How do you store your photos?

[guardado1213]

Hello all,
I'd like to hear from the community about how you store your photos, for work or personal use. I am asking because I recently upgraded from an old ASUS pc to a Macbook Pro and would like to see if anybody has any tips or advise on photo storage. My budget limited me to 512GB flash storage. Currently i have my Lightroom catalog on the Mac HD and have my photos on an external, but I'm wondering if their is a more efficient method of working? Would it be better to store directly onto the Mac HD? My side business in photography is taking off (thank the lord) so I think i need to get more serious about photo storage and backups.

Thanks for reading and I appreciate your thoughts and comments.

-Juan

 

[guardado1213]

funny I never think of files as photos, but images.

I was getting ready to say a drawing cabinet for prints, and archival sheet for slides, and glassine envelopes for negatives. 🙂

Well I do have archival sheets for my 35mm neg😀 and those are surprisingly more organized than my digital files

 

[Mike Fish]

Hello all,
I'd like to hear from the community about how you store your photos, for work or personal use.

My setup:
MacBook Air (LR catalog lives here)
WD MyCloud 8TB NAS w/ RAID (actual image files live here)
Apple AirPort Time Capsule (on-site backup of MacBook)
Apple Time Machine (backup software for daily backup of MacBook to Time Capsule)
CrashPlan (continuous cloud backup of everything)

-Mike

 

[guardado1213]

My setup:
MacBook Air (LR catalog lives here)
WD MyCloud 8TB NAS w/ RAID (actual image files live here)
Apple AirPort Time Capsule (on-site backup of MacBook)
Apple Time Machine (backup software for daily backup of MacBook to Time Capsule)
CrashPlan (continuous cloud backup of everything)

-Mike

Thanks Mike for sharing your setup, it is very impressive! For cloud storage, are you using iCloud or another vendor? Also do you store any photos directly on your Macbook Air? Sorry for all the questions!

 

[Mike Fish]

Thanks Mike for sharing your setup, it is very impressive! For cloud storage, are you using iCloud or another vendor? Also do you store any photos directly on your Macbook Air? Sorry for all the questions!

The questions are no problem at all.

I use Crashplan for cloud backup. Once it's setup it runs in the background and I don't even think about it. I don't need to remember to do anything, which I like. They send status emails so I know it's all working.

It costs $60 for a year using their storage. If you have a computer of your own to store the backups, their system allows that for free. So for example, your computer at home could backup to a computer at your parents house for free.

I imagine there are other cloud backup providers that are just as good. So I'm not saying Crashplan is the "best" - only that it had the features I was after.

The WD MyCloud NAS is available over wifi whenever I'm home. So the only time I really have any image files on the Macbook is briefly during import, or if I'm away from the house or out of town. I guess the WD NAS can actually be configured to allow remote access, but I haven't done that yet.

The WD NAS is not super speedy, but since the Lightroom Smart Previews are with the library on the Macbook it doesn't impact me much.

 

[guardado1213]

Thanks for the explanation Mike I appreciate it. I've been looking for a service to back my files up so I'm definitly going to give CrashPlan a look. The way you have set up the WD MyCloud sounds appealing and i think i might go in a similar direction. I've been using external hard drives but now that i have more clients, I'm always afraid of accidental damage or failure.

Thanks for sharing your setup photomoof!

 

[willie_901]

I recommend you purchase 4 more external storage devices.

1. Back up OS X HD to Device 1 using Time Machine. This would include the LR Catalog (which must be on your internal drive for efficient performance). This must be done with a wired connection because The LR Catalog is/will become too large to back up hourly over WiFi. This back up will include all the contents of your internal HD. In an emergency you could boot up from this drive.

2. When you import raw or JPEGs into LR, invoke the LR import option that creates a copy on a additional external storage device. This is Device #2. This is back up of your cameras' original files from SDHC or CF cards. I view this as my virtual negative/transparency file cabinet.

Now you have original data in two places. Your current external Drive (Storage Device 0) and Device #2.

3. Make a separate back up daily of the LR Catalog to external Device #2.

You now have your LR Catalog on three separate devices (OS X drive, Time Machine Drive, Device #2).

4. You will export JPEGs/TIFFs from LR for client use. These can be stored on your OS X drive which means they will be backed up by Time Machine. Or you can keep these on your current external drive (Device #0). If so, back up these photo files manually to external Device # 2 as well.

4. Manually store LR Catalog back ups on Device #2 as well. This and other back ups should be automated with a third-party app. I use SuperDuper. However the user friendliness of SuperDuper is a C+ at best. I'm sure there are other options as well.

5. Manually back up Device #2 to another storage device Device # 3. This protects you form a rare failure or error where you loose two back ups. It is also the only back up of your virtual negative/transparency file cabinet.

You will have two copies of your originals and any TIFFs created by third-party LR plug-ins/app such as PS, NIK etc.

6. At least once a month make a disaster recovery back up of your OS X internal Drive and Device 0 (working photo library) Ideally this device should be stored at a friend or relatives home. However storage in a separate room is protection from everything but a catastrophic disaster.

Running a business is different than supporting a hobby. Your fees should cover the expense of professional data management.

 

[pixelatedscraps]

Wow. It's been a long time and what an appropriate thread to jump back into. Our studio has recently overhauled its image storage structure and rebuilt its entire 24Tb server so here's a little look into how we do things:

1) Lightroom Catalogs / Portfolio imagery / Client Finals imagery = all on Dropbox and synchronised across 5x different Macs (1Tb)

2) Raw files / LR Catalogs / Portfolios / Client Finals (weekly backups from Dropbox, current year of work, taken on-site to clients or home to work from)= 2Tb LaCie Rugged Mini (Thunderbolt 2 / USB3)

3) Raw files / LR catalogs / Client Finals (immediate previous year) = 2Tb external 2.5" Buffalo drives (1x copy at the studio, 1x at home)

4) Backup of everything from the last 6-7 years (before that, it's negative and slide territory) on 4x 8Tb WD Red drives in RAID 5 on a Synology DS414J NAS.

5) About to sign up with either Backblaze / Crashplan or Amazon Prime for backing up the NAS.

6) Time Machine backup to a firewire-connected 1Tb LaCie Rugged backing up just the OSX SSD drive (running a 2010 27" iMac, i5, 20Gb RAM, 256Gb SSD / 1Tb HDD, a 2015 MacBook Pro 15" and a 2016 MacBook Air 13")

Now if we were to talk about file naming and organisation, that's a whole other conversation! ��

 

[jim0266]

iMac with 4TB drive attached. LR Cat lives on the iMac's internal SSD. Images live on external HD. Once a week or as needed I use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the 4TB ext to another 4TB. That is a bare HD that slides into a HD dock. I have several other HD's that also get copied with CCC with just the images. I try to rotate one those to my office for off-site safety. iMac 500GB SSD gets copied to another SSD on about the same rate.

For cloud storage *everything* gets backed up to Backblaze.

The photos and LR Cat are uploaded to Amazon Glacier via Arq. Arq runs in the background automagically doing its job. I have about 700GB there and currently costs about $7 a month. Arq is my photo archive of last resort. My hope is I will never use it to download photos.

 

[giganova]

- Bootable (!) backup of the operating system and all software on external Lacie HD. If the main HD on my machine ever crashes, I can boot from any other computer or restore everything on a new machine and it will look exactly like before.
- Photos live on internal hd.
- Backup of photo files folder on external Lacie hd #1 using CarbonCopyCloner software.
- Backup of photo files folder on external Lacie hd #2 using CarbonCopyCloner software. This HD is stored offsite in a secure location. I'm using a 128 Gb thumb drive to transfer the files to the remote backup drive to make sure that the backup drives and originals are NEVER at the same location. That thumb drive stays in my photo bag, so I have my most important photos always with me.