Best Hard Drive Solution for Photography Catalogue

LElman on 18/02/2018 - 21:52

Hi All,

I'm currently using a 2015 MBP 13" and have an ever growing Lightroom catalogue, thanks to a Sony a7ii and a love for old film cameras as well as digitising the film. I Currently have a 2tb portable hard drive but was thinking of upgrading to one of the WD 6tb Wireless hard drives to keep my photographs safe

Would also like to be able to access my Lightroom library etc when out and about, hence the current use of a portable hard drive.

Anyone have used one of these or equivalents/alternatives?

https://www.wdc.com/products/personal-cloud-storage/my-cloud…

Thanks in Advance

Elliot

Computing Backup Computer Component Hard Drive NAS Photography Western Digital

Comments

  • [Deactivated] on 18/02/2018 - 21:57
    -4

    floppy disk

  • mnc on 18/02/2018 - 22:04
    +1

    Google photos for unlimited upload (will resize to 16 megapixels and some compression as well) and 1TB free upload to Flicker.

  • reno on 18/02/2018 - 22:12
    +1

    cloud… =)

  • cabler365 on 18/02/2018 - 23:02
    +1

    I use a Freenas server at home (with 2 * 4tb WD drives in Raid 1 - ie a copy of data on each hard drive) which I built from deals on here :) This protects me against immediate storage failure and provides high speed access to my files but does not protect from fire/theft at home/cyclone etc. To mitigate that I have an account with SmugMug where I sync all my JPEGs. Yes I have lost my RAWs and I have to download them all but I have them available to me! SmugMug may not be the best choice - but its fixed price with unlimited usage does look more attractive with increasing amounts of data that you are going to put there! For smaller amounts there are other cloud providers that would be cheaper.

    Additionally, as @mnc said, use Google Photos - unlimited free storage at 16mp and amazingly powerful searching. Really great for finding obscure photos! You can never have too many backups! :)

    FYI Previous discussion topic

    • diamondd on 14/10/2018 - 19:01

      "This protects me against immediate storage failure"

      I'm afraid it doesn't - you need AT LEAST three copies of everything you want to consider safe from storage failure.

  • StickMan on 19/02/2018 - 00:21
    +1

    Redundancy is key. I run 3 drives.

    1 for running off

    2 for a mirror image (Free File Sync), manually copied whenever I feel like

    3 another copy, held offsite.

    Anything less than 3 copies isn't a 'backup'.

    • Elman on 22/02/2018 - 18:38

      Thanks for the suggestions guys. I like the Freenas Server idea - Will have a look into it to see how I can make that work.

      What drives are you using @stickman?

      Cheers,

      Elliot

      • StickMan on 22/02/2018 - 21:37
        +1

        NAS is ok but that’s ‘one copy’, at best 1.5 copies. It doesn’t cover offsite or accidental deletions.

        WD Ultra for main drive, another WD for backup, and some seagate for offsite.

    • So lo on 16/10/2018 - 17:47

      This. It warrants emphasising that if it isn't offsite, it isn't backed up.

      All it takes is a break-in or fire and all your onsite 'backups' are gone.

  • DJMick86 on 11/10/2018 - 15:32

    https://www.harveynorman.com.au/wd-my-cloud-ex2-ultra-16tb-n…

    spend the money on something like this. and set up raid. connect to router and its wireless.
    Raid means that there will be less storage but your files will be on both drives incase of fail. also when ssd become cheep enough you can easly upgrade to ssd and make it a lot faster and safer.

  • aim54x on 12/10/2018 - 09:39

    I run a few copies as well.

    1 - in the computer (4tb Seagate Barracuda)
    2 - external 3.5" Seagate 4tb HDD
    3 - external 2.5" WD 2tb (photos only, will have to upsize this soon)
    4 - Netgear ReadyNAS (4x2tb WD Red)

    I'm starting to look at capacities and will probably upsize drives again soon.

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