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External Hard Drive
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Mar 29, 2018 22:32:15   #
johntaylor333
 
I have a WD 12TB 4 drive RAID array which cost me $600. If one drive goes down, just swap it out and it will rebuild itself.

No problems in 2 years. A little slow as it's running on Ethernet to our router (USB 3.1 would be quicker).

I also use crashplan so that I have another copy of everything somewhere different

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Mar 30, 2018 11:31:56   #
Ron Dial Loc: Cuenca, Ecuador
 
You should consider what happens when the external HD fails, as they all eventually do. Either buy two and keep one as a backup of a backup, or start copying the images onto DVD's. Disk format's change, even DVD formats change. Keeping all of your images where you can find them is a problem for every digital photographer. I now store copies on a second HD and send it off site. It ain't perfect, but better than nothing. Consider the worst and plan for the best.

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Mar 30, 2018 11:42:01   #
TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC
 
Ron Dial wrote:
You should consider what happens when the external HD fails, as they all eventually do. Either buy two and keep one as a backup of a backup, or start copying the images onto DVD's. Disk format's change, even DVD formats change. Keeping all of your images where you can find them is a problem for every digital photographer. I now store copies on a second HD and send it off site. It ain't perfect, but better than nothing. Consider the worst and plan for the best.


Backup (and an off-site disaster recovery copy) is always good advice. Let me add a couple of choices. Consider Mdisks instead of DVDs. Almost all BluRay drives will read and write them, they come in sizes up to 250GB, and they are orders of magnitude more robust for long term storage compared to DVDs. Second, if you have decent internet speed, consider using a major cloud provider such as Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Apple... Best DR you can possibly buy, as in addition to enterprise quality redundant storage, professionally administered, they keep multiple copies of your data at seperate geographic locations (and you can restore/access you data from anywhere with an internet location).

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Mar 30, 2018 13:35:14   #
NelsonARowe Loc: North Georgia USA
 
I bought a Western Digital that says for Mac. A lot of the externals out there say they are compatible with Mac iOS but that requires reformatting and luck. The one I got said right on the box for Mac and I have had no issues with connecting it to my iMac pro and downloading my pictures for storage no matter what file format they are in (raw jpg). It’s not any more expensive than the regular ones and can be found at Walmart ! They also have different size 1 tb to 4 tb. I also pay Apple the extra few bucks a month and store in iCloud and then I have google photos which is free and they have my 3rd copy. I feel safe enough with one onsite and two in storage.

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Mar 30, 2018 17:10:33   #
rfahrens
 
Thank you all for your input. I have learned a bunch and have many options to consider.
Again, thank you for your input.

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Mar 30, 2018 17:11:27   #
via the lens Loc: Northern California, near Yosemite NP
 
rfahrens wrote:
My internal iMac disc storage is full. Photos take up most of the storage. My primary camera is a Sony A7ii and I shoot in raw format. I am thinking of storing all my photos on an external storage device. Is that a good solution and what solution or equipment would you recommend? I am concerned about the speed of transferring as well as retrieving data.


I put everything on external drives and back up to a different external drive; this way you can just keep adding on.

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Mar 30, 2018 17:38:45   #
TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC
 
NelsonARowe wrote:
I bought a Western Digital that says for Mac. A lot of the externals out there say they are compatible with Mac iOS but that requires reformatting and luck. The one I got said right on the box for Mac and I have had no issues with connecting it to my iMac pro and downloading my pictures for storage no matter what file format they are in (raw jpg). It’s not any more expensive than the regular ones and can be found at Walmart ! They also have different size 1 tb to 4 tb. I also pay Apple the extra few bucks a month and store in iCloud and then I have google photos which is free and they have my 3rd copy. I feel safe enough with one onsite and two in storage.
I bought a Western Digital that says for Mac. A lo... (show quote)


Just to add, formatting a HD with either a Windows or a Mac is trivial and no luck involved - just a couple of mouse clicks from either platform. If everything you will read AND write is Apple/Mac, you can use the Apple APFS file system. By the same token, if you’re Windows only, you can use NTFS. But if you want to able to read AND write files files from either Windows or Mac, choose either FAT32 or ExFAT when you format. Remember that FAT 32 has a max file size of 4GB.

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Mar 30, 2018 17:55:09   #
Cdouthitt Loc: Traverse City, MI
 
Screamin Scott wrote:
I've got 2-4TB & 1-2TB WD My Book drives...


Yup...what I use.

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Apr 15, 2018 12:53:51   #
DJphoto Loc: SF Bay Area
 
rfahrens wrote:
My internal iMac disc storage is full. Photos take up most of the storage. My primary camera is a Sony A7ii and I shoot in raw format. I am thinking of storing all my photos on an external storage device. Is that a good solution and what solution or equipment would you recommend? I am concerned about the speed of transferring as well as retrieving data.


I use a PC, but that doesn't matter. I have 3 external 2TB WD drives, one of which is kept off-site and rotated with one of the others. I also have a second internal drive that I keep another copy of my photos on. I also store a copy of all of my photos on Dropbox. I currently have 1 TB, but will need to upgrade to 2 TB soon. You must have redundant back-ups.

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