Storing digital archives

[P1505]

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I have a mess of files, drives, accounts, and cards with stuff everywhere. It’s time to tidy up.

Im thinking of getting a NAS, instead of paying for cloud storage. My PC is in my office which is a brick built outbuilding. So the NAS would be in the house.

My workflow is simple. SD card into PC, everything goes into a new folder labelled with the camera type and date. That goes into Lightroom. Google Drive backs up everything for me, but that’s getting full and the next tier is quite expensive. And it’s buggy.

So I was thinking of getting a NAS and running a backup to that nightly.

What does everyone here do? I imagine I’ll be at 4TB of data by summer, so would aim for something that could cope with 8TB. When I reach the limit of that, I’ll hold a better alternative will exist

[Ecar]

My broadband subscription actually comes with free unlimited storage for videos and pictures. The only issue is that raw files (including dng) are treated as documents (with a 250GB-free limit), not pictures, by my provider. Therefore, all my backups have been going to a NAS (actually two - located in different places - for redundancy) for many years now. NAS storage has become so cheap these days that it's a no-brainer IMO, as long as you have a good connection and enough bandwidth. Just make sure you buy good drives for the NAS. Enterprise-grade are probably overkill, but they are only marginally more expensive and provide peace of mind. Buy the NAS and the drives separately: drives are very easy to install and you often end up saving money this way (or get better-spec'ed drives, or more capacity for the same price).

[P1505]

I’ve ordered a 1TB SSD to house the Lightroom catalogue as it grows, but the masters will go to the NAS.

Ill then set that to back up to Backblaze every night. I think that’s the safest long term route. If I go RAID6 I’d feel happier.

[LocalHero1953]

I use a QNAP NAS for primary storage with SSDs, accessed mainly by LR on my desktop; it is connected by wired ethernet, and is fast enough. Keeping the main image files on a NAS allows me also to access images from my laptop, though I don't often do that.

The NAS is backed up manually (using SyncToy) to a Lacie external RAID drive (spinning disks) directly connected to my desktop, and from there to the cloud using Backblaze, which offers cheapish unlimited storage. Yes, the offline storage makes the external drive redundant, but it is convenient to have a local backup for accidental deletions, rather than having to find and download it from the cloud.

Edited February 26, 2021 by LocalHero1953

[pgk]

Multiple, independent, desktop and portable hard drives, each with a copy of all my RAW files on it - at the moment this is 4 x 4GB drives. Plus other (duplicate - currently 3) drives for JPEG & PSD image files and documents. My RAW Files are sequentially numbered (in the same way that all photo libraries/agencies I've come across) so it has a unique simple identifier. Any other system relies on interpretation and a file cannot be found as quickly. All my back ups are manual.

[ianforber]

I probably have far fewer files to back up than most people but my approach is to keep the Catalogue/Library on my internal SSD (backed up to Dropbox), and the image files themselves on an external drive, which is duplicated to two other external drives. I also have JPEGs of favourite (ie my wife’s favourites) in Apple Photos stored in the cloud. I do have a QNAP NAS,  but it’s for my music and films!

[zeitz]

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I use two Drobo RAIDs (one is a 5D, the other is a 5D3), with triple redundant storage on each RAID.  Each Drobo has 5 HDDs.  The existing drives can be hot-swapped with larger hard drives as needed; the drives don't have to match.  Failed drives can also be hot swapped.  Drobos are expensive; HDDs are cheap.  The extreme flexibility and security is worth the price.  A Drobo Mini is cheaper and portable, but requires SSDs which are limited in size and are expensive for the size.

[P1505]

The Drobo units look good. Think I will go that route. I’ll keep Backblaze as my offsite backup and keep Google Drive for storing JPEGS for sharing.

[P1505]

Update to this. My LaCie RAID failed, and they don’t have any more in stock. But I realised that with Backblaze all I really need is a standard external HDD, so I’ve ordered one of those.

Photos to internal drive, synced to external. Backblaze the entire library and catalogue. Job jobbed.

[P1505]

Just in case anyone Google’s I wanted to share how I have this all working.

My Lightroom machine is a Windows 10 system but this would work on Mac.

My internal drive for photo storage is a 4TB HDD. I copy images from the SD card via a card reader onto folders with the camera name and date, so M10 22-08-20.

I then import these into Lightroom in the standard way, choosing not to move or copy the images.

My external drive is a 4TB G-Tech drive, sitting on the other side of the room. That is a constant duplication of the internal drive, I’m using GoodSync (https://www.goodsync.com) to do this for me. It’s fully automated and free.

That takes care of my local backup.

I then use Backblaze to copy my entire system to the cloud. The initial backup is slow but once complete it’s just incremental and quite quick. On my connection I can upload a days worth of RAW files in an hour.

This system Is working well for me. If I need to go further I’ll get a NAS set up in the house, which is separate to the office so covers me for fire.

This backup regime is 100% automated and cost £155 for the drive and £5 a month for Backblaze. Cheap and simple.