, have a third RAID array that mimics the same data PLUS a mirror of my work machines, personal laptop and personal data that is updated once a month and stays at a third offsite location as backup.</p>

[jay_f___dc_]

<p>Over the past two years I have generated about 25,000 images now in LR2, most of which started as 100Mb scans of 35 mm transparencies. Many of these have been reduced in size which leaves me with about 1.5 TB worth of images. My G5 has a 500 GB and 1 TB internal drives. The former is only for the OS and programs. The latter is for images. I also have an external 1 TB RAID 0 drive for the rest of the images Both TB drives are backed up (mirrored) to one 2 TB RAID 0 drive. The 500 GB internal is also mirrored to an extern 500 GB drive. I have another 500GB external that was used when my collection was smaller. I use SnchronizePro for Back up - very easy to use and flexible. You can program it to do teh backups while you sleep. All external drives are G-tech connected with FW/800. I should have a third copy of all stored off-site but don't as yet. G-tech drives are a bit more expensive, but seem to be completely reliable, very quiet, and fast. Colleagues who have comparable size drives from popular competing manufacturers have over the past couple of years complianed to me of failures, noise, etc etc. About a year ago I put together a 500 GB and 1 TB drive into one enclosure from OWC for my back up system. It failed last week! Drives were ok, enclosure was the problem. That same day I ordered by 2 TB G-tech from Amazon and it arrived the next day! So this is a simple storage system, not the cheapest or most elegant (although the G drives look good with the G5) since each drive has its own power brick, but it works, easy to maintain, and expandable. ALso it will be simple to make a third copy for offsite storage. Also, when I scan, I scan to a "dedicated" scanning drive so that if I am also working on existing images there are no disk conflicts except for the programs of course. Then I copy the images from the scanning drive to my main drives, back up, and only then clean the scanning drive.</p>