# Where to store my photos? What is your workflow?



## AlexanderB (Nov 4, 2012)

Hi,

I have been taking photos since 2001 and the time has come -- my library eats too much of hard disk. My current setup is: Mac Book Pro + Apple Preview for viewing photos. I'm thinking about upgrading to aperture/lightroom + external NAS drive (Network Attached Storage). But after researching on the net I have doubt aperture/lightroom will work reliably with network drive. What is your experience?


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## 480sparky (Nov 4, 2012)




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## Mully (Nov 4, 2012)

Forget aperture go with lightroom IMHO I use Carbon Copy Cloner for backups and it works great ...no problems in 3 years. I use 1T drives for storage, on my second drive now as I keep the drive off line as archive.


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## MLeeK (Nov 4, 2012)

keyword everything!!! As are Collections and Smart Collections in LR. I use XXClone for my backups, but I still manage with the PhotoShop equivalent of LR. XXClone just duplicates the hard drive contents onto another-it doesn't index them or make it easy as pie to find everything. If your LR catalog is maintained on that initial disc, it's copied onto the backup. Networking can work, even with LR. You'll need to have your drives in a secure hard drive enclosure and that probably should be hard mounted to prevent bumping and getting tossed around. 
HOWEVER... I also have the feeling you aren't talking about a double back up, but just to get them off your main computer and archive. In which case I'd still do the INITIAL clone onto your new hard drive. That way if your working hard drive fails you have EVERYTHING backed up. Hard drives have a life expectancy of between 2 and 3 years depending on the use of them. After the initial clone you can then continue to add to that drive, but don't use clone because it will overwrite on the back up with what is on the current working hard drive. If you delete the originals off your working drive it will also remove from the back up. 
If your main LR cataloging contains a catalog for that NAS or RAID or... it will be able to go to the network and pull the contents from that external drive. Just be sure to keep your LR catalog updated. 

Cataloging is the largest power of LR. Here is some info from Adobe on it. 
DPBestflow is a study funded by the Library of Congress for the preservation of imaging and has a PLETHORA of resources on this. It was their primary focus, but as you know cataloging, preservation and archiving is a huge part of workflow from start to finish. The website is so incredibly indepth that you can spend days on there. It's worth it. If you ever get to attend a seminar put on by DPBestflow DO IT! It's SO worth while. Welcome | Digital Photography Best Practices and Workflow | dpBestflow
This is their section on Disk Configurations Disk Configurations | dpBestflow And this is their file management launch File Management | dpBestflow


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## MLeeK (Nov 4, 2012)

Mully said:


> Forget aperture go with lightroom IMHO I use Carbon Copy Cloner for backups and it works great ...no problems in 3 years. I use 1T drives for storage, on my second drive now as* I keep the drive off line as archive*.


Mully's choice to keep the back up off line is a very wise one that we all should be doing. When a hard drive is spinning constantly with power, whether we are accessing it or not it is getting wear and tear on it. Solid state drives are becoming more accessible in the recent few months, but they are still OUTRAGEOUS expensive for the large amounts of data we need. Some day, I dream...


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## 480sparky (Nov 4, 2012)

Dis:

http://www.thedambook.com/art/DAM_Book_Cover.jpg


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## MLeeK (Nov 4, 2012)

480sparky said:


> Dis:
> 
> http://www.thedambook.com/art/DAM_Book_Cover.jpg



YES YES YES!!! DPBestflow recommends that one and another too... I think the one sparky mentions is the better of the two, personally, but I've never read the other in entirety. Books | dpBestflow


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## Light Guru (Nov 4, 2012)

Mully said:


> Forget aperture go with lightroom IMHO I use Carbon Copy Cloner for backups and it works great ...no problems in 3 years. I use 1T drives for storage, on my second drive now as I keep the drive off line as archive.



No forget Lightroom go with Aperture.  

It's a preference really. They both have 30 day demos so try them out. 

I personally prefer Aperture.  And I back up using the vault feature to my drobo.


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## Light Guru (Nov 4, 2012)

AlexanderB said:


> Hi,
> 
> I have been taking photos since 2001 and the time has come -- my library eats too much of hard disk. My current setup is: Mac Book Pro + Apple Preview for viewing photos. I'm thinking about upgrading to aperture/lightroom + external NAS drive (Network Attached Storage). But after researching on the net I have doubt aperture/lightroom will work reliably with network drive. What is your experience?



If the drive is connected via Ethernet it should not be a problem. If your accessing it via wifi then yes you will have issues with quickly accessing your photos. 

I definitely recommend a photo management program like Aperture or Lightroom they are both great at organizing your images and doing basic edits. 

What ever you do make sure you have the drive you keep them on backed up. 

Remember there are two types of hard drives.  Those that have failed, and those that will fail.  

I'm my iMac I have a SSD for my system drive and a larger regular hard drive that I use to keep my Aperture library on. I then backup Aperture using the build in via the built in vault feature to my drobo that gives me redundant data storage.


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## AlexanderB (Nov 4, 2012)

It seems the video describes some kind of RAID array done manually + store a copy inside a safe + 2 copies offsite. This seems a bit overkill for me, modern NAS for home usage will do almost the same thing. My[FONT=Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif] uncertainty is how aperture or lightroom will work over the network (wifi).[/FONT]


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## AlexanderB (Nov 4, 2012)

Light Guru said:


> If the drive is connected via Ethernet it should not be a problem. If your accessing it via wifi then yes you will have issues with quickly accessing your photos.


These are just performance issues or some kind of fundamental problem with working over wifi?


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## 480sparky (Nov 4, 2012)

AlexanderB said:


> It seems the video describes some kind of RAID array done manually + store a copy inside a safe + 2 copies offsite. This seems a bit overkill for me, modern NAS for home usage will do almost the same thing. My uncertainty is how aperture or lightroom will work over the network (wifi).



So what happens to your RAID/NAS when your house burns down, or gets flooded, or lighting fries the drive's controllers, or a tornado transplants everything you own into the next county?

If I resided on the East Coast, I need not worry about my images.  I'd have 98% of 'em still safe & sound in another state.

Yeah, RAIDs and NASs will take care of 95% of image loss reasons.  I just prefer to take care of 99.9999999%


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## JClishe (Nov 5, 2012)

When I import into Lightroom, I have Lightroom configured to automatically make a backup copy of all my images to my Windows Home Server during the import process. Then every night, my Home Server backs itself up to 1) an eSATA disk array, and 2) Windows Azure blob storage.


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## Light Guru (Nov 5, 2012)

AlexanderB said:


> Light Guru said:
> 
> 
> > If the drive is connected via Ethernet it should not be a problem. If your accessing it via wifi then yes you will have issues with quickly accessing your photos.
> ...



Performance issues. Potentially BIG performance issues.


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## spacefuzz (Nov 5, 2012)

I use l lightroom and it reads off 2 additional hard drives (internal to my box). I havnt really seen any performance issues from it. 

I backup to the clouds via Crash Plan. 

Good luck finding a solution thats right for you!


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## bratkinson (Nov 6, 2012)

My workflow is done in multiple passes or stages of a shoot. I copy from the SDHC to my SSD drive and 1TB drive in folder 1. I make a 'fast pass' deleting all that are too duplicative, badly exposed/focused or just a lousy picture from folder 1 on the SSD. I then process everything in folder 1 through Lightroom, creating folder 2. I also copy folder 2 to the 1TB. Then comes pass #3 with Photoshop Elements. I use both LR and PSE as there's things easier done in one than the other. The end result goes into folder 3. I then make yet another pass with PSE, cropping pictures to the sizes I want for printing, sometimes the same picture gets more than 1 crop, 4x6 and 5x7, for example. The cropping results go into folder 4. Each of the folders gets backed up to the 1TB each day, as well as to a 16gb thumb drive I carry with me until I have my offsite copy made and physically offsite, perhaps a week later.

As the cost of hard drives gets cheaper by the day (the 1TBs are less than $100. Contrast that to a 40 MEG, not GIG drive 25 years ago was close to $350, as I recall!), I'm not concerned about filling one up. By then, the 8 or 16 TBs will be less than $100, so space won't be a future problem, either. Of course, the absolute key is in coming up with an appropriate folder name for each shoot. Some use a descriptive name, some only a date, or some use a mix. I use both, and for recurring events, a single descriptive folder name contains multiple dates as folder names for each recurrance. Then my '4 folders' of each shoot are in the date-named folder. And I'm just a hobbiest. Pros would need a much more complex folder naming structure. 

In regards to RAID as backup/security/safety, when I built my latest computer in June, I determined from various technical websites that RAID can be more headache/problematic when it comes to recovering from a failure than most can or want to handle. 

For that reason, I went to cloning my drives and keeping one set in my computer room, and an USB external set offsite at church. That way I'm protected from every likely scenario, even tornado, as the church copy is in the basement.  In preparation for Sandy, I had a packed suitcase with my computer room drive copies in it. 

One thing RAID cannot protect from is what I've encountered twice in the past 2 months. Updates to Windows or to the device drivers can and have rendered my computer unable to successfully boot up. Even with close to 30 years PC building/repairing/upgrading experience, sometimes the effort to get it operating again is more time than I have or want to spend. Since I have a weekly clone of C: at home, I simply swap out the C: drives and I'm back to were I started from, albeit with some missing email, at most. Having all my drives on slide in/out bays makes it 30 seconds or less to swap 'em.


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