suznmari Loc: Woodstock, IL

Hello - I am looking for an external device to store photographs that are downloaded on my computer. I currently have a Macbook and a desktop Mac and have at least 40,000 photos total between both computers, many of them are doubles. I would like to get them organized and off the computers because they take up so much space and also I want them organized according to date so I can find what I am looking for. I would purchase 2 devices if necessary but I want to find a highly recommended device for obvious reasons. If anyone can recommend anything, I'd appreciate it. Thanks!

UTMike Loc: South Jordan, UT

I would look at Lightroom to organize/merge your collections and then appropriately sized external hard drives for storage.

jdubu Loc: San Jose, CA

Many options are available, but back up on a second drive or media is essential. Unless you are fine with the prospect of losing all your photos if something goes wrong.

Simplistically, 2 external hard drives will accomplish this for you. I run a variety of WD hard drives for working files, back up, etc. I also have 2 Synology NAS systems integrated as mirrored copies and other HD's as separate manual backups off site.

rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

I currently have three G-Tech drives attached to my iMac. They are attached through a USB hub. One is for photos, one for scratch space, the third does incremental "time machine" backups.
--Bob

DWU2 Loc: Phoenix Arizona area

If you follow Mike's advice, and I recommend you do, once you are accustomed to Lightroom (Classic, of course), here's a plugin duplicate finder that you may find useful: https://www.lightroom-plugins.com/DupesIndex.php

jak86094

For a couple of years, I've kept my images in a Lightroom catalog on an external drive and photos from my iPhone in a Photos catalog on my iMac. They are all backed up constantly using a Newertech Voyager S3 SADA drive dock. The Voyager lets you dock a SATA drive using USB 3.0 and backup using the Mac's Time Machine software but eject that drive and swap in another without opening any cases, etc.
. The Voyager is my backup solution. I bought two 5 TB SATA drives. I keep one in the Voyager for about a week, then, after that one has been backed up on the day I switch, I take it out of the Voyager (you just push a button to eject the drive), take it out to the trunk of my car where keep the second 5 TB SATA drive and swap them. When I mount the second drive in the Voyager, it almost immediately updates it with a Time Machine backup of any changes in my photo libraries. That gives me the original (External SATA drive permanently hooked up to the Mac) and two backups on the 5 TB drives...one mounted in the Voyager, keeping an updated backup of my photos (backing up several times a day) and the second outside of the house (in case of fire or other catastrophe in the house) that was backed up just before I swapped it out.

Jeffcs Loc: Myrtle Beach South Carolina

I use WD with my MACs and can attach to any of my computers
1= attached all the time
2= backup and unplug
3= backup remote as it lives elsewhere

Charlie7

I store photos in Apple iCloud. All of my photos are always accessible on all my MAC devices. I also back-up on an external drive.

gvarner Loc: Central Oregon Coast

Storage devices are the easy part, organizing is tougher. Start by figuring out how to identify and avoid the duplicates. That will be the hardest part. Hopefully each of your duplicates will have the same file name as it’s copy. If not, the job just got harder and you’ll need something like Lightroom to help with that, to scan each photo and find its copy.

BobHartung Loc: Bettendorf, IA

Several approaches are available.

First, a NAS (Network Attached Storage) System seem in order as you use two computers. Western Digital has a variety of varying sizes with various levels of RAID.

Second the NAS needs to be backed up you might consider a directly attached RAID array such as a Thunder Bay by Mac Sales (aka Otherworld Computing). Then with Good Sync or Sync Folders Pro you can keep a copy of the NAS on another device in an automatic manner. The SoftRAID software by OWC will soon support RAID 6.

I use two Thunderbay Enclosures each with 42 TB of hard drives in my home for back up. Currently RAID 5 but I will migrate to RAID 6 when fully operational. There are not on the network and I am connected to them via Thunderbolt 2 fibre optic cables. I also have a WD NAS on the home network (most computers are CAT 6 wired) for everything that my wife may need access to - invoice copies, utility bills, and the like.

ColonelButler Loc: Niagara-on-the-Lake ON Canada

One point that nobody has mentioned for consideration before this person tries to consolidate 40,000 photo files. What software are they using now to process and edit the images? If it is non-destructive, they are going to have to make some big decisions on how to migrate their catalog file information to a new software system. Example, if they have been using Apple Photos and want to move to Lightroom for its superior file management features, how will they ensure their edits follow the files when transferring?

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

While I commend you for keeping an off-site copy for disaster recovery, I would think long and hard before keeping my backup in my car trunk. You certainly need an off-site disaster recovery copy, but I can’t imagine a much worse place than in a car trunk to keep it. Heat, shock and vibration are the bane of conventional HDs, and while the drive isn’t operating (which would likely be fatal), shock and vibration can certainly damage actuators and platters, even when not spinning, and heat can damage components, even when not in operation as well. I would respectfully suggest rethinking that strategy and find a cool location with no shock or vibe for your DR copy.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Since you have two computers to access the data, a network attached storage (NAS) device that resides on your network and attaches to a port on your router is a good choice so both devices can share the data. If you go that direction and both computers have Gbit Ethernet connections, you’ll want a Gbit router and NAS (for speed). The drives in the NAS can be SSDs or conventional HDs, and when you choose a NAS, you should consider one that is back-ended by a RAID so that you can implement some redundancy in your storage such as a RAID 1 (mirroring).

Another alternative is to buy an external drive for each machine (either USB or Thunderbolt connected, depending on the available ports on your Macs) and mirror each machine to the other one (regularly and automatically) over your network, keeping your all your consolidated data synced on both machines. That is potentially faster as each machine is always accessing data from the local external drive which can be an SSD for speed.

Finally, you need an off-site copy of your data for disaster recovery, and since you’re running Macs, ICloud is an obvious choice unless your internet connection is dog slow. You can implement backup to ICloud regularly and automatically very easily).

Regarding deduplicating and organizing your data, there are a myriad of ways to do this. One good start is to copy the data on both machines to the NAS or one of the directly attached external drives telling the copy ap not to copy duplicates. That will get rid of duplicates between machines. If you still have duplicates, you can then run any of the dozens of available dedupe aps to remove those. Finally, you can sort by date simply by viewing the files by date (instead of file name). You now have one volume with all your files from both machines, deduplicated and in date order. If you’ve chosen the NAS route, you’re done except possibly implementing a digital asset manager (DAM) such as LR if you feel you need one. If you choose the two external drive route, just copy the data to the second drive and turn on your mirroring to keep the data synced in the future, and of course, make sure your aps point to and store data to the NAS or externals going forward.

Picture Taker Loc: Michigan Thumb

I would get a external hard drive for each computer and have the exact copies of each other. Must have two.

Ednsb Loc: Santa Barbara

Are they just in files now or are you using some type of DAM like Apple Photo, Lightroom, ON1, etc?

If you put them into a DAM (from both computers) you should be able to see the dups pretty quickly. There are apps that work against apple photos (which you own for free) which will de-dup your images but essentially they are just looking at characteristics like the same name then showing you all the dups and you manually (never automatic unless you don’t mind throwing away images) select which to keep. On1 is great because you can use its browser function rather than a catalog (database) using the MacOs file structure. It allows you quickly to see those images, mark them then delete them. You can even do searches against the metadata like same date, camera, lens, etc WITHOUT cataloging them.

As far as a backup, the rule of thumb is 1-2-3. I have an attached drive which is my time machine. It does incremental backups of your data and apps but not the macOS) you can look at slices of data based on the date for as far back as your drive has information. It deletes the oldest version as it runs out of room. Usually, you want a drive that is at least 3x the data size. For the 2nd step, I use CCC to clone a version of my drives to another external drive. CCC is an exact copy of the drive it is cloning. If that is the root drive you can make the CCC copy bootable. So if your root drive crashes you can recover from the CCC copy or even run off it. You can set up schedules that run in the background. I run CCC on a weekly basis. For the 3rd step, you need something that is not located at your computer site. I use BackBlaze which for $6/month backups your data (not apps) to the cloud in the background continuously. I live in Southern California and have had to evacuate numerous times due to fires. If I was on vacation and my house burned down I would be ok for 2 reasons. First is I take one of the cleaned drives with me. 2nd BackBlaze has me covered for a catastrophic situation.