Storage help please?!

LannaPhotography

New member
Hi! I'm having a storage nightmare over here. I have photos dating back to 2008 on my computer. I recently bought a 2T external hard drive to put my photos on. Between 2008-now I had about 30,000 pictures which equated to approx 1.5T of storage. My computer is running out of space- it karat won't let me upload my most recent batch of photos because there isn't enough room. I don't feel comfortable deleting my pictures off of my computer until I have them in at least one other place, and I can't foresee myself 50 years from now having a closet full of these huge external hard drives. Help! Where do you store your HUGE amount of pictures?! My computer thanks you in advance.

-Jessica
 

traceyjj

Senior Member
My hubby suggested yearly DVDs (however many it takes each year). I'm seriously considering going down that route. My only concern was that if DVDs became obsolete, how would I get access to my images... but hubby said that if DVDs were no longer sold then we copy them to the latest storage format.

Having said that, my 2tb external drive is smaller than a few DVDs, but its a way of backing up my photos without having to use the cloud :)
 

paul04

Senior Member
The way technology changes, I would not worry about having lot of hard drives in the cupboard, You never know, in 5 years time we might have 10TB of online storage.
Another idea, get another internal hard drive for your PC, that way you could have 2 back up's
Just back up your pictures for now on you external drive,( and spare internal drive)
And carry on taking pictures :)
 

Deleted

Senior Member
A good method of large capacity storage is a Network Attached Storage server. Look at a model from Netgear (the ReadyNAS range) or LaCie. These can store large amounts of data with redundancy. In addition, you can use an online backup service with unlimited data such as Crashplan to archive your data online.

I can give you links to specific models if you need more information.
 

SteveH

Senior Member
Like others have said, I use a NAS (Network Attached Storage) device. The model I have is a DLink, and will take 2 disks up to 3TB each. I have mine mirrored so if one of the disks fails, the other will still have a copy of my data, and you can also attach an external USB drive to create an extra backup.

My plan, is once the 3TB is full, approximately next summer, then I will buy a 4 disk NAS and by that time there will be disks up to 16TB on the market, so a pair of them, or 4 x 10 TB should see me right.

If you have a look on Amazon, under the computer section for NAS. If you get one, make sure it has 2 disks minimum and will either backup from one to the other, or do mirroring (RAID1) to protect you against disk failure.

ETA - This is the model I have D-Link ShareCenter 2 Bay Cloud Network Storage Enclosure: Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories

It has sat quietly working away for two years without a problem - The only issue with it now, is that it will only take disks up to 3TB, no bigger.
 
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aroy

Senior Member
My hubby suggested yearly DVDs (however many it takes each year). I'm seriously considering going down that route. My only concern was that if DVDs became obsolete, how would I get access to my images... but hubby said that if DVDs were no longer sold then we copy them to the latest storage format.

Having said that, my 2tb external drive is smaller than a few DVDs, but its a way of backing up my photos without having to use the cloud :)
1. I have found that DVD do not last long. I have some which are 7 years old and the data can only be read after a lot of tries (I have verified it on a brand new drive). So I have stopped using DVD.
2. DVD = 4.7GB, 1TB = 1000GB = 212 DVD. Add wasted space due to file system and large file granularity and you can safely assume 225 DVD/TB, so 2TB ~ 450 DVD, a daunting task to write and verify them. By the way even I have over 500 DVD of archived data in 6 large boxes. A 2TB disk will occupy a fraction of that space, be more accessible and data faster to retrieve.
3. A 2TB HDD is much cheaper than 400+ DVD. Just use a slow - 5400 RPM drive for archiving, they are more reliable than the faster drives. Both Seagate and WD have slower drives meant for archiving.

Here is what I do at present :
. I have 3 external USB drives - 1TB, 750 MB and 500MB.
. I regularly copy all the relevant data to these disks, so I have 3 copies on external media.
. I have quite a few 160GB, 300GB and 750GB internal HDD. I have copied two sets of very old data to these disks. I have a hot plug cage on my desktop, so once every six months I just check the data - write to a scratch disk and then write it back to the data disk. This ensures that the data is not only correct, but refreshes the disk surface.

I future I am planning to acquire a series of 1TB or 2TB external USB3 drives and store all my data in duplicate on them.
 

J-see

Senior Member
If you're shooting as a business it's probably different but when it is a hobby, I have a very simple method to control my data: I'm selective.

My father shot thousands and thousands and there's an attic full collecting dust. There's drawers filled with albums too. Nobody ever looks at them and even when, we look at the best.

That's my principle; the more I learn, the more of what I did before no longer makes the cut. I simply click delete. What I have left in the end is the good stuff. The rest doesn't matter.

Evidently that's not a method that works for or is appreciated by all.
 

FastGlass

Senior Member
If you're shooting as a business it's probably different but when it is a hobby, I have a very simple method to control my data: I'm selective.

My father shot thousands and thousands and there's an attic full collecting dust. There's drawers filled with albums too. Nobody ever looks at them and even when, we look at the best.

That's my principle; the more I learn, the more of what I did before no longer makes the cut. I simply click delete. What I have left in the end is the good stuff. The rest doesn't matter.

Evidently that's not a method that works for or is appreciated by all.
No, my wife wouldn't let me go that route. She likes to keep everything. Even the out of focus, not meant to be silhouette images that subjects can't be identified images.:confused:
 

Horoscope Fish

Senior Member
Hi! I'm having a storage nightmare over here. I have photos dating back to 2008 on my computer. I recently bought a 2T external hard drive to put my photos on. Between 2008-now I had about 30,000 pictures which equated to approx 1.5T of storage. My computer is running out of space- it karat won't let me upload my most recent batch of photos because there isn't enough room. I don't feel comfortable deleting my pictures off of my computer until I have them in at least one other place, and I can't foresee myself 50 years from now having a closet full of these huge external hard drives. Help! Where do you store your HUGE amount of pictures?! My computer thanks you in advance.

-Jessica
Your best route, at this point in time, is still hard drive storage. If you want to store it all, you'll have buck up for bigger drives and/or more of them. 6TB drives are in the $300 range, last time I checked. Whether you want to network or them not is up to you but you're still looking at hard drives. Optical media, DVD's and such, are not good for long term storage.

....
 

480sparky

Senior Member
...........Evidently that's not a method that works for or is appreciated by all.


85% of what I sell I never even gave 1 star during my editing. So if I deleted unrated images, my income would drop 85%.

I get people who ask, "Do you have a photo of ____?" and I'll check. Sure, but I never rated it.
 

J-see

Senior Member
85% of what I sell I never even gave 1 star during my editing. So if I deleted unrated images, my income would drop 85%.

I get people who ask, "Do you have a photo of ____?" and I'll check. Sure, but I never rated it.

Like I said, it's different for all. I don't care about nor aspire to sell any of my shots. I'm shooting what I like because I like it and even while, I try to get better.
Every step forward, I occasionally look backward and cull the weak.
 

aroy

Senior Member
I keep all my RAW files, as at times I go back to them and tweak them. Some out of focus or dark/blown I keep to test software. Storage is not all that expensive, once deleted it is gone.
 

J-see

Senior Member
It got little to do with money. I have 700+Gb empty space on this HD and I still delete daily.

We, and I speak for the hobbyists now, have to understand that like all others we have a tendency to become hoarders. If needed we will build something to the house in order to store even more. But most of what we store is doing nothing else but collecting dust. Yes we can look at them again but it's going to be a couple some day when it's too bad to shoot.

We can have a family evening and all watch some shots. If they're young enough we can force the kids to watch them too. But after an hour, they start daydreaming how being an orphan would be like. Imagine you've got a friend that collects stamps, or coins, or anything else remotely uninteresting. Imagine he wants to show them to you. All 3000. The first time you might do so out of politeness. After that you'll start practicing great excuses to leave when you'll visit him again. Most people are not as interested in a hobby as those into that hobby. Many are willing to look at a couple of great shots. If you indulge them with more, they'll run off screaming.

Even we ourselves will, at some point, no longer care about many a shot. But we're hoarders and deleting feels like cutting a limb. We'd rather know it is there even when it doesn't do anything else but being there.

I'm a realist, I do now what I'll end up doing anyways; taking out the garbage.
 
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