Back Up Disk SSD or Spinning?

[Oxfordian]

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Some help and advice please.

I am going to have to buy a new back up drive for photo storage, currently I have a Sandisk 500GB SSD drive which has been okay but has refused to respond on a few occasions requiring disconnection and reconnecting to get it working again, as a result I am hesitant to get another Sandisk drive.

In consideration are a LaCie 8TB 1big Dock Thunderbolt 3 or a LaCie Rugged 2TB SSD again with a thunderbolt connection, I have been using the Sandisk SSD since 2022 but only with 20/24 MP cameras, moving to the Q3 and SL2 has filled the remaining space on the drive rather quickly. The 8TB drive is in pole position purely due to the space available on the drive but I appreciate that read/write speeds will be considerably slower on the spinning drive compared to a SSD drive.

What are peoples thoughts on one type of drive over the other, is the big 8TB usable as the main external storage for my images, will the read/write speeds be fine for photo retrieval and editing or should I stick with SSD's and accept that I will have to buy them more often. Looking online the 8TB driver is around £450 which is a bit higher than some  2TB SSD's.

I don't take video only still images using a Q3 and SL2 output is full sized DNG's, the Sandisk SSD is connected to my Mac Mini M1 via a thunderbolt 3 cable, processing images with Lightroom.

Any feedback/advice/suggestions welcome.

Thanks in advance.

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[drew.saunders]

Your primary work drive should be SSD for the speed.

Backup should be a separate disk, and spinning rust is a fine option, as that tends to be written to once and (ideally) not read from very often.

It sounds like you're not looking for a true backup, but a larger external work drive for your photos independent of the internal drive for your OS, applications, etc. In that case, get SSD if you can afford it, and then get a 8TB HD for backup.

Ideally, network speed and budget allowing, you should have a 2nd backup off site (the "cloud"). I pay for Amazon Prime, and they give you unlimited photos and something like 5G of videos. I don't shoot video, so I use that as my photo backup. I should get something else, but my cable modem uplink speeds aren't the best.

Your data should be in at least 3 places:

1. Working space
2. Local backup
3. not local backup

Drew

[pop]

8 hours ago, drew.saunders said:

Your data should be in at least 3 places:

1. Working space
2. Local backup
3. not local backup

Sound advice. 

In addition, you should copy both the working space and the local backup on a regular schedule to a new device, perhaps yearly. You also should perform a spot check now on then on your off-site backup.

[PhotoCruiser]

vor 8 Stunden schrieb Oxfordian:

Looking online the 8TB driver is around £450 which is a bit higher than some  2TB SSD's.

But has 4 times more storage space

I have several hard disks and ssd disks and use a older type 12TB Sandisk G-Drive RAID HD with Thunderbolt in Zurich and got a Sandisk 8TB HD with Thunderbolt here in Sardinia, both for backup purposes.
The SSD disks i use are for working purpose as they are tiny and can be carried around without risk to get damaged by hits or falling down, but i use only MacBooks and some of them stick can on the outside of the upper half to be out of the way. I usually buy M" SSD housings and a M2 SSD and assemble them by my self, and SSD's are great for the time machine backup as it makes it much faster.

Honestly a 7200 rpm HardDisk with a Lightroom catalog is not that much slower than a SSD as data transfer is limited but is considerable slower if you copy terrabytes of photos/data to it.

I have 3 LaCie Rugged and they are great due their extra protection, very good for travelling, the 8TB BIG is good too but you may go to a shop to hear her working.
My 12TB RAID G-Drive is very loud and on my desk what bothers me sometimes, the new Sandisk G-Drive i bought is nearly silent, i just see on the LED that she is working.
Thunderbolt is faster but more expensive, but that matters mostly when you have several disks for one or two USB3.2 is almost as fast.

For storage and if you have it on your desk and don't carry her around a HardDisk is fine, particularly if TB connected, if you carry the disk around then a SSD would be more safer and depending on use faster.

Best solution would be:

1 SSD double of the space you need for your data as working disk
1 HardDisk double or triple of the space you occupy actually for backup purposes and a good backup strategy

Chris

[Oxfordian]

Thanks for everyone's input it is much appreciated.

I am going to get a LaCie rugged 2TB SSD drive to use as a working drive, a second 8-10TB drive will be purchased in a month or so to act as the back up, the other drives I own that have images on will be copied onto this second drive then sent off to live with my son for safety.

Using some form of cloud based back up makes sense and I will investigate this further.

Once again thanks for the feedback.