How do you backup 20TB of photos offline?

[dmunsie]

Edit-delete-repeat as needed. The past year I have been saving every shot as well, and spent the last couple of days deleting images I didn't need. I can't imagine having to go back a decade or more. wow... makes me appreciate the need to spend a little more time on each shot and get it right the first time or so.

Let's not make assumptions. The guy is a fairly world-renowned photographer. I'm not saying super-famous but pretty known. I'm sure he gets it "more right" on the first try than most people do. He's been doing it for decades and has made a pretty decent living at it. I'm not going to question his ability or his workflow. He said he just came back from a month-long trip to Africa and brought about a 100GB worth of photos back. It's not that much if you think about it. His wife is his partner (also a photographer). If they both shoot 50 photos a day each for 30 days, that's 3,000 shots total. Let's assume that they don't use super high MP cameras and the raw files are 30MB/pc, that's 90GB. That's just the unedited versions. If they want to keep all the RAWs ("negatives", if you will), the amount of data will add up pretty quickly. There might be other photographers that work for/with them that I'm not aware of.

The assumptions were for my own limited skills and shots. I've quickly accumulated alot of images and I still...can't fathom how someone could go through decades worth of material. So for me personally...I've quickly learned that post organizing / processing is much more time expensive than I realized so instead of taking a plethora of shots each shoot, I'm spending much more time on composition and taking much fewer shots.

 

[GerryDavid]

I shoot portraits, and I've been keeping every shot on three external hard drives, when those get full, I get 3 more. I am thinking of changing things. I rarely get reorders so it seems like I am keeping these for no reason. Its just taking up space, money and time. If I do get a reorder, it will probably be a print that I have already processed, not one that didnt make the first round of selections.

In my picture viewings, I will show them the pictures, say 100. that gets narrowed down to 50 and then to 25. I am tempted to just erase the ones that dont make the first and/or second round of edits freeing up a ton of space.

I am even considering keeping the files for 30 or 60 days and then anything that doesn't get ordered gets erased. So out of the 100 files, I will be keeping between 3 and 20 pictures. That way they wont think "Ill order them next year" which never comes.

Then the pictures that get ordered will take up a fraction of the space compared to all of them would have, and could even be backed up to a cloud.

Any thoughts?

 

[D-B-J]

G-Technology 8TB G-RAID Professional High-Performance Dual-Drive Hard Drive - Apple Store (U.S.)

800 for 8 TB? Not bad...

 

[Ilovemycam]

Edit-delete-repeat as needed. The past year I have been saving every shot as well, and spent the last couple of days deleting images I didn't need. I can't imagine having to go back a decade or more. wow... makes me appreciate the need to spend a little more time on each shot and get it right the first time or so.

Let's not make assumptions. The guy is a fairly world-renowned photographer. I'm not saying super-famous but pretty known. I'm sure he gets it "more right" on the first try than most people do. He's been doing it for decades and has made a pretty decent living at it. I'm not going to question his ability or his workflow. He said he just came back from a month-long trip to Africa and brought about a 100GB worth of photos back. It's not that much if you think about it. His wife is his partner (also a photographer). If they both shoot 50 photos a day each for 30 days, that's 3,000 shots total. Let's assume that they don't use super high MP cameras and the raw files are 30MB/pc, that's 90GB. That's just the unedited versions. If they want to keep all the RAWs ("negatives", if you will), the amount of data will add up pretty quickly. There might be other photographers that work for/with them that I'm not aware of.

Reminds me of Moose Peterson. He has about that much stuff. Saves everything.

I don't think there is a photog on earth that has that many great keepers to fill up so many drives.

For my own stuff, I try to just keep exceptional photos and some sentimental stuff here and there. (I don't always keep up with the cleaning out though.) But every photog is different with the picture hoarding.

He could make 4 x 6 master prints of some of them and scan the back up prints if his drives die. Or he could back up on gold DVD pairs and have a ton of DVD's.

I'm glad I'm not in his shoes. He inspires me to go clean up some files!

 

[Raian-san]

Don't really know why someone would back up 20 tb of data. You just save some of your favorite ones and delete the rest. I shoot video so every wedding is 200-400 gb of files. This is why I give my clients the raw footage and they can save it. If I need it in the future I can ask them for it but no point of my saving it.

 

[bratkinson]

Unfortunately, computer storage technology has been changing faster than one expects. 30 years ago, the first hard drives were RLL and MFM (I've since forgotten what the letters mean), SCSI also came along about then. Then IDE hit the street. Made hard drive management lot easier as I didn't have to worry about interleave-factor, low-level formatting, etc. In the past 7-8 years, we've gone through SATA, SATA II and now SATA III. Who knows what there will be 10 years from now?

As for off-site storage, it used to be 160K (yes, K!) floppies, then 360K, then 1.2m, 2M ZIP drives, various-size tape drives, CDs, now DVDs, and finally, 'the cloud'...if you can trust someone else to keep your data YOUR data, and, to BE THERE 10 years from now...

For my lowly 1TB requirement, I have a 1TB USB drive. If I need more, I'll buy another 1TB for less than $100. At least the price keeps going down. 2 years from now, a 10TB will probably be in the $100-200 range. When the price and the technology changes again in 3-4 years, I'll probably go to that technology.

 

[Patriot]

He waited too late IMHO. That's something he.should have started when his collection was smaller.

 

[vtf]

try beta

 

[rexbobcat]

Unfortunately, computer storage technology has been changing faster than one expects. 30 years ago, the first hard drives were RLL and MFM (I've since forgotten what the letters mean), SCSI also came along about then. Then IDE hit the street. Made hard drive management lot easier as I didn't have to worry about interleave-factor, low-level formatting, etc. In the past 7-8 years, we've gone through SATA, SATA II and now SATA III. Who knows what there will be 10 years from now?

As for off-site storage, it used to be 160K (yes, K!) floppies, then 360K, then 1.2m, 2M ZIP drives, various-size tape drives, CDs, now DVDs, and finally, 'the cloud'...if you can trust someone else to keep your data YOUR data, and, to BE THERE 10 years from now...

For my lowly 1TB requirement, I have a 1TB USB drive. If I need more, I'll buy another 1TB for less than $100. At least the price keeps going down. 2 years from now, a 10TB will probably be in the $100-200 range. When the price and the technology changes again in 3-4 years, I'll probably go to that technology.

Pshaww, in 2 years everyone will have 10 TB of cloud storage and hard drives will be obsolete.

You won't need a personal laptop or anything because you'll be able to go to any computer anywhere and log into your cloud account to access your desktop, programs, and files.

THE FUTURE!!!!!!!