External storage for digital photography

Hi

I purchased my iMac last year mainly for photography running Lightroom and Photoshop (which is does beautifully well).

I shoot mainly in the RAW format which creates circa 24Mb files for each photo and will fairly quickly fill-up my internal hard drive. Therefore, I am considering my options for storage and backing up my images and also potentially secondary device for running Time Machine such that I can recover my system should I have a fatal issue on the drive within the iMac.

My proposed back-up approach is as follows :

(1) Large capacity external drive with two drives configured in RAID 1, circa 4-6 Tb :
This will be used to store my photos configured in Raid 1 so if one drive fails then the other drive will ensure I have a back-up of my photos. I have looked at the Western Digital (Thunderbolt Duo and Velociraptor) and Lacie options but have read contrasting reviews on their noise levels and ability to deal with the Mac going in to a sleep mode.

(2) Single drive external - 1Tb
This will be used to run Time Machine so I have a drive to recover from if my internal hard drive should fail. It doesn't have to be particularly quick as it wont be used for transferring large volumes of data.

Can anyone help with advice on what approach you have taken and if what I am describing sounds sensible. Also, if anyone has experience of any of the RAID enabled devices I mention that that would be good to hear about. (Noise).

Many Thanks

Sounds like a good set-up

Although personally I wouldn't use RAW, but that's just me, PNG or LZW tiffs would be just as good quality wise

I have also found no problems with sleeping disks, since I started connecting them through a powered hub rather than directly

Hi GCFarrow,

I am also in the same boat for picture sizes, my camera raw files are 24 +/- MB's each and my photoshop/illustrator files can ba anything from a few hundred meg to over four gigs depending on the project.

I have recently added more storage to my home setup in the way of an Iomega IX2 to store all my music, films and scanned paper records etc etc.

My current setup is;

1 x Buffalo Linkstation Pro, 2 x 3TB RAID 1, I store all my Photography, Publications, Artwork ect on here.
1 x Iomega IX2, 2 x 2TB RAID 1, all my media/documents on here.

2 x G-Tech 2TB Firewire drives, one on the iMac and one for the MBP. I use these as the Time Machine drives.

1 x 1TB G Drive Mobile with two partition on, I have bootable backups of the iMac and MBP on this drive in case of a drive failure or if I cock something up.

In addition to this, I have a 400GB Cloud plan where I upload any pictures / publications I am currently working on, sold or have advertised. I also use the cloud storage to store work files and scanned records; tax/bank/utility documents.

I know this may seem a little excessive but the way I look at it is that I have allot of storage available and I can grow into it. Before I added the Iomega NAS, I was using nearly 90% of the Buffalo drive.

Rgds,
Dave

Off Site Storage

vaughaag said:

Hi GCFarrow,

I am also in the same boat for picture sizes, my camera raw files are 24 +/- MB's each and my photoshop/illustrator files can ba anything from a few hundred meg to over four gigs depending on the project.

I have recently added more storage to my home setup in the way of an Iomega IX2 to store all my music, films and scanned paper records etc etc.

My current setup is;

1 x Buffalo Linkstation Pro, 2 x 3TB RAID 1, I store all my Photography, Publications, Artwork ect on here.
1 x Iomega IX2, 2 x 2TB RAID 1, all my media/documents on here.

2 x G-Tech 2TB Firewire drives, one on the iMac and one for the MBP. I use these as the Time Machine drives.

1 x 1TB G Drive Mobile with two partition on, I have bootable backups of the iMac and MBP on this drive in case of a drive failure or if I cock something up.

In addition to this, I have a 400GB Cloud plan where I upload any pictures / publications I am currently working on, sold or have advertised. I also use the cloud storage to store work files and scanned records; tax/bank/utility documents.

I know this may seem a little excessive but the way I look at it is that I have allot of storage available and I can grow into it. Before I added the Iomega NAS, I was using nearly 90% of the Buffalo drive.

Rgds,
Dave

Click to expand...

Hi Dave,

One quick question, do you have off site storage of all of your data.
I know you said 400 GB Cloud Storage but you qualified that by saying for "current photos and projects".

What happens to all your archived photos and projects that are on your drives and you have (heaven forbid) a fire, flood or you get robbed?

Maybe I missed something.
DavidH

louishen said:

Sounds like a good set-up

Although personally I wouldn't use RAW, but that's just me, PNG or LZW tiffs would be just as good quality wise

I have also found no problems with sleeping disks, since I started connecting them through a powered hub rather than directly

Click to expand...

Not so sure about that. Especially if you are into heavy post processing.

DavidHH said:

Hi Dave,

One quick question, do you have off site storage of all of your data.
I know you said 400 GB Cloud Storage but you qualified that by saying for "current photos and projects".

What happens to all your archived photos and projects that are on your drives and you have (heaven forbid) a fire, flood or you get robbed?

Maybe I missed something.
DavidH

Click to expand...

Still waiting on my Drobo 5D. >_<" I already got all the 4TB drives for it. You need to have a backup of the backup offsite.

DavidHH said:

Hi Dave,

One quick question, do you have off site storage of all of your data.
I know you said 400 GB Cloud Storage but you qualified that by saying for "current photos and projects".

What happens to all your archived photos and projects that are on your drives and you have (heaven forbid) a fire, flood or you get robbed?

Maybe I missed something.
DavidH

Click to expand...

Good plans all . . . I tend to be a bit paranoid on backups.

Only thing I would add is one or more cheap USB external drives. Put your most critical fles on them and stash in a safety deposit box at the Bank. At $25/yr for the box, plus the HD cost, can't beat it for peace of mind.

DavidHH said:

Hi Dave,

One quick question, do you have off site storage of all of your data.
I know you said 400 GB Cloud Storage but you qualified that by saying for "current photos and projects".

What happens to all your archived photos and projects that are on your drives and you have (heaven forbid) a fire, flood or you get robbed?

Maybe I missed something.
DavidH

Click to expand...

Sorry, I did not explain that very well. The Cloud storage is used for current works and photo archive, (weddings etc). Most of my illustrator works are one off's for my day job, posters, brochures etc so other than the base template I generally dont need them again and those that I do need to keep are saved on the work severs.

I've just logged in and my current breakdown is 213.4GB Photoshop files, 42.6GB of Documents and 18GB of Other.

Before having cloud storage, I had a 2TB drive at my parents house that I used to update every month or so. I went with the cloud option over this as I was able to keep my backups more frequent and the cost of cloud had become more reasonable.

Generally speaking, I keep wedding for around 18 months, giving time for additional prints/books/DVD's to be ordered. After this time I work though the pictures, keep a few for portfolio use and burn the rest to DVD, removing them from the archive. I always inform the couple before fully deleting their pictures for my own piece of mind.

So far the 18 month rule has worked out for me and I have never come close to filling the 400GB's, so unless I suddenly get an influx of weddings I dont see a massive problem.


Rgds,
Dave

Thanks everyone for taking the time to respond to my post. It is appreciated. From the comments received looks like I'm on the right tracks. I'd better get saving up as the RAID drives aren't particularly cheap but that said if it means my images are secure its a very worthwhile investment.

Best Regards
Gary