Hard drive question

SheffSean

SheffSean

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Name
Sean
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Hello everyone, well its been a while since I posted anything on this site, mainly because I've been out of action due to a shoulder injury at work, I've not taken a single shot since early January when it happened, anyway self pity moan out of the way, I've bought myself a Western Digital hard drive, each time I boot my iMac up, i get a message asking me if I want to use the HD as a back up to the HD in my iMac and I'm not what to do, should I use it as a back or not, I bought the HD to keep all my images on once I've processed them so this may help with the response, thanks in advance.

Sean.
 
I'm guessing your mac is asking if you want to use the hard drive as the time machine back up of your macs internal hard drive.

Where do you currently keep your images? Do you have a second copy of them (backups)? Do you want a backup copy of your images? How do you feel if the worst was to happen and you lost all of your images due to the hard drive they are on failing?

Currently I keep all of my photography on a fast external drive (I moved it as I filled up my internal drive with my photography and had no space left). This external drive is backed up to another desktop external raid 1 hard drive and also an external WD hard drive that I keep offsite. This way I have three copies of the data and one if off site if say I was burgled or a fire occurred. The backups are done automatically by carbon copy cloner every time my mac sees the hard drives are connected.
 
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If working on Mac, assigning HD clearly is imperative.
The very first assignation SHOULD be space for the
holy TimeMachine.

Since your Mac has not detected such assignation, it
is a way to remind to you.

In my MacPro, there are 4 drives, all NAS:
  1. system and apps
  2. image bank
  3. storage of everything else
  4. TimeMachine
 
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Hi Rob, thanks for your fast reply, yes to the first part of your reply, at the moment most of my images are are on my mac internal HD, some are on another WD hard drive (my wifes) but to be honest a lot of them are complete rubbish and where taken at an early time in my photography career, I bought the new WD HD as part of a new start as my photography has progressed quite a bit, WHEN!!! I get back on my feet, this is where id like to store my images, is this usual to have so many backups then Rob.

Sean.
 
Backing up all depends on whether you are happy to loose everything if something happened to the drive you store them on. One thing we can be certain of is hard drives will fail at some point, burglaries can happen and unfortunately so do fires. How would you feel if you lost all of your images because something happened to the drive they are stored on? Some hobby photographers may not be that bothered so don't see a reason for the additional expense. I'm bothered about the potential to lose everything so I've set up the easiest backup solution that suits my needs and one that will be done too. If you were doing photography as a living backups are critical to ensuring you meet your customers needs.

I've been doing photography for several years and built up quite a few images over that time. All of it is stored in my Lightroom catalogue and is accessible should want it in the future. The reason I have so many backups is because I don't feel I would be happy if I lost everything I had ever taken. The most likely failure is the hard drive I store them on, if that failed I would like to restore that hard drive back to its previous state, this is where the onsite backup comes in. It's quick and easy to restore from this backup. The off site backup hard drive would be needed if I was burgled or had a fire. Whilst photography wouldn't be the first priority should that ever happen I would be gutted to never be able to restore my 'photography computer' and to lose everything I've ever taken.

The problem is backups need to be thought about in advance, I've seen so many threads where people have had hard drive failures and had no backups. Some have looked at the possibility of professional data recovery from the failed hard drive. This is not only very expensive but often cannot be done. If you have a backup to hand it can be quick and easy to restore your hard drive back to how it was before it failed, relieve the panicking feeling a hard drive failure can bring on.

Don't forget online backups can be used too. Places like Flickr can save hi res images and be downloaded if you ever want a copy. This can be an easy way for a hobby photographer to have a 'cloud' backup, a hard drive backup is a good way to have a quick and easy backup copy. If increased google '1-2-3 backups'.
 
Thanks for the in-depth reply, yes its safe to say I'm a hobby photographer at the moment so i'll not bother to use my HD as a back up to my built in HD, sorry forgot to mention I've got some images in LR library, once I've processed my images i'll just move them to my WD HD and i'll get another one when i get back back on my feet and things pick up, mind you I've got to get my head around an effective workflow system, really looking forward to that, NOT, cheers Rob, all the best.

Sean.
 
petersmart said:
You can get FREE 50GB cloud storage from Mega www.mega.nz

And a PRO a/c on Flickr gives you 1TB of space for about £25.00 a year.
Click to expand...
Flickr have changed their account prices. I gather the free account now gives 1TB storage. When my 'pro' renewal came up I didn't renew as it seemed all you got was stats which I didn't feel was worth the money. Flickr is useful for storing hi red images, I don't think they do RAW storage.
 
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