File storage advice for photographer

[Fornothingelse]

I am a professional photographer that works from home. I trying to figure out the best set up for file storage. Currently I have an early 08 Mac Pro that has two 2tb drives in it. they are dedicated for file storage. I also have external drives that I back-up all of the internal drives too. Here's the problem, those drives are full!

Now I'm trying to figure out what the best option is. I don't have a lot of space to set up a rack/stack server in my office.

I have looked at the Western Digital 8TB (Sharespace), and think this could be my best option. Obviously I would have to get 2 of the so I can set up a back-up.

Do I have any other options?

 

[CrackedButter]

Google 'Drobo'. Thats is the solution to all your needs.

 

[Edge100]

I am a professional photographer that works from home. I trying to figure out the best set up for file storage. Currently I have an early 08 Mac Pro that has two 2tb drives in it. they are dedicated for file storage. I also have external drives that I back-up all of the internal drives too. Here's the problem, those drives are full!

Now I'm trying to figure out what the best option is. I don't have a lot of space to set up a rack/stack server in my office.

I have looked at the Western Digital 8TB (Sharespace), and think this could be my best option. Obviously I would have to get 2 of the so I can set up a back-up.

Do I have any other options?

http://www.newertech.com/products/voyagerq.php

This is a really fantastic product that will allow you to do rotating backups of your main drives. And it has an eSATA port so you'll get speeds that approach those of your internal drives.

The Drobo, as mentioned, is also a great option, but lacks eSATA so you're limited to FW800 speeds (which might not be an enormous problem if you're just doing nightly backups).

 

[Ruahrc]

Another possibility is to back up things to an online backup service. Space and expandability wise this is probably going to be the best option. It requires no space on your part, and is expandable by simply buying or subscribing to more storage space. Once you get the initial lump of data uploaded, keeping up via incremental backups is not that bad. Some services even allow you to mail disks to them with the initial data which they can upload to the server locally, sparing you to upload the whole thing over the internet.

 

[SelfMadeCelo]

Another possibility is to back up things to an online backup service. Space and expandability wise this is probably going to be the best option. It requires no space on your part, and is expandable by simply buying or subscribing to more storage space. Once you get the initial lump of data uploaded, keeping up via incremental backups is not that bad. Some services even allow you to mail disks to them with the initial data which they can upload to the server locally, sparing you to upload the whole thing over the internet.

I'll second the online storage idea and throw in an option. You could go with Amazon's S3 service. It's DIRT CHEAP. How cheap?

It's $0.10 per GB to transfer in. If you want to share it's $0.17 per GB up to 10TB to transfer out. The more TB you transfer the cheaper it gets per GB.

After that it's $0.15 per GB for the first 50TB for storage.

So if you have 10GB of pictures, you spend $1 transferring them in and $1.50 a month to store it. Plus it's extremely reliable and you can use all the space you need.

There's also plenty of tutorials to automatically back up data to your S3 account and even some tricks to get S3 mounted in OSX as a new drive. You could also use CyberDuck to transfer files or even a Firefox add-on called S3Fox.

If you want more info --> http://aws.amazon.com/s3

Good luck. =)

 

[Nicolasdec]

The Drobo, as mentioned, is also a great option, but lacks eSATA so you're limited to FW800 speeds (which might not be an enormous problem if you're just doing nightly backups).

1+ for the Drobo. You could get a Drobo Pro, that has iSCSI and thats very very fast.

 

[GoCubsGo]

http://aws.amazon.com/s3

Good luck. =)

I never knew about that. Nice tip ... sorry OP for not helping much.

 

[j26]

So if you have 10GB of pictures, you spend $1 transferring them in and $1.50 a month to store it. Plus it's extremely reliable and you can use all the space you need.

And if you have 4 TB like the OP has would it not cost you $400 to transfer and $600 a month storage?

 

[Fornothingelse]

Thanks Cracked Butter! I think that is exactly what I'm looking for. It will be really beneficial to have the option of upgrading as I need to. Hopefully the 16tb max will be able to hold me over for a while. We tend to store about 2tb every year, and it will probably continually increase.

Thank you everyone else as well! Although I don't think the online backup is really an option for me. These are just way to large of files to deal with that, and paying for backup of more 4tb+ will be a little pricey. I think the Voyager option might just be a little to limited for me. I really am looking for expandability. And the Gigabit Ethernet option is a huge plus for the Drobo, it will be better then dealing with USB/Firewire.

Thanks again!