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How do you manage your photo storage / archival?

I understand that there can be room for improvement, but this has worked so far and I don't take as nearly as much photos as i used to.

1. Wired solution: WD MyBook 2TB 2x (Mirrored 2 + 2) for Raw unfinished files

2. Finished solution and other dump: WD MyCloud 8TB (Mirrored 4 +4 ) for Laptop backups, finished photos, and family and extended fam's iPhone pics/vids.

3. As a redundancy i back up through Amazon and Google photo apps for iphones for smaller files.

4. Too many random hard drives that should belong offsite, but they are still in the house...
 
I'm somewhat echoing other people here with my own setup, but I have a Drobo that is further backed by BackBlaze. I also looked into CrashPlan and a few other backup services, but what tipped me to BackBlaze was the better price and the native application (CrashPlan uses a java-based application, if I remember correctly). I have the standard BackBlaze, not B2. But I'm using a Drobo 5C (DAS, not NAS); not sure if a NAS model would still be compatible.

Drobo used to get a lot of flak, but it's been a few years since their management changed, and for me it was more affordable than a Synology solution. I like it and am happy with it, but if you prefer Synology, go for it. For what it's worth, the Drobo unit comes with a little tote bag, so if portability is what you're after... (not that a Synology unit couldn't fit into a tote bag, I'm sure).
 
I literally came here to post about this, so I'm going to join in on the conversation.

I am trying to follow the rule that data only exists if it is in three locations. Here are the options I have
  • 1TB external hard drive that might be close to full, need to check
  • 8TB external I bought on Amazon Prime Day
  • Amazon Prime Photos
  • Microsoft's cloud storage (200GB for two years came free with the purchase of the hard drive)
I want to keep photos in the cloud and on the two externals (buying a third when the smaller one fills up, whenever that may be).

What is the best option for storing them in the cloud? Prime photos takes FOREVER to upload and often something fails, which I don't have time for. It is nice since it is already paid for but I'm willing to look into storing them elsewhere, just not somewhere where it automatically adds them to my computer hard drive (like the documents I have in the dropbox folder) since I don't have the space for all that.
 
udontno said:
I literally came here to post about this, so I'm going to join in on the conversation.

I am trying to follow the rule that data only exists if it is in three locations. Here are the options I have
  • 1TB external hard drive that might be close to full, need to check
  • 8TB external I bought on Amazon Prime Day
  • Amazon Prime Photos
  • Microsoft's cloud storage (200GB for two years came free with the purchase of the hard drive)
I want to keep photos in the cloud and on the two externals (buying a third when the smaller one fills up, whenever that may be).

What is the best option for storing them in the cloud? Prime photos takes FOREVER to upload and often something fails, which I don't have time for. It is nice since it is already paid for but I'm willing to look into storing them elsewhere, just not somewhere where it automatically adds them to my computer hard drive (like the documents I have in the dropbox folder) since I don't have the space for all that.
Click to expand...
If you're using Photos for photo management, turning on iCloud Photo Library might work nicely for you (with the option of "optimize Mac storage" enabled, instead of the default of "Download originals to this Mac"). You'd probably need to buy more iCloud storage space (the default, free amount is only 5 GB) but the prices have become a lot more reasonable... and the rumor is that with the release of iOS 11 and macOS 10.13 this fall, we'll be able to share iCloud storage space with family members.

If you're using a different program for photo management then iCloud might be less ideal, and I'll defer to others who have more experience for that one.
 
Ledgem said:
If you're using Photos for photo management, turning on iCloud Photo Library might work nicely for you (with the option of "optimize Mac storage" enabled, instead of the default of "Download originals to this Mac"). You'd probably need to buy more iCloud storage space (the default, free amount is only 5 GB) but the prices have become a lot more reasonable... and the rumor is that with the release of iOS 11 and macOS 10.13 this fall, we'll be able to share iCloud storage space with family members.

If you're using a different program for photo management then iCloud might be less ideal, and I'll defer to others who have more experience for that one.
Click to expand...
I have been using Photos for photo management, but that might change in the future since I'm looking to get photoshop and might use adobe's products for everything photo related. I have the 50GB iCloud plan, but that wouldn't put a dent in it. Also, would I need to have the photos on my computer to be in iCloud? I have been putting photos onto both externals and then removing them from my hard drive, as I don't need to clog up space on my computer with them.
 
udontno said:
Also, would I need to have the photos on my computer to be in iCloud? I have been putting photos onto both externals and then removing them from my hard drive, as I don't need to clog up space on my computer with them.
Click to expand...
If they're within Photos then they should be uploaded, but if you've been exporting them from Photos to your externals and then deleting them, then I'm not so sure... it sounds like you may need a different solution.
 
Ledgem said:
If they're within Photos then they should be uploaded, but if you've been exporting them from Photos to your externals and then deleting them, then I'm not so sure... it sounds like you may need a different solution.
Click to expand...
That's what I've been doing. I have been exporting to external #1 and then external #2, then deleting. I need a cloud storage system I can upload from the externals that isn't slow as molasses and won't kill my pocketbook, I guess.
 
udontno said:
That's what I've been doing. I have been exporting to external #1 and then external #2, then deleting. I need a cloud storage system I can upload from the externals that isn't slow as molasses and won't kill my pocketbook, I guess.
Click to expand...
Have you thought about trying Google Photos or Dropbox? Sounds like a possible solution for you.
 
BJB Productions said:
Thanks. This was super good for me to hear, mostly because we seem to have a similar set up. I'm wondering if at this point I should just wait it out a little longer and get something with USB C. I'll probably be getting a Mac with USB C within a year or so.
Click to expand...

If you need a quite a lot of space and want NAS with nice hardware like USBC and 10GB Ethernet you can build a NAS out of a PC server chassis. I've been looking at refurbished PC workstations HP from Newegg.com and the prices are good and the HP build quality is as good as it gets. A 4-core Xeon with 32GB of ECC RAM for $400. These have just come off-lease, been cleaned up and re-built Get something like this and it will have MUCH higher performance then Synology.

For example a Mac will allow you to use Thunderbolt 3 as a network connection. So you can connect two Macs at 40 Gigabits per second. Of a Mac and a FreeNAS server at Thunderbolt speeds. Synology will not do this.

Then you put this software on it:http://www.freenas

It works a lot like Synology with a web based interface. But the file system is ZFS. The above web site will also sell you a turn-key system but the software s all free. Some features of ZFS that matter here are (1) That it can keep a version history, so roll back the a known-good snapshot is easy. Snapshots are nearly instant no matter the amount of data. Also a snap shot helps for backups. Very much like Apple's new file system except ZFS adds native RAID.

The trouble is that a FreeNAS system might be overkill unless you are a professional. But using normal community hardware lets you add things like 10Gb ethernet and USB-C
 
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ChrisA said:
If you need a quite a lot of space and want NAS with nice hardware like USBC and 10GB Ethernet you can build a NAS out of a PC server chassis. I've been looking at refurbished PC workstations HP from Newegg.com and the prices are good and the HP build quality is as good as it gets. A 4-core Xeon with 32GB of ECC RAM for $400. These have just come off-lease, been cleaned up and re-built Get something like this and it will have MUCH higher performance then Synology.

For example a Mac will allow you to use Thunderbolt 3 as a network connection. So you can connect two Macs at 40 Gigabits per second. Of a Mac and a FreeNAS server at Thunderbolt speeds. Synology will not do this.

Then you put this software on it:http://www.freenas

It works a lot like Synology with a web based interface. But the file system is ZFS. The above web site will also sell you a turn-key system but the software s all free. Some features of ZFS that matter here are (1) That it can keep a version history, so roll back the a known-good snapshot is easy. Snapshots are nearly instant no matter the amount of data. Also a snap shot helps for backups. Very much like Apple's new file system except ZFS adds native RAID.

The trouble is that a FreeNAS system might be overkill unless you are a professional. But using normal community hardware lets you add things like 10Gb ethernet and USB-C
Click to expand...

Wow, that's a super neat idea. Never thought of doing that. It may be overkill for me, though. I think what's most important to me is having a safe data archival system. My onsite setup doesn't need to be super huge. Just something that can constantly push to my cloud backup perhaps.
 
BJB Productions said:
Wow, that's a super neat idea. Never thought of doing that. It may be overkill for me, though. I think what's most important to me is having a safe data archival system. My onsite setup doesn't need to be super huge. Just something that can constantly push to my cloud backup perhaps.
Click to expand...

You don't need to use an 8-core server. You could build a FreeNAS system around a a ten year old Celeron based PC. Older low-spec PCs are available for free. FreeNAS is, I think a good step up from Synology's DSM. You can build it using a low-end CPU (I've gotten it to work well using an Intel Atom) but ZFS needs lots of RAM
 
ChrisA said:
You don't need to use an 8-core server. You could build a FreeNAS system around a a ten year old Celeron based PC. Older low-spec PCs are available for free. FreeNAS is, I think a good step up from Synology's DSM. You can build it using a low-end CPU (I've gotten it to work well using an Intel Atom) but ZFS needs lots of RAM
Click to expand...

What does "lots" mean? 64gb or more?
 
BJB Productions said:
What does "lots" mean? 64gb or more?
Click to expand...

The rule of thumb is 1GB of RAM per TB of data stored. But a practical minimum of 4GB. So if you are building a system with 16 TB of usable disk space. (That would be five or six 4TB drives depending on how much redundancy you need) you want 16 GB of RAM.

Today 16GB is not huge but compared to a Synology NAS it's a lot.

A dual core Intel i3 processor with 8GB of RAM, and 8GB of disks would work well for a home system.
 
The latest version of free was has changed their hardware requirements to include EEC ram, that not a big deal but it makes it harder to use or recycle a old PC. It's a great solution that I have used in the past. After retiring my free was server about 3 years ago I picked up a refurbished Mac mini (2012 model) I put a 1 tb SSD and 16 GB of rem and run OS X server. I have a 4 TB data drive that is backed up to a mother 4 TB drive nightly via superduper. 2 addition 4 TB drives with disk images for the household Mac pros. The Data drive is also backed up via crash plan. I also run iTunes home server, plex and a VPM so I can remote in to any to the home computers or security cameras. I love using OS X server because it give me the option of running other software on the computer. I even have a VM running with Windows for some special home security software.
 
dimme said:
The latest version of free was has changed their hardware requirements to include EEC ram, that not a big deal but it makes it harder to use or recycle a old PC. It's a great solution that I have used in the past. After retiring my free was server about 3 years ago I picked up a refurbished Mac mini (2012 model) I put a 1 tb SSD and 16 GB of rem and run OS X server. I have a 4 TB data drive that is backed up to a mother 4 TB drive nightly via superduper. 2 addition 4 TB drives with disk images for the household Mac pros. The Data drive is also backed up via crash plan. I also run iTunes home server, plex and a VPM so I can remote in to any to the home computers or security cameras. I love using OS X server because it give me the option of running other software on the computer. I even have a VM running with Windows for some special home security software.
Click to expand...
Nice, That's a good idea too of running server on a Mac mini.
 
I keep my photos in five places:
  • My computers internal drive (around a 300gb library)
  • Synology NAS (raid 1)
  • External SSD
  • Time machine HDD
  • NAS at my fathers place (raid 6)
I've been using Carbon Copy cleaner to sync whatever changes I make on my mac onto the HDD and NAS, manually copy archived libraries to my fathers NAS whenever I'm over for dinner or something. The time machine manages itself :)
 
facemeat said:
I keep my photos in five places:
  • My computers internal drive (around a 300gb library)
  • Synology NAS (raid 1)
  • External SSD
  • Time machine HDD
  • NAS at my fathers place (raid 6)
I've been using Carbon Copy cleaner to sync whatever changes I make on my mac onto the HDD and NAS, manually copy archived libraries to my fathers NAS whenever I'm over for dinner or something. The time machine manages itself :)
Click to expand...
Interesting. So you don't use Synology NAS for your Time Machine backups?
 
BJB Productions said:
Interesting. So you don't use Synology NAS for your Time Machine backups?
Click to expand...
I considered it, but I owned that HDD long before I purchased the NAS. The HDD has been my time machine for years, when it dies I’ll probably back up on the NAS though.
 
I have a couple of external HDD which are my main storage. I back them up to my Synology NAS w/ Hybrid RAID. That *used* to back up to Amazon Drive but they changed their pricing so I looked into Backblaze. I considered their B2 cloud backup service but decided to give the unlimited personal plan a try first. It will back up your attached external HDDs. It's $5/month so I stuck with it and I have 2 backups (NAS & Backblaze). I don't have as much as you do though. I'm still considering their B2 cloud service to back up the NAS completely though.
 
udontno said:
I have thought about Dropbox, but as that keeps a copy in the dropbox folder of your computer, I don't want to go that route.
Click to expand...

You can use Dropbox's 'selective sync' feature so that you don't have to keep the files on your Mac. I use Arq for backup to Dropbox using this method.
 
E3BK said:
I have a couple of external HDD which are my main storage. I back them up to my Synology NAS w/ Hybrid RAID. That *used* to back up to Amazon Drive but they changed their pricing so I looked into Backblaze. I considered their B2 cloud backup service but decided to give the unlimited personal plan a try first. It will back up your attached external HDDs. It's $5/month so I stuck with it and I have 2 backups (NAS & Backblaze). I don't have as much as you do though. I'm still considering their B2 cloud service to back up the NAS completely though.
Click to expand...

I would be really interested to follow along if you end up going with B2. Originally when I started this thread, I was hoping I could maybe do B2 + just a basic SSD for my working drive. Now it's looking like to push to B2 I'll need an Synology NAS to do that.
 
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