# storing photos on an external hard drive?



## AndyH (Mar 3, 2018)

Is it possible and/or a good idea to store all of my photos on an external hard drive connected via usb directly to my wifi router?

My reasoning for wanting to do this is:

1. I have a desktop pc that is not really powerful enough for editing but I still use for viewing and uploading photos.

2. I have laptop that I use for editing because it has an i7 2.2ghz with 8gb ram. However I do not want to store photos on my laptop because it doesn't have enough storage and it will not always be powered on.

3. I want my photos available regardless of whether the desktop is on or not. (will mostly be on unless rebooting for updates).

If I go this route, what is the best way to backup my photos? I would like for the network attached external hard drive to be automatically backed up to the internal drive on my desktop computer.

Any thoughts?


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## BrentC (Mar 3, 2018)

Get yourself a Samsng T5 SSD.  It's tiny and fast and you can connect it to any laptop or pc.  If you use LR then keep photos and catalogs on the SSD.   I have a NAS on my network that I backup everything on the SSD to weekly.


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## 480sparky (Mar 3, 2018)

AndyH said:


> Is it possible and/or a good idea to store all of my photos on an external hard drive connected via usb directly to my wifi router?.....................?



What would be the advantage for doing this?


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## AndyH (Mar 3, 2018)

BrentC said:


> Get yourself a Samsng T5 SSD.  It's tiny and fast and you can connect it to any laptop or pc.  If you use LR then keep photos and catalogs on the SSD.   I have a NAS on my network that I backup everything on the SSD to weekly.


That may work but In order for it to automatically backup my photos I would have to leave it connected to my laptop and my laptop turned on right?


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## Jamesaz (Mar 3, 2018)

I stored my digital photos on an external hard drive. It died. Data recovery is expensive. I shoot mostly film now but would certainly suggest either multiple backups or solid state (no moving parts) backup. Just my personal experience. When I worked my corporate job a lot of resources went to digital asset storage and management (photo and video). Raid servers on site and backup offsite in the 100's of terrabytes. Of course the company had way more money than you or me. By the way, the dead hard drive resides on a shelf in the closet, serving the same purpose as the shoebox full of negatives in grandma's attic.


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## AndyH (Mar 3, 2018)

480sparky said:


> AndyH said:
> 
> 
> > Is it possible and/or a good idea to store all of my photos on an external hard drive connected via usb directly to my wifi router?.....................?
> ...


I agree it is not the best way to do it but it seems that in my situation it might be the most practical way using what I already have.


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## 480sparky (Mar 3, 2018)

AndyH said:


> I agree it is not the best way to do it but it seems that in my situation it might be the most practical way using what I already have.



You mean there's no way to add a USB port to your computer?



Jamesaz said:


> ........Data recovery is expensive. I ............ would certainly suggest either multiple backups or solid state (no moving parts) backup.............



I've been of the thinking:  If your files aren't at three distinct, separate street addresses, they really don't exist.


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## BrentC (Mar 3, 2018)

AndyH said:


> BrentC said:
> 
> 
> > Get yourself a Samsng T5 SSD.  It's tiny and fast and you can connect it to any laptop or pc.  If you use LR then keep photos and catalogs on the SSD.   I have a NAS on my network that I backup everything on the SSD to weekly.
> ...



Yes.  Or in my case I have my NAS setup to automatically copy the files from my SSD when I plug it into the USB port of my NAS, so I don't need my laptop or a pc to back it up .   

Catalogs and images start taking up a lot of space and best to keep off your laptop.  The external SSD is more than fast enough that you can work off it.  If you want proper backup, my advice is get a NAS that has RAID and backup your files weekly.  

Use something like Flickr to upload your edited images so you can access and show people from anywhere.


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## AndyH (Mar 3, 2018)

BrentC said:


> AndyH said:
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> > BrentC said:
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That sounds good! What kind of NAS do you have?


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## BrentC (Mar 3, 2018)

AndyH said:


> BrentC said:
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> > AndyH said:
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I have a Synology DS412+  with four 2TB drives, 5TB of space.  One drive is used as a hot spare in case one of the other fail.  I really like the Synology NAS's.  Qnap is pretty good too.   Or you can go the cheaper route and build your own with an older PC.


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## zombiesniper (Mar 3, 2018)

Just to throw one more wrench into this discussion.

You should have 2 on site storage, primary and back up but you should also have one off site. Just incase your house is broken into or burns down you can still back up from the off site storage.


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## jcdeboever (Mar 4, 2018)

Back up the external drive to a cloud. As mentioned, hard drives brick, SSD drives offer no guarantee for reliability other than they don't move. Recently, a friend of mine was editing wedding photos from an external spin drive and it crapped out. He lost them temporarily and the drive is being recovered as I write this, little over $3k and chances are high that all the images will not be recovered according to a recent email update. He only hoping to recover all the recent wedding photos. Regardless, he had over 2 tb of images on there. He is freaking out about it. The sad part is, we had a conversation about this a few months ago and I urged him not to buy the brand he did, and to use Amazon cloud service. He went the cheap route and never got around to doing the cloud thing.


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## BananaRepublic (Mar 4, 2018)

AndyH said:


> Is it possible and/or a good idea to store all of my photos on an external hard drive connected via usb directly to my wifi router?



Do you mean use the storage space on the wifi router device or do you mean using the internet to save files to a cloud space. Both can be done but they are two different things.


BrentC said:


> Catalogs and images start taking up a lot of space and best to keep off your laptop. The external SSD is more than fast enough that you can work off it.



Yes this what i do. There is a risk that the drive will fail and then you may be goosed. ( I would add that I do not do photography for a living)



zombiesniper said:


> You should have 2 on site storage, primary and back up but you should also have one off site



This is fine two if you can absorb the costs into the cost of doing business plus its inconvenient.



jcdeboever said:


> Back up the external drive to a cloud.



Can this be done using without your computer memory in the middle.

You could if you use light room store your raw files onto one external and ligthroom catalogues to another. If your house is burning down you just need to grab one.


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## AndyH (Mar 4, 2018)

BananaRepublic said:


> AndyH said:
> 
> 
> > Is it possible and/or a good idea to store all of my photos on an external hard drive connected via usb directly to my wifi router?
> ...


I have a Netgear nighthawk router that has a USB port on it. I have an external 1tb Toshiba hard drive attached to it.


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## ac12 (Mar 4, 2018)

Backup is NOT as expensive as some think it is.
I get a 2 or 4 TB external USB drive from Costco.  I think the 2TB drive is about $70.
Then every 3 months I copy ALL my data files to the external drive, and take it to the safety deposit box.
Now I have a full backup of all my data files (including photos) off-site.
Note, the 3 months increment is appropriate for ME, and what I do.  YOU have to determine the appropriate interval for YOU.

If you have 3 external drives, you rotate among them; #1, #2 and #3.  
So you have multiple copies of the files.

When I do a major activity.  I will take additional backups.
Example, after I upload my nephews wedding pix, I took a backup.  
Then for editing, I took two backups.
- A backup in the middle of editing.  It took me enough editing time at that point that I did not want to have to do it again.  
- Then a second backup after I finished editing.
So in total, I took 3 backups, for that project.
This project backup reduced my exposure, rather than waiting for my quarterly backup schedule.

Cloud storage or cloud backup are additional options.

My personal issue with using the cloud for working storage is the upload data transfer rate.  
My upload speed is 6Mb/sec, which is NOT very fast when you have a LOT of file to upload.  
Note this is MegaBITS, not MegaBYTES.  There are 8 bits per byte.  
So, a 20 MegaBYTE file would be 160 MegaBITS, and take about 27 seconds to upload, at 6Mb/sec.
27 seconds x 300 files = 8,100 sec = 135 min = 2hrs 15min.​So before you can do any editing, you have to do this 2 hour upload.
500 files would take 3 hrs 45 min.​I've run my uploads overnight, because it takes a couple to several hours to upload all the pix that I may shoot at a sports event.  
Next, once the file is in the cloud, if I were editing that file then saving the file, the save would take about 27 seconds to run.  Not long, but think about it, you have to wait about 30 seconds every time you do a file save when editing photos, compared to the couple seconds it takes you on a local drive.  This wait time adds up when working on a lot of files.
It is for this reason that I prefer to work with local files, either on my PC or on a networked drive.

BTW, you can buy a faster upload speed from your ISP.  But, like many things, it comes down to how much $$$ are you willing to spend for that faster upload speed? 

Cloud for backup is more tolerable, as the backup would run overnight when you are not on the computer.  So you don't really care how long it takes to run.  As long as the backup completes by the time you need to use the computer in the morning.
Obviously the computer needs to be running overnight for the backup to the cloud to run.


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## ac12 (Mar 4, 2018)

Personally, I would go WIRED network connection from the laptop to the NAS.  This is presuming that you have GigaBit network connections.  100 base-T/100MegaBit connection should be OK for working on single files.
Going wireless, your data transfer speed is based on the specific WiFi gear you are using, how far you are from the WiFi router, and anybody else using the same WiFi channel.

The placement of the WiFi router in your house, and where your computer is, is critical.  Wall, floors, and other building stuff will attenuate/reduce the signal strength, and slow down the data transfer rate.  I have 2 routers in my house, upstairs and downstairs, for that reason.  There is so much signal loss that I cannot use the upstairs router when I am downstairs.


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