Hard drive filling up - archive strategies?

Tobers

Tobers

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Andy
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I'm running an onboard 500gb hard drive which is close to being full. I've also got a 500gb USB drive as backup and another 1TB NAS drive as 2nd backup.

I use Lightroom to organise all my pictures, with the onboard drive as the master.

I'm about to buy another 500gb USB drive to archive older pictures onto. What's the best way to do this?

I thought about using the "export as catalog" function from Lightroom, picking all pictures up to the end of 2010 and using the new USB drive as the destination. I'd then delete all those pics from Lightroom, effectively also deleting them from the onboard drive and freeing up space.

Is that the best way to do this?

Ta

Andy
 
Personally, I'd look at your storage strategy in total. It sounds like it's a bit piecemeal and it might be worth thinking about how you might organise the data better..
 
Any ideas and strategies to help then?

As I said, the current approach I have works well, but with Lightroom I want to move catalogs around rather than just the base files otherwise Lightroom gets into a tizzy if the files aren't where it expects them to be.
 
Look to locate your data into a logical manner and make sure you have at least more than one copy on a drive at any one time.

1Tb drives are a better way to go. Buying another 500Gb drive wll just complicate things. Bigger drives are not much more expensive.
 
I am pretty certain that ebuyer are selling 2tb external hardrives for around £85 (or they were 2 weeks ago)

Buy a couple, use one as a main and one as a back up :)

I would also look at having 2-4tb inside the PC :)
 
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Internal hard drives are MUCH quicker than external. Keep your data internally.

Do you have a gigabit network? If so, that can be a significant performance boost to moving data around.

Personally, I'd have everything locally, backed up regularly (I do mine every 20 minutes here) to a drive on the network. Mirror the network drive to one that is "somewhere else" (to give backup redundancy). It depends on which computers/NAS/network you have as to which is realistic.
 
Tobers said:
Any ideas and strategies to help then?

As I said, the current approach I have works well, but with Lightroom I want to move catalogs around rather than just the base files otherwise Lightroom gets into a tizzy if the files aren't where it expects them to be.
Click to expand...

Take a look at http://jkost.com she has a great way of explaining things all Lightroom
 
arad85 said:
Internal hard drives are MUCH quicker than external. Keep your data internally.

Do you have a gigabit network? If so, that can be a significant performance boost to moving data around.

Personally, I'd have everything locally, backed up regularly (I do mine every 20 minutes here) to a drive on the network. Mirror the network drive to one that is "somewhere else" (to give backup redundancy). It depends on which computers/NAS/network you have as to which is realistic.
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true, but even then you are limited to keeping backups on site. Online backups are very dependant on broadband speeds and not something I would try. At least with an external you can do a weekly overall backup and dump it at a friends/relatives house.
 
Harvey_nikon said:
true, but even then you are limited to keeping backups on site. Online backups are very dependant on broadband speeds and not something I would try. At least with an external you can do a weekly overall backup and dump it at a friends/relatives house.
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That's why I was deliberately vague.... If you only have a small amount of data you want to backup offsite, you could set this up over the Internet. If you're like me that'd like to store 1TB off site, the choices become a tad more limiting.

It also depends on you're attitude. I rarely go off site, so carrying backup media with me isn't realistic.

I really must put a backup drive at the other end of the house...
 
I am using a 2TB Seagate external I got from maplin for 99 quid. I know its not as fast as internal, but my active projects are on internal drive then I just archive everything older than 4 months on to the external in case I want to go back to it later at which point I just pull them back to the internal.
 
Well, I bought an iomega 1TB USB3 drive and a USB3 card for the PC. The drive is stunningly fast on USB3.

Next up is to export Lightroom images as one catalog per year of pictures onto the new external drive and the old 500gb one I have. That way the originals and all edits are kept together nicely. My whole image library is also backed up to my NAS drive.

And lastly I'll delete the images I have exported from the main Lightroom catalog on my internal drive which frees up space on that drive.

I have a daily backup job running to the new 1TB drive and the NAS to keep everything backed up from now on. The old USB drive then goes offsite to a friend's house, and comes back every now and them for an update. So I will end up with the master data on the internal drive, 2 on site backups and an offsite backup.

I think backing up using Lightroom catalog export is the best way forward as a Lightroom user - it works really well.
 
Lr export doesn't backup the original files
 
Correct, but "Export to Catalog" does export the originals, plus all the edits, metadata etc.
 
Tobers said:
Correct, but "Export to Catalog" does export the originals, plus all the edits, metadata etc.
Click to expand...

It does indeed - I forgot about that :) I actually use that too. lol
 
Am i right that the OP only has his pictures in once place and that is why the drive is filling up? have you ever thought about putting them on CDs/DVDs ? as back up disks then delete the none essential files from your hard drive to free space?

What if they drive was to fail and you lose everything? i have mine on a external once ive finished with them on my main drive and everything is on a CD that i dont want to lose
 
4737carlin said:
Am i right that the OP only has his pictures in once place and that is why the drive is filling up? have you ever thought about putting them on CDs/DVDs ? as back up disks then delete the none essential files from your hard drive to free space?

What if they drive was to fail and you lose everything? i have mine on a external once ive finished with them on my main drive and everything is on a CD that i dont want to lose
Click to expand...

No.... he has a 500Gb drive as backup to the main and also a 1Tb NAS (Network Attached Storage) that is used as the 2nd backup.

Non essential files will be backed up there to I guess.

CD/DVD is just too slow these days.
 
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