Beginner Hard drive/Backup solutions

lindsayperezphotography

lindsayperezphotography

Junior Member
Messages
66
Edit My Images
Yes
I have usually had all my images on a single hard drive organised and backed up onto another but I don't feel I have a secure backup anywhere and I am also not able to access my files from anywhere else else from my phone when abroad.

Does anyone know any good solutions where I could have a hardrive about <1TB that would give me secure backups and be able to access my images anywhere? Would I need a server?

ANY help is appreciated

Thanks!
 
Cloud storage? Many options for varying costs out there.

In addition to your HD's
 
If you want access from anywhere as Phil says you are looking at cloud storage in some form or other.
If you want to get editing as well you could look at Adobe CC which gives you 1TB storage +Lightroom which costs £10/ month , if you don't want editing a cheaper option is the basic Zenfolio package which costs £60 for unlimited storage and is accessible from any where.
There are others but these are the only ones with which I am familiar
 
I use a Synology NAS device. Safe place to store my photos and other files, and I can access it from anywhere using phone, tablet or computer.

Buy at least a two disk unit and configure in RAID so as to have two identical copies of everything, although this automatically halves the available storage, ie, two 1 GB disks will give 1 GB total storage, but each disk is an exact copy of the other. If one fails, unplug it, plug-in a replacement, the unit will automatically rebuild the new disk as an exact copy of the other.

There are other manufacturers of NAS, and if you buy a bare bones unit you can decide the size of the hard disks you put in it.
 
Last edited:
First of all, Split the imperatives:-

1/ Do you 'need', full scale hi-res versions of your pictures, any-where and every-where, let alone on small-scale, low-res smart-phone screen?

2/ A 'back-up' archive, is just that, a repository you don't expect to access very often, if at all! Its just a store, and a 'Back-Up' one, is like a fire-extinguisher, you have hoping you will never have to use at all!

From there, what's most suitable/convenient?

I 'archive' out-of-camera 'originals'.. to a pocket hard-drive, I don't have permanently connected to the PC.... it's about 500Mb OTMH... and has a few directories, for 6-monthly back-up, which contain both out-of-camera originals and display derivatives.....

Do you REALLY need 1Tb or ore 'just' for photo's? I have gawd knows how many scans of twenty years of old film negs in that back-up!
How many photo's do you have that are really EVER going to be looked at to need THAT much storage?

Ideally, I should maybe have two-pocket drives.. one for current archive, one for the last 'as' back-up; current becoming back-up on update, to save biggest risk of corruption, which is when a drive is 'written to'... but, a dedicated storage drive on a second PC sort of does the job.. And there's a big stack of writable DVD's, with older back-ups on them....

Random access of my photo's 'out and about' is completely separate... many are up-loaded 'low-res' to farce-broke' or to 'boto-phuckit'.. though I may need find alternative to that with their recent T&C changes.....

Dodging web-access issues altogether, an 8Mb memory stick, can hold pretty much the entire archive at 'Display' resolution; a 32Mb micro-SD that my 'reader' or O/H's smart phone could read, is big enough t hold pretty much ALL my photo's, let alone the ones I would want to show any-one, 'out and about', either on a smufone or an available TV set, or a lap-top or 'something'.... no net connection need be available, no log-ons, let alone web-addresses remembered, and access speeds can be much faster, especially of smaller file sizes, and the 'real' archive safe and sound, at home on the pocket-drive or dedicated hard-drive...

I don't think you need get a new widget..... first, I think you need a proper 'strategy' and to make the distinction between a 'back-up' archive, and a 'display library'.. they are not one and the same, and trying to combine both is a camel likely to fulfill neither role, well.

After that? Well, pocket drive is err... black! Quick check says its a 'Western Digital - pass-port' drive... I inherited when my daughter insisted it was 'broke' and I bought a new cable, that wasn't, and re-formatted! Heaven knows what the 'spare' drive in the PC is ad who cares!.... I really don't think, that makes and model makes a awful lot of odds... its a fire-extinguisher! Read/write speeds etc don't really matter much for it to sit there significantly NOT being used.

Whilst for occasional use 'on the hoof' SD cards/ memory stick, pretty much dtto. Biggest risk is loosing the entire card, as much as the data on it! Read-Speeds pretty in-significant compared to time to find something to plug it into! While 'on-line' access, well, you need access, for starters....

So back to the strategy.. and there I have to say that to my sense of sensibilities, a dedicated hard drive, you can physically hold and keep safe somewhere, is a lot more trust-worthy than some face-less cyborg company on the web, you pay a subscription to, to change their T&C's and delete your files on a whim.... but that's my 'feeling' on that matter... up to you to choose your own strategy.
 
FWIW, I have a decent PC with 2x 2TB hard-drives in Raid configuration. The cool thing about Raid is a) it's a back-up, but b) if a hard-drive fails it switches over instantly to the other mirror drive so you can finish the job your working on without interruption. Then I have another 2TB back-up hard-drive, and I also keep copies of recent work on a USB stick just in case I need to transfer to the laptop. And finally there's cloud storage of processed JPEGs with Amazon, though I'll probably switch everything to Adobe when I give in to a LR/PS subscription..
 
HoppyUK said:
FWIW, I have a decent PC with 2x 2TB hard-drives in Raid configuration. The cool thing about Raid is a) it's a back-up, but b) if a hard-drive fails it switches over instantly to the other mirror drive so you can finish the job your working on without interruption. Then I have another 2TB back-up hard-drive, and I also keep copies of recent work on a USB stick just in case I need to transfer to the laptop. And finally there's cloud storage of processed JPEGs with Amazon, though I'll probably switch everything to Adobe when I give in to a LR/PS subscription..
Click to expand...

Perhaps not relevant to you as you already have a backup disk too, but to be clear RAID really isn't a backup. It adds resilience to your hard drive setup, but it's absolutely not a backup solution. Delete a file, gone, corrupt a file - gone. PC stolen, files gone. Fire Damage? Gone. etc. Plus RAID is far from 100% reliable - It's good but it's not faultless
 
lindsayperezphotography said:
I have usually had all my images on a single hard drive organised and backed up onto another but I don't feel I have a secure backup anywhere and I am also not able to access my files from anywhere else else from my phone when abroad.

Does anyone know any good solutions where I could have a hardrive about <1TB that would give me secure backups and be able to access my images anywhere? Would I need a server?

ANY help is appreciated

Thanks!
Click to expand...
When you say files do you mean RAWs or processed jpegs? What are you going to need access for?

Cloud storage of some sort seems to be what you need. Whether that's by a website like zenfolio, online cloud backup, may be Dropbox or a cloud hard drive that depends what you actually want to view. Lightroom CC with 1TB would give you full access or Lightroom/PS and it's 20GB storage may give you some access whilst away.
 
don't forget the adage, 1 backup is no backup, 2 backups is 1 backup, 3 is 2 and so on.
 
Teflon-Mike said:
First of all, Split the imperatives:-

1/ Do you 'need', full scale hi-res versions of your pictures, any-where and every-where, let alone on small-scale, low-res smart-phone screen?

2/ A 'back-up' archive, is just that, a repository you don't expect to access very often, if at all! Its just a store, and a 'Back-Up' one, is like a fire-extinguisher, you have hoping you will never have to use at all!

From there, what's most suitable/convenient?

I 'archive' out-of-camera 'originals'.. to a pocket hard-drive, I don't have permanently connected to the PC.... it's about 500Mb OTMH... and has a few directories, for 6-monthly back-up, which contain both out-of-camera originals and display derivatives.....

Do you REALLY need 1Tb or ore 'just' for photo's? I have gawd knows how many scans of twenty years of old film negs in that back-up!
How many photo's do you have that are really EVER going to be looked at to need THAT much storage?

Ideally, I should maybe have two-pocket drives.. one for current archive, one for the last 'as' back-up; current becoming back-up on update, to save biggest risk of corruption, which is when a drive is 'written to'... but, a dedicated storage drive on a second PC sort of does the job.. And there's a big stack of writable DVD's, with older back-ups on them....

Random access of my photo's 'out and about' is completely separate... many are up-loaded 'low-res' to farce-broke' or to 'boto-phuckit'.. though I may need find alternative to that with their recent T&C changes.....

Dodging web-access issues altogether, an 8Mb memory stick, can hold pretty much the entire archive at 'Display' resolution; a 32Mb micro-SD that my 'reader' or O/H's smart phone could read, is big enough t hold pretty much ALL my photo's, let alone the ones I would want to show any-one, 'out and about', either on a smufone or an available TV set, or a lap-top or 'something'.... no net connection need be available, no log-ons, let alone web-addresses remembered, and access speeds can be much faster, especially of smaller file sizes, and the 'real' archive safe and sound, at home on the pocket-drive or dedicated hard-drive...

I don't think you need get a new widget..... first, I think you need a proper 'strategy' and to make the distinction between a 'back-up' archive, and a 'display library'.. they are not one and the same, and trying to combine both is a camel likely to fulfill neither role, well.

After that? Well, pocket drive is err... black! Quick check says its a 'Western Digital - pass-port' drive... I inherited when my daughter insisted it was 'broke' and I bought a new cable, that wasn't, and re-formatted! Heaven knows what the 'spare' drive in the PC is ad who cares!.... I really don't think, that makes and model makes a awful lot of odds... its a fire-extinguisher! Read/write speeds etc don't really matter much for it to sit there significantly NOT being used.

Whilst for occasional use 'on the hoof' SD cards/ memory stick, pretty much dtto. Biggest risk is loosing the entire card, as much as the data on it! Read-Speeds pretty in-significant compared to time to find something to plug it into! While 'on-line' access, well, you need access, for starters....

So back to the strategy.. and there I have to say that to my sense of sensibilities, a dedicated hard drive, you can physically hold and keep safe somewhere, is a lot more trust-worthy than some face-less cyborg company on the web, you pay a subscription to, to change their T&C's and delete your files on a whim.... but that's my 'feeling' on that matter... up to you to choose your own strategy.
Click to expand...
really help full thanks for your advice!!
 
JohnX said:
I use a Synology NAS device. Safe place to store my photos and other files, and I can access it from anywhere using phone, tablet or computer.

Buy at least a two disk unit and configure in RAID so as to have two identical copies of everything, although this automatically halves the available storage, ie, two 1 GB disks will give 1 GB total storage, but each disk is an exact copy of the other. If one fails, unplug it, plug-in a replacement, the unit will automatically rebuild the new disk as an exact copy of the other.

There are other manufacturers of NAS, and if you buy a bare bones unit you can decide the size of the hard disks you put in it.
Click to expand...
this seems like a really sound reliablr.opyion only thing it price! is it easy enough yo acsess files?
 
lindsayperezphotography said:
this seems like a really sound reliablr.opyion only thing it price! is it easy enough yo acsess files?
Click to expand...

Yes really simple, but you're right about price. Typical 2-bay, 2x3gb is c£450, but, what are your photographs worth?

I also use my NAS to store important files, plus it'll stream music and video, allow me to make tv recordings with a cheap dongle....

Have a look at the Synology and Qnap sites.
 
JohnX said:
but, what are your photographs worth?
Click to expand...
A very, VERY good quetion, we could probably ALL do with asking....

Mine, ultimately the answer has to be 'commercially' not a lot. Something not quite as much as next to nothing... there's no queue of agency reps on my garden path waving cheque-books, or folk asking me to undertake 'commissions'....

Plenty of people, DO, I think hugely over inflate the 'worth' of thier photo's and get so paranoid about thier 'copy-right' of them!

Sentimentally? Impossible to put a cash value on... but again....

Large chunk of my archive are technical illustrations without the text around them to explain what they are or why, they are pretty much completely worthless to any-one. And if they were all 'lost'.. I very much doubt that I would be so concerned by the loss to humanity that I had the compunction to start tearing down little motorbikes or old Land-Rovers to 're-shoot' any of them!

The old family photo's? Hmmmmmmm...... intreguing....

Judging by how often any-one looks at the family photo's I took over twenty years of my kids and such.. the interest mainly theirs, in what they looked like... but practically, even THERE there's little 'interest' or little worth.

Big reveal... they were all there, the photo's have been the archive twenty years.. they have all 'seen' them had access to them.. how many of the THOUSANDS of family photo's I took over 20 years do any of them even actually remember? Would many be particularly missed if lost?

Judging by the cringeworthiness of so many when girl-freinds / boy-frends chance on them... not much! Probably more inclined to PAY to see them destroyed!

Of potentally 1000;s of old family photo's, its the IDEA of them that is more valuable than the actuality I think.

Few of my photo's ever made it to the album, let alone those albums ever get looked at. I have dozens of photo-albums from my grand-parents, actually, even THEY only looked at once... when they put every photo in the envelope in them!

I have looked... and I dont know 1/10th of the places they took them, and of the one in five that contains a person, Nine times out of ten, I dont know them! What's left, is maybe six snaps of my grand-parents.. usually my gran looking pained to be infront of the camera yet again, or my grandad, looking very stern, posing eagerly infront of a monestry or water-fall of something! They are emnantly forgettable, and a single decent portrait would be far better 'memory' I might want to keep.

It's a very very good question, and I suspect answers would be more revealing of our own perception of the value of our 'work' than its actual ral 'worth' whether cold hard cash or tugs on the heart-strings.

But, ultimately, likely that pressed to put a cold hard cash value on them... few would be prepared to pay all THAT much for them...Imagine, if they put an annual tax on kept photos... how much would you be prepared to pay, before you said, "Oh-Kay.. take'em!" or "Hold up, just let me keep my favorite dozen!"

There's currently, according to the file-manager 'count' 30,ooo pictures 'just' in my 'display' directory..... hmmm.. if some-one asked me to pay a £1 per picture one off tax to keep them, I am pretty sure I wouldn't be going to the bank for a loan, before I had tried parsing out the ones I REALLY wanted to keep! 1p each a year? Well, I doubt I'll live a hundred more years.. but still.... that's still as much as my annual council tax bill! I think I would still be sending a lot towards the recycle icon! And WHO would really miss'em?

£80 for an external pass-port drive that, will probably takes the lot, at full res, and will likely last ten years or more..... yeah, why not.... B-U-T suspect that there's STILL a heck of a lot of 'junk' on that drive...... and?

Well... what did we do before? Grandparents seldom keep negatives, once they had the prints! And they rarely kept all them! In days past, did hobby photographers make duplicates of their negatives, and keep the originals in fire-proof strong=-boxes at the bank, against the albums in the living room being lost when granny started a chip-pan fire?

These days with 'cheap' hard drives, or cloud strange, photo-host sites, however many other possible 'archive solutions' that a;ll make mass storage so much asier, ore convenient and cheaper, doesn't automatically mean we NEED them. And Just because we CAN, doesn't necessarily mean we SHOULD.... bit like building nuclear bombs really
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top