Storage and how best to secure images

[Droolinggimp]

Ok I have a W10 PC and 240gb SSd (OS and pictures on it) and a 500gb normal hard drive with my videos, games and apps etc . I am now looking into taking photography seriously and would like the best way to have secure storage for my pictures.

I am willing to do a fresh install of windows if it helps. Before I do I would back up all my photos on a brand new SSD which I would install prior to formatting the main ssd, take it out and then format/install windows again.

I have heard of Raid but know nothing about it or whats best to do.

I will also be purchasing a couple of external drives. If you think these are not needed let me know.

So what is the best way to accomplish this storage solution?

 

[Seearbe]

My setup for photography is:

- W10 on SSD, along with Lightroom and Photoshop
- Mechanical HDD where I store all the photos, stored by year-->month-->day
- Second mechancial HDD in the same PC where I manually backup the photos on an incremental basis (each month I just copy and paste the last month's folder)
- External HDD where I do the same manual backup, stored in a fireproof safe
- NAS located in an outbuilding, with automatic backup.
- Everything backed up to Amazon Photos on the cloud (free for prime members)
- Everything backed up to the cloud via Lightroom

I hope I'm covered! That sounds like I'm massively paranoid about losing my photos but it's not the case; things have just gone like that organically! I wanted a safe to keep other important things and just stuck the HDD in there, I had a spare NAS that was going unused etc.

The two mechanical drives were originally in mirrored RAID but something went wrong with the array and rather than trying to figure out how to piece it back together, I found it was far easier to just restore from the backup. So now they're just separate drives, with a backup on one.

For you:
- I'm not sure storing to an SSD is needed. They have less moving parts so should be more reliable but for the cost, I'd get two larger mechanical drives
- Definitely get an external drive and store that drive in a different location (even buried in the shed provided it stays dry). If you get robbed or there is a fire, it reduces the risks of a total loss.
- Look at cloud backup as a third option.

Edit: I see a baby in your sig. This was part of the reason I put a few extra layers of backup in place!

 

[Droolinggimp]

Thanks for that post @Seearbe.

I will look into just having a few normal drives and like you just back up the latest folder each month.. Sounds good idea. Plus external drives and hide them .....

Yeah I have a 4 (nearly 5 year old) and a 1 year old (nearly 2). Lots of pics from phones and camera on the pc plus holidays and a wedding I did the other day.. Thats the main reason I asked this question really. I have another wedding next year too. Need to be prepared,

 

[Seearbe]

Thanks for that post @Seearbe.

I will look into just having a few normal drives and like you just back up the latest folder each month.. Sounds good idea. Plus external drives and hide them .....

Yeah I have a 4 (nearly 5 year old) and a 1 year old (nearly 2). Lots of pics from phones and camera on the pc plus holidays and a wedding I did the other day.. Thats the main reason I asked this question really. I have another wedding next year too. Need to be prepared,

The simplest solutions are often the best.

My wife would kill me if I lost the photos of the kids!

 

[UnworthyBean]

My setup for photography is:

- W10 on SSD, along with Lightroom and Photoshop
- Mechanical HDD where I store all the photos, stored by year-->month-->day
- Second mechancial HDD in the same PC where I manually backup the photos on an incremental basis (each month I just copy and paste the last month's folder)
- External HDD where I do the same manual backup, stored in a fireproof safe
- NAS located in an outbuilding, with automatic backup.
- Everything backed up to Amazon Photos on the cloud (free for prime members)
- Everything backed up to the cloud via Lightroom

This is probably the perfect way to do it.

At bare minimum I'd say get two internal hard drives, one for storage and the other for backup. Then get an external that you just plug in once a week or month and ideally store it somewhere else.

Google photos is also free at reduced quality and I've found it handy for showing people previews when I'm out and about.

 

[snips86x]

I have a Synology NAS which has mapped drives to my PC. I use my SSD to process my images and then copy them to the NAS. NAS has 2x3TB drives and, until I moved house, was backed up to an external drive weekly (I should probably set this back up again).

 

[Andybtsn]

I use OneDrive. All my pictures are replicated to the cloud so there is always a version on either my PC or a server somewhere in the world.
Should Microsoft's infrastructure blow up I still have the data on my machine, similar to if my PC goes bang I can just copy my media onto a new hard drive/machine.

I do have a NAS that I backup to every 6 months or so.

 

[Skynet5]

NAS and sync to s3.

 

[Quartz]

I have heard of Raid but know nothing about it or whats best to do.

RAID is not a backup method. It is a method of data resilience. If you have two drives in a RAID 1 mirror set (and you should for important data) then if one fails the other is still there. BUT if you accidentally delete something it will get deleted on both drives!

 

[Amp34]

I have all my photos on a NAS, which is backed up to an external hard drive. That drive is swapped with a second every month or so and stored off site.

Photos I’m working on are on an internal SSD. I also have my Lightroom catalogue (and backups) on the same drive, and all of it is backed up to Onedrive automatically. That means the latest Lightroom catalogue is always backed up, as well as the photos.

Cant justify the cost of a TB of photos on cloud storage unfortunately or I’d do that too.

 

[Seearbe]

Cant justify the cost of a TB of photos on cloud storage unfortunately or I’d do that too.

I have 2TB stored to Amazon photos, in both raw and jpeg, included within my annual fee.