Hard drive about full (Page 3): An external drive or a RAID array is a very useable method of expanding HD space. Especially if you have USB 3 or USB 3.1 connections available. I have...

BobHartung Loc: Bettendorf, IA

farwest wrote:

My hard drive is about full and I was wondering what others do at this stage add another HD or move photo's to and external HD what implications does that have with my LR catalog? I know there is a few options I just don't know what works best.

Thanks

An external drive or a RAID array is a very useable method of expanding HD space. Especially if you have USB 3 or USB 3.1 connections available. I have my RAID in a closet on the other side of the room and a backup in the basement. The RAID is connected by fiber optic cables terminated with USB 3 connectors. I back this up over MB ethernet to a much larger RAID in the concrete "safe" room in the basement. I think the latter is limited to 24 TB.

If considering purchasing a RAID, be sure to get one that does not require matched HDs as this can get expensive.

ronaldwrightdallas

1. I would bet that your main computer is getting old and will need replacement in the reasonable future. I end up changing computer every 3-5 years.

2. my solution to drive space was to purchase a drobo 5 system. it is not as cheap as getting individual external drives, but I safe (after a few years I had one drive go bad, it told me that, I pulled it out and tossed it, inserted a new blank drive and went on about my business). also it is easily expandable. I have 5 terabytes of extra space right now. with my new computer, I moved all my photos to that drive and lightroom speed is very good.

3. yes I backup to a single external drive

jackm1943 Loc: Omaha, Nebraska

farwest wrote:

My hard drive is about full and I was wondering what others do at this stage add another HD or move photo's to and external HD what implications does that have with my LR catalog? I know there is a few options I just don't know what works best.

Thanks

What I've been doing recently is going thru my nearly 2TB collection and weeding out lots and lots of old stuff that should have been weeded out years ago. In particular, 95% of all the HDR's I made in the past because I've learned how to better process them in CCPS.

coolhanduke Loc: Redondo Beach, CA

I had the same issue and went in and found a ton of photos I really didn't need to keep and purged. You might also off load some to a DVD for storage to free up your hard drive.

nadelewitz Loc: Ithaca NY

alvin3232 wrote:

I would move all your pictures to an external drive, that way if you PC every crashed or had any hardware issue's you would still be able to access your pictures while your PC is being repaired.

Just moving files to an external drive isn't enough. The external drive HAS TO BE BACKED UP, the more backups the better. ANY hard drive, the internal one in the computer or an external, should be thought of as subject to failure AT ANY TIME!!!!!!

Please don't be one of the people who comes crying to UHH after losing all your files due to un-backed up drive failure..

cbtsam Loc: Monkton, MD

steve49 wrote:

I Agree with bobspez... delete some stuff a good option.
don't save everything under the sun.

Well, I respectfully disagree with steve48 and bobspez. My practice has always been to delete (almost) nothing; I've even kept unexposed transparencies, and still have slide pages almost half full of black slides!

Recently, I went back and reprocessed images from 2005 and 2006. I guess my post-processing skills have improved over the years, so that what didn't look very good now looks pretty darn good, IMHO. I'm certainly happy I didn't delete those non-keepers.

I keep all of my images on two 4 TB external drives (one older images, one more recent), which each get backed up to an 8 TB external drive that also includes backups of the 2 TB internal hard drive, and to the cloud with Backblaze. The 8 TB is filling up, so I'll be looking for a 10 or 12 TB before too long. And one or both of the 4 TB drives will croak at some point. And, perhaps at some point, I'll replace the 4's with 6's or 8's, as the prices decline and/or the desk space fills up. C'est la vie.

MrT Loc: Gilbert, AZ

Laptop or desktop? That will make a big part of how you proceed Apologies if already answered,I did not see it. I had the same problem on a home built I7 in a full tower case. I added an NvMe drive for the c drive kept the 3 tb drive for all but photos and added 3 4tb HGST and moved all photos to one of those. Got a smokin deal of $70 at Walmart online. Don't remember the name of the company. I load all to the the photos drive and backup to the other 2 drives. I am looking at NAS storage and the possibility of opening the case and pulling a backup and putting in my office at work. Good luck.

nadelewitz Loc: Ithaca NY

cbtsam wrote:

Well, I respectfully disagree with steve48 and bob... (show quote)

Don't go overboard on bigger hard drives. The more you keep on a drive, the more you lose all at once with a drive failure, and a brand-new drive should not be trusted any more than an old one.

Better to have multiple backups on multiple drives.

There's an old question that is even more pertinent now: How much data do you want to trust to one spindle?

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

nadelewitz wrote:

...There's an old question that is even more pertinent now: How much data do you want to trust to one spindle?

As much as will fit on that spindle*
Assuming it's well backed up.

* For computer operating purposes, leaving around 10% of a disk empty will minimize disk I/O delays and fragmentation problems.

AzPicLady Loc: Behind the camera!

nadelewitz wrote:

Don't go overboard on bigger hard drives. The more you keep on a drive, the more you lose all at once with a drive failure, and a brand-new drive should not be trusted any more than an old one.

Better to have multiple backups on multiple drives.

There's an old question that is even more pertinent now: How much data do you want to trust to one spindle?

That has been my thinking as I have to purchase more and more hard drives. I'd rather lose what's on a small one than what's on a big one. Even if it is backed up!

hassighedgehog Loc: Corona, CA

This reminds me I'm due to backup. I keep all my pictures on two external drives, one spinning disc and one SSD. I also keep them on a large thumb drive. This way if one technology fails, there are two other ones.

GLSmith Loc: Tampa, Fl

Only data I have on my hard drive is my operating system and a separate partition for pagefile (memory) & printing... this is done based on working in system performance/tuning for almost 20 years with both Unix & Microsoft systems. External 4 TB drives are what I use ( make sure you format them to the system you are going to use them in).

jjtotten Loc: Washington, Utah

I am wondering if your fire resistant safe is like mine? The way that they keep the temperature down during the fire is to evaporate water inside the safe which would require you to make sure that your stored hard disk is in a sealed container so that the humidity would not effect it. Just wondering.

nadelewitz Loc: Ithaca NY

BobHartung wrote:

An external drive or a RAID array is a very useabl... (show quote)

RAID should not be considered backup. IT IS NOT, because a drive out of a raid array (even a mirroring setup, which I learned after trying it) cannot be read when connected to another computer. Drives in a RAID array are linked to the RAID controller they are connected to, and can only be read if connected to an IDENTICAL Raid controller on another computer.

My first attempt at setting up a home NAS used RAID mirroring. When I tested it by connecting one of the drives via USB to another computer, there was nothing there. Research showed me the error of my thinking. Changed the NAS to one shared drive, and USB backups of that drive to three other drives connected to the NAS system. The NAS operating system I use (Openmediavault) allows this very nicely.

Bill_de Loc: US

Bobspez wrote:

I only keep the keepers. The rest I delete. 500GB of photos 50,000 pics, if each pic is 10MB. Who is ever going to look at 50,000 pics?

I agree. When I download images to the computer I delete quite a few, but save too many. I periodically pick a year and instead of looking for what to delete I look for what I really want to keep. The rest goes.

For the most part I have already printed the ones somebody else might want.

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