Beginner Storage of files

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Oreo21

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Hi All,

I have a few questions on the best way to store files with minimal effort.

At the minuite I am fairly new to camera's but I am used to file storage (as an ex DJ I am quite used to sorting mp3's etc).

Anyway, I am taking photos in both Jpeg and Raw format. The reason for this is because I am used to Jpeg files and while I am learning the basics didn't want to confuse myself with Raw. The reason I save in Raw at the same time is that I want to be able to have the flexibilty that the Raw files holds for future editing. So I have set the camera to save in both formats.

I have a basic laptop (which is where these files will be stored) and an external harddrive which I will copy things over to as back up. Is there a way to set this up so the external harddrive automatically copies one folder which contains my photos?

I have also been playing with google drive and the software they provide for a similar thing (all be it files are copied to the cloud). However I notice a lot of people use flickr. Is this better for showcasing my better photos or do people upload everything to flickr?

How do people here organise there photos and back ups?

Thanks
 
For local storage I have everything stored on the PC's internal hard drive. From there everything is copied to an external hard drive using robocopy.
 
easy solution to this. you can use syncback which is free and you can set it up to schedule backups to your external hard drive ( hourly, daily, weekly , etc etc etc) it can also compress them if you want and do a mryiad of other functions.

i always backup in triplicate.. on my backup second hard drive in laptop, on an external NAS, and online in both completed jpegs and SOOC raw files.
simply put you cant put a price on your photos and i would rather spend a few hundred pounds ensuring thousands of pounds and years of work is backed up in multiple locations.
 
If you are going to retain raw files for future editing, then you need to consider your software requirements as well as the hardware. Adobe Lightroom is not only a high-quality image processor, but also an image database management system all rolled into one. It combines a catalogue management programme with raw image processing. It may seem ambitious to take it on at this early stage, but I would suggest you should try out a free test version from Adobe. It is worth the investment.
Apart from that, for synchronising files across various drives, Econ Chronosync is one of the best packages available.
http://www.econtechnologies.com
 
Oreo21 said:
The reason I save in Raw at the same time is that I want to be able to have the flexibilty that the Raw files holds for future editing.
Click to expand...

Are you going to do lots of future editing though? Do you need to keep every single RAW file of every single picture you've taken? I think the answer would probably be no. Before you start storing duplicates of photos you'll never edit or want to see again I think you'd be better doing some culling.
 
I'm still relatively new to playing around with photography but I have back up for all my files on my PC (Documents,images & video), my route was a NAS drive slightly more than a USB external drive but the benifit is if you have a smart TV or blu ray they will most likely link to in and then you can share images, or watch the video on the TVs in the house without having to turn on your PC.

Think it was more in the £150 range for 2TB (link of one below)
http://www.ebuyer.com/189995-buffalo-linkstation-duo-2tb-2x-1tb-nas-drive-ls-wx2-0tl-r1-eu

This is then set up as a drive on my PC to access whenever.
 
Whilst out and about I use a Kingston MobileLite to back up SD cards to a flash drive.

Once home I copy the flash drive to my laptop. Once copied, the SD cards can be used again.

The laptop runs a script so that whenever first connected to my home network it does an Rsync of the photo and video folders to my fileserver (a RaspberryPi) with RAID. The Rsync is setup so that all files are maintained on the fileserver, even if deleted from the laptop to allow clearing the laptop of all but current projects.

Once a day this RaspberryPi Rsyncs with an identical one in my parent's house.

Once a month it creates a .tar.gz archive and uploads it to Amazon Glacier.

All transfers are set to email results so that I can tell if there are any transfer errors.

Hopefully I'll never get 2 geographically diverse disc failures and if I do, I only lose that months work. If I was pro, I might transfer into Glacier more often.
 
doad13 said:
I'm still relatively new to playing around with photography but I have back up for all my files on my PC (Documents,images & video), my route was a NAS drive slightly more than a USB external drive but the benifit is if you have a smart TV or blu ray they will most likely link to in and then you can share images, or watch the video on the TVs in the house without having to turn on your PC.

Think it was more in the £150 range for 2TB (link of one below)
http://www.ebuyer.com/189995-buffalo-linkstation-duo-2tb-2x-1tb-nas-drive-ls-wx2-0tl-r1-eu

This is then set up as a drive on my PC to access whenever.
Click to expand...
just remember if the NAS is your only copy it isnt a backup.

but im sure youre saying that is your 2nd backup set copy on the NAS :)
 
^^^ As Neil says above. If the files reside only on the NAS.. they are not backed up. RAID is NOT back up.. it's redundancy!
 
Configured as Raid 1 then you have a mirrored raid, which is effectively a back up. However, I always keep my images on an internal 4tb drive, then on an external and finally on a NAS in the office.
That way, whatever happens(apart from a nuclear strike) I'm covered for all calamities.
 
Cowleystjames said:
Configured as Raid 1 then you have a mirrored raid, which is effectively a back up.
Click to expand...

No.. it's not. It protects you from drive failure. It's redundancy. It can still be deleted, either by yourself or someone else accidentally. It can still become corrupt if a power failure occurs while writing to the RAID (cheap NAS devices do not have battery back up to help clear the write cache). It can still even be stolen.

If the data only exist only on the RAID then your files are NOT backed up... sorry.



However... as you also have another drive... they are backed up... but it has nothing to do with it being RAID1. It's because you have multiple copies in different locations or devices.
 
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Pookeyhead said:
No.. it's not. It protects you from drive failure. It's redundancy. It can still be deleted, either by yourself or someone else accidentally. It can still become corrupt if a power failure occurs while writing to the RAID (cheap NAS devices do not have battery back up to help clear the write cache). It can still even be stolen.

If the data only exist on the RAID it is NOT back up. Your files are NOT backed up... sorry.



However... as you also have another drive... they are backed up... but it has nothing to do with it being RAID1. It's because you have multiple copies in different locations or devices.
Click to expand...
what he said.

ALWAYS treat a RAID array as a single copy as you are not protected against - deletion, corruption, fire, theft, flood, some types of hardware failure (to name a few).
 
neil_g said:
what he said.

ALWAYS treat a RAID array as a single copy as you are not protected against - deletion, corruption, fire, theft, flood, some types of hardware failure (to name a few).
Click to expand...


I've always used pretty high end RAID cards, and have always run RAID6 to withstand 2 drive failures on each device, but several months ago the LSI RAID card in the main server just failed, and it took the RAID configuration with it despite having battery back up. Upon fitting a new RAID card, I could not import the configuration... even when I tried to import it as a foreign config. When the card failed, it took the RAID with it. If I had assumed RAID was back up, I'd have lost everything... forever.

RAID is NOT back up. Major rookie mistake.
 
yup, ive seen that a few times too. even on high end enterprise kit.

go back a few years inside a monster server, the raid controller failed and wrote crap data over all attached drives.

fortunately the machine was backed up to tape, cue a sleepless night getting the machine back up and running before start of play next day.
 
It's only a real backup solution if a full backup exists in 2 separate locations.
 
I use google drive, but the 15gb free limit won't take long to fill. Have you thought about getting a NAS drive? Best thing I ever did.
 
I use WHS auto back up, plus a manual LR back up to external drive. Thinking of also investing in crashplan for an online backup - 99 quid for a year, unlimited amount and unlimited number if PCs
 
st599 said:
It's only a real backup solution if a full backup exists in 2 separate locations.
Click to expand...


Yep... if your house burns down, it will take both back ups with it. It's for this reason I have one server in the garage. It's far enough from the house to make a house fire an unlikely cause of losing both. It's also hidden in the garage roof rafters, so a thief will unlikely find it. Plus.. a thief braking into the garage would probably be more interested in my car and tools, not a weird black box up in the ceiling.
 
Think about failure points: fire etc. as David's suggested but also things like Cryptolocker virus. Having duplication is good but only of you have an archive/older version. Likewise, what if you accidentally overwrite a file and want a previous version back?
 
3TB in the mail for later on today, I hope! In all honesty my personal photos are EVERYWHERE. my lightroom partion on my macbook pro, my OS partition on my macbook pro, my awful DLINK323 "nas", Backblaze backup, flikr, dropbox, some USB somewhere, discs, internal drives on my desktop...

Clients work is always kept on internal hard drive 1 + 2, NAS, Dropbox jpeg and backblazed.
 
pjm1 said:
Think about failure points: fire etc. as David's suggested but also things like Cryptolocker virus. Having duplication is good but only of you have an archive/older version. Likewise, what if you accidentally overwrite a file and want a previous version back?
Click to expand...
PLEASE DON'T MENTION THAT HORRIBLE WORD.
I can't even look at my screen where it says the word now.

God forbid.
 
Pretty much what everyone said. Get yourself a good 1TB or something external harddrive and save everything there. That's exactly what I do. Dump all the files there, and don't even plug it in unless I'm adding to it.

Also, using both JPEG and RAW are going to eat up a lot of space pretty quickly. I'd recommend just sticking to RAW so you won't have to deal with doubles, have a little more space, and go back and edit it if you need it. You can always convert a RAW to JPEG too.
 
Soulex? said:
Pretty much what everyone said. Get yourself a good 1TB or something external harddrive and save everything there. That's exactly what I do. Dump all the files there, and don't even plug it in unless I'm adding to it.

Also, using both JPEG and RAW are going to eat up a lot of space pretty quickly. I'd recommend just sticking to RAW so you won't have to deal with doubles, have a little more space, and go back and edit it if you need it. You can always convert a RAW to JPEG too.
Click to expand...

This doesn't represent a backup solution for reasons mentioned earlier. It's just a local copy.
 
st599 said:
This doesn't represent a backup solution for reasons mentioned earlier. It's just a local copy.
Click to expand...
Then there is always FTP type services at you could subscribe to I guess. Relatively easy to navigate
 
Is Flikr a quick and cheap option? They would provide all back up facilities by having mirrored servers etc. An you can mark an album as private. They give you 1TB to upload. However I don't know what they do to quality and any other question marks about ownership of IP
 
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