How do you store all your photos?

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Matt.

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I am at the point where I need at least a couple of TB storage and that's increasing. I'm unsure on the best approach.

How do you manage all your storage?
 
Matt. said:
I am at the point where I need at least a couple of TB storage and that's increasing. I'm unsure on the best approach.

How do you manage all your storage?
Click to expand...

6tb internal drive for storage plus a few external drives for backup. System drive is 2tb SSD, and I keep a couple of years worth on that for quicker access.
 
I am merciless in deleting images. When I import to Lightroom, I immediately delete any images that are not clearly useful. This is usually within an hour or so of getting home from a photography trip. A few days later I will review the images and process those I want to use and delete the rest. The result of a day's photography is probably five or six images that I keep and occasionally none. After 18 years of digital photography I have around 1 Gb of images.

Even with my approach, the majority of my images will never be looked at again and might as well be deleted. There is no point in keeping images that will never be looked at.
 
Although my volume is trivial by comparison, I take the same view as John. Unless I were in possession of a large number of very good images, I see no value in keeping many. Record shots fair enough, but even then how many are worth it?
 
lindsay said:
Unless I were in possession of a large number of very good images, I see no value in keeping many.
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I keep anything that might be useful. Obvious failures are gone but with digital storage being so cheap, I keep the rest.
 
I’m of the opinion that it’s easier to just keep everything. I never delete. Storage is cheap (mostly!).

I use a MacBook Pro so cannot increase internal storage.

My current thought is this:
- External SSD as primary storage (maybe only 2TB for now)
- Export processed images to separate folder. Perhaps sync with iCloud
- Full backup to 8TB external drive (probably will add more and rotate)
- Full backup to Amazon Drive/Photos

This is a relatively simple approach and mostly automated.
 
Store all mine on a NAS though I have very recently been thinking of altering my process.

I think going forward I'll be importing, being much stricter with keepers and then converting to jpeg and storing those only. No more keeping everything in RAW.
I will need to import to one folder then effort to another as the backup from my pc to Nas happens instantly which is why currently all RAWS are kept.
 
john.margetts said:
I am merciless in deleting images. When I import to Lightroom, I immediately delete any images that are not clearly useful. This is usually within an hour or so of getting home from a photography trip. A few days later I will review the images and process those I want to use and delete the rest. The result of a day's photography is probably five or six images that I keep and occasionally none. After 18 years of digital photography I have around 1 Gb of images.

Even with my approach, the majority of my images will never be looked at again and might as well be deleted. There is no point in keeping images that will never be looked at.
Click to expand...
Pretty much the same here
 
Rule of thumb is you need 3 copies of data for backup with one off site

Similar to others,

Import cull and edit keepers and save to drive 1
its then easy to copy on schedule to another disk and then the cloud (i use backblaze b2 on a server)

Buy 2 disks the same size in pairs always
 
SsSsSsSsSnake said:
just installed the amazon prime photos backup app, unlimited storage of full size
photos and 5 gig vids
Click to expand...
I use it on my phone since Google stopped unlimited photos.
Didn't cross my mind to use it on pc as well.
 
SsSsSsSsSnake said:
Pretty much the same here
Click to expand...
Similar although I have kept some where my processing skills if improved may make a better image. That said I dont ever seem to have time to process images so every now and then have another cull, some stay as memories - they wont ever be a good image but captured a moment.
 
I am fairly ruthless with deleting but there are always record shots and memories which I export the RAWs to decent sized jpegs which gets them down to 20%ish of the original size and then delete the RAW. I have a LR preset to export and put in an "archive" folder beneath the original folder. I also colour flag the archive files so they are easy to filter out
 
Lots of hard drives, lots and lots... Plus dvds. I like at least four copies, with some off site. Thats history, I dont want to loose it.
 
I've got a few large HDDs (in pairs) with my RAWS - straight from camera. And tend to be more ruthless with JPEGS.

Given that my newly acquired D850 has huge files and is taking over as main camera this is causing a bit of a headache - the rate it fills a 120GB card is astonishing (and to think we managed with 1GB cards 15-20 years ago), so I am having to be a lot more ruthless with the files (RAW and JPEG) from this camera before I save to the HDD - I use a portable drive for temporary storage now.

I have tried a cull of my slides quite recently, but that didn't really create much in the way of room in the cupboards I store them in, so I doubt a cull of my surplus digital files will yield much space on my HDDS..
 
I also tend to be very bold on the culling. I delete approx. 80% of the images and only keep AND develop the ones that speak to me. Typically i Remain with 20 - 50 keepers from a portrait or boudoir shoot and around 200 images from my wedding jobs. And that‘ still plenty of work to do in order to hand out the best results I can.

All saved as raw and jpeg on my hardware devices (transitioning from Desktop PC to iPad pro), in the cloud and on one external SSD.
 
Mine goes like this...

Photos are saved to main hard drive in my computer.

They are backed up to an external hard drive that serves as main backup.

Once in a while, they are backed up to another external hard drive that serves as secondary backup, which is to be kept off site.

I prefer to try to overestimate the amount of storage I needed. Let's say, it is very highly likely that I'm going to end up with 75GB worth, so I overestimate and buy myself a 500GB hard drive. By the time I have 450GB worth, I will overestimate and by a 3TB hard drive. By the time I reach say 2.5TB, I'll buy a 8TB hard drive, and so on.

That way I future-proof the hard drives needed.
 
raws into apple photos app on ext ssd also get uploaded to cloud and back up to another external ssd monthly.
 
Look at Swansea male's comment. My sentiments entirely. I store on my laptop in folders from a certain date to a certain date, (My last folder is NOvember 2021 to June 2022).
Then on two hard drives, backing up every two to three weeks. My photos are my diary, valuable to me. Major Easy also has the right idea.
 
My file management is something like this
  • Import images to Lightroom on MacBook, they are automatically copied to NAS (or an external drive if I’m away from my network).
  • MacBook backs up via Time Machine to NAS and CCCloner to external HD.
  • NAS backed up to off site HD weekly and cloud nightly.
  • Best images exported to Flickr and/or iCloud.
  • Rejected photos are deleted from MacBook and any unused photos over 12 months old are put in a collection for review and deletion, as if I haven’t done anything with them in a year, I am unlikely to ever.
 
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