Recommend best place to store images


Hafiz Rahman

New Member
Aug 24, 2015
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Singapore
Hi everyone, lets share some best methods to store all your images. e.g. flickr
 

HDD is still the cheapest media. Placed in a drawer or cabinet it can last for many years. But: it's offline.
For online storage: do pay attention to the T&C (copyright) and the mode of presentation. If it's only for storing (without presentation) then there are more options than flickr.
There is no "best" option in general.
 

For archiving, best to have a DAS or NAS setup and run RAID 1...
 

I am using Mac so I go for Drobo because of thunderbolt connection, allow me fast access and standalone.
 

I'm pretty lay man n don't shoot alot thus i copy from the SD card to 2 HDD. When i'm ready to shoot again, i'll format the SD card.
If i'm in oversea on vacation where i will shoot more, i'll back up onto the WD wireless HDD.
 

Drobo 5d for the past 3-4yrs ... Fast n stable
On TOP of that, I also burn all my pics onto a blue ray disc on a yearly basis.
 

i am not a professional hence for me Desktop HDD, portable HDD backup is good enough for me.
 

Hmm for casual photographer, hobbyist?


you need to have a system for how you organize your images, this is far more important then where you store your images, it is pretty useless you able to store 10,000 images but can't find the pictures you were looking for, is just digital hoarding.
 

Drobo 5d for the past 3-4yrs ... Fast n stable

Yup agreed.

I have the Drobo 5D with 5 bays too.

Very reliable. One bay kong off once and it lighted up in red, the harddisk gone case but was able to slot a new harddisk in and the system auto repair.

Kudos to Drobo.
 

I agree with catchlight when he posted that organisation is important. For me, storage is part of your flow process. I use the following flow:
After shooting, image is transferred to an internal SSD in the computer (not C: / system drive). The images are sorted and tagged. Those images that I want to work on will remain on this disk.

All other images that were not deleted will be moved to an external Synology RAID drive. This is my working long term storage. If I need to access old images, this is where I go to. I can do searches since it is part of my lightroom catalog. I can also process the image without moving them back to the internal drive.

For archival storage, I will sync the image files in the Synology drive with a DLINK NAS, also RAID.The sync will update all the changes to the archive disk. The archive drive is my saftety backup and no edits are done that. At 6-12 months interval, I will burn the images to DVDs.

So far, this flow has been working for me. What I wanted was a quick access to images which I want to process and easy access to my old images. The hardware may change as better storage solution is available. What is important is that the archive can be access and read years (decades?) down the road.
 

NAS run raid 6(however raid is not backup, but redundancy) , or google drive/dropbox for offsite backup
 

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