Storage Solutions

antc · 13 Dec 2015 at 17:39

Hi all,

First just incase a mod sees this, I do have a post about external storage in the Mac section. But I wanted to ask in here too specifically relating to photographic storage solutions and what other photographers do.

So, I am looking to try and get the best setup (not necessarily most expensive) for my external storage solution I can.

At the moment I have a bunch of external drives. My photos are on the internal drive in my iMac and then replicated to 2x external drives via time machine which backs up alternate hours to each drive.

I was using a Drobo FS until it decided it was going to loose all my data one day when it was turned on so haven't used/trusted it since. Thankfully what was on there was another copy of my photos/music/docs etc which I have on other drives.

So I am curious, what do you guys use, how do you use it and what made you choose to go that way?

TIA :cool:

Cyanide · 14 Dec 2015 at 09:41

I've got a set on archive DVDs, a set on a RAID1 NAS and a set in the cloud. Mine's mostly wedding work though so I don't want to take chances with it!

booyaka · 14 Dec 2015 at 10:18

Unlimited Cloud storage with Amazon if your a prime member.

Vertigo · 14 Dec 2015 at 11:59

Server in the garage running Server 2012 R2 Essentials and all PCs backup to this every night. I then periodically take an offsite backup from the server to an external drive which is kept at the office.

I can restore individual files from the server as needed or a bare metal restore via a network boot. The server is actually a virtual machine which is also backed up to the external drive so, if I lost everything in the house, I could recover the server and its backup database easily from the external drive and then bare metal restore new client machines.

antc · 15 Dec 2015 at 14:57

Anyone else?

joelk2 · 15 Dec 2015 at 15:03

raid 5 homeserver backed up to crashplan.

Genoma · 15 Dec 2015 at 16:43

Up to last week I've been running redundant local backups, + rotating offsite backups on USB drives.

Got myself a copy of SyncBackPro to manage the schedules for the various local copies, and given I'm a prime subscriber, also using it for a cloud backup to Amazon Cloud Drive (free for photos with Prime). Amazon's upload speeds are good, event though it took most of the week to get everything up there, the daily changes if any will be copied overnight automatically. Another layer of security for me.

Bear in mind videos aren't included in the quota, been considering where to put mine...

john_s · 16 Dec 2015 at 08:34

booyaka said:
Unlimited Cloud storage with Amazon if your a prime member.

I've just joined Prime, so I'm just in the process of copying my photos up to it.

I keep threatening to set up a home server at my house and a one second at my parents and replicate between the two, but I never seem to get round to doing it. Maybe next year...

Demon · 16 Dec 2015 at 11:26

- A NAS for local storage
- Crashplan for unlimited off site storage of everything (including versions of each file)

Vertigo · 16 Dec 2015 at 16:22

john_s said:
I've just joined Prime, so I'm just in the process of copying my photos up to it.

I'd be interested in this if it weren't for the non-commercial use clause, although obviously many are flouting this.

I keep threatening to set up a home server at my house and a one second at my parents and replicate between the two, but I never seem to get round to doing it. Maybe next year...

Couldn't live without my server, use it for all manner of things in addition to backups. Crashplan allows free backups to another remote machine which could be an option.