Photographic file organisation help needed

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I'm not sure that this is the right place, but the main focus of this is photos, so I will try.

In my family we have a range of different devices for storing photos and cataloging them, but each one is different and each one takes time.

What I am after is practical solutions that others have found, used and recommend for me to try.

So, basically we have the following:
My canon 5D MKIII has most of its photos put into Lightroom on my MacBook Pro and then stored on a portable HDD.

We have a PC based machine, that has a huge storage drive and photos on that.

My iphone

My wife's iPhone

2 iPads - (mine and my wife's although these share photos between them)

My wife's laptop (recently having power issues so nothing form iPhone or iPad backed up - i know we need to sort this out).


So, what it the best way to put all the photos form all these devices in one are that we can access?

The only thought I have is an external HDD that can be connected to via wifi form anywhere (out the country etc..) not just on the home network.

Does anyone have a suggestion on what one to go for? any other suggestions?

Im at a place where i want everything simplified, I cant be doing with different systems for different things. And some things that only open in some programs and some that wont.

This problem can be limited to me, how does everyone else manage it?
 
NAS?

If connected to a router/switch, you could access it providing you are on the network.
 
Sounds to me exactly the kind of application that cloud storage was designed for. I use Google drive for all my photos, synced to various PCs.

My NAS is for music and movies (stuff that wouldn't be the end of the world if I lost).
 
I have all my photos copied to two different computers and an external HDD, and I make sure I make the effort to do it every couple of weeks so I have 2 solid backups if one dies.

I only do editing on the main PC, the other one just has Picasa for showing so inevitably some photos will end up having different versions spread across the 3 devices but i'm not too fussed about that.
 
Assuming you shoot raw then just normal cloud storage probably won't be able to handle that amount of data... i would (and recently did) go with a NAS. I went for the cheapest recent 2 bay synology which is the 214se. While it doesnt have the spec of some others it's perfectly capable.
Synology (and other nas makers too) also provide software for creating your own cloud with android and iphone apps for automatic camera uploads etc. It has user control so different users can upload to different home directories. And of course you can mount it as a network drive..

It takes a bit of setting up - more than i expected (i've been fiddling for over a week) but it's pretty good...
 
Zogger said:
Assuming you shoot raw then just normal cloud storage probably won't be able to handle that amount of data...
Click to expand...

I've got about 270Gb of RAWs on Google Drive. 1TB capacity for £6 per month. I just copy files to my PC as normal, Google Sync deals with uploading to the cloud and keeping copies on all my other PCs.

Multiple redundant copies, my stuff accessible anywhere (protected by 2FA), and it took about 5 minutes to set up. I can even edit RAWs in a browser without a local copy using pics.io.

If data volume is a concern, then backblaze offer unlimited storage for about £3 a month, I've not used them though.
 
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I had conveniently forgotten about being able to pay for more data :p (I had just woke up..)
1TB not enough for me personally but that's only because of all the video (for now).
I decided to subscribe to crashplan yesterday but it's more of a backup service and less of a magic cloud.
 
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If it's for view only by everyone then maybe a cloud solution works but the way the OP phrased it gave me the impression this is just a consolidation exercise and that he needed something pretty low latency (lightroom) so a NAS still sounds right to me. Or better still, both :)
 
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