i want to save all my photos on my PC which is a good one to use

[Photo Lady]

When we were in business, we utilized both custom and off the shelf models. By and large I couldn't tell a lot of difference one way or the other on longevity. Usually technology was the limiting factor. Before I bought this last one, I had looked into the cost of a custom built desktop from a local shop. It was going to cost considerably more then what I ended up paying for the laptop with less features.

your right.. I just meant a little custom.. they can add or subtract stuff on some models.. not totally custom made..

 

[petrochemist117 142]

2k of pics...... a 1Tb should be big enough
You can get two types one that is powered just from the pc USB port the other is powered from the mains

32GB ought to be plenty for 2000 pictures, but It's really not worth buying anything that small. I wouldn't get a hard drive smaller than 500GB these days

 

[480sparky40 39]

2Tb is my minimum. 6 and 8Tb are available these days.

 

[otherprof88 29]

Western Digital 2TB WD2000FYYZ 7200RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive..does this one sound like it will do the job.

2 terabytes should be more than enough, and my experience with Wester Digital was good. If you buy something like that from Costco, they include phone “concierge” service to help with any problems or questions. I would not keep the external drive next to the computer, as Sparky wrote, and I would look into a cloud backup service as well - belt and suspenders.

 

[Photo Lady]

Western Digital 2TB WD2000FYYZ 7200RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive..does this one sound like it will do the job.

2 terabytes should be more than enough, and my experience with Wester Digital was good. If you buy something like that from Costco, they include phone “concierge” service to help with any problems or questions. I would not keep the external drive next to the computer, as Sparky wrote, and I would look into a cloud backup service as well - belt and suspenders.

thank you

 

[johngpt]

LOL, I've filled several 2TB external hard drives backing up images, and now I'm working with 4TB drives.
I've always used Western Digital 3.5" drives, generally purchased from Newegg.
I go with WD Blue or Black.
It's now almost impossible to find enclosures for those 3.5" drives that connect via FireWire 800 (Macbook Pro user) so I'm now having to use enclosures that connect via USB3.
I've really liked the enclosures from ToughTech which is now owned by CRU and the only FW800 they sell is for encrypted use and requires a key. But they sell USB3 enclosures which will probably be very reliable if past history is any indicator.
And I'm now experimenting with an Orico hard drive docking station for connecting drives I don't use often. Got the Orico from Amazon.

 

[smoke665]

I've filled several 2TB external hard drives backing up images, and now I'm working with 4TB drives

Just a question when you say several "backing up", are you doing all new backups each time, or are you using a Syncing app that compares your existing HD makes deletions and additions as required so it says in sync with the drive? I actually do both, I use Sync for the general backup, and then archive those things that I don't want to throw away but no longer need on a HD.

 

[paigew]

I haven't read all 50 replies, but what is recommended is having a hard copy back up, and online back up. I use time machine to back up on an external drive, as well as backblaze for online back up. If you don't have a Mac you can get a external drive with two drives and create a raid system where it backs itself up.

Sent from my Pixel 3 using Tapatalk

 

[vintagesnaps]

The HP Pavilion models I'm looking at run $400-500 for 8GB and about $700-800 for 16. The WD (Western) hard drive I have is the smallest storage that was available which I think was 1 TB. I'm not even close to filling it up. It doesn't seem like you shoot photos excessively so you probably just need what works for you and is in your budget.

The only thing about storing online is it puts your photos in someone else's hands. You can't count on a site not going out of business or pulling the plug. I've known it to happen, a site where working sports photographers had stored photos announced it was going out of business and gave little time for users to get their photos. Many were unable to retrieve their photos before the site went down. So they lost their photos. Now people at least know to have more than one way/place to store photos.

 

[paigew]

The HP Pavilion models I'm looking at run $400-500 for 8GB and about $700-800 for 16. The WD (Western) hard drive I have is the smallest storage that was available which I think was 1 TB. I'm not even close to filling it up. It doesn't seem like you shoot photos excessively so you probably just need what works for you and is in your budget.

The only thing about storing online is it puts your photos in someone else's hands. You can't count on a site not going out of business or pulling the plug. I've known it to happen, a site where working sports photographers had stored photos announced it was going out of business and gave little time for users to get their photos. Many were unable to retrieve their photos before the site went down. So they lost their photos. Now people at least know to have more than one way/place to store photos.

Yes definitely don't only use online! You should use both online and in person back up, together [emoji16][emoji16] also I just bought a 8tb hard drive last week for only $160! It's a Seagate brand.

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[ac12]

As was mentioned, I would buy a couple/few external drives for backup.
Then label them 1,2,3. And use them in that order.
Once a month or when you take a lot of pics or an event, back up the pictures to the external drive and take the drive off-site.

You want the backup drive OUT of the house, so if you have a fire, you don't loose your backup.​

After you reach #3, the next time retrieve #1 from the backup site, and use it. Then keep rotating through the drives.

When I run my backup, I run it overnight, so I don't care how long it takes.
But you have to verify that the backup did indeed backup the images.

An online/cloud backup is fine, but I would not put all my eggs in that basket. I would still use a backup drive.
I would use the online backup for daily backup, but still use the backup drive for my monthly backups.

 

[Photo Lady]

wow a lot of information here.... thank you all

 

[Original katomi]

I was one who lost a lot of images because I only had on line storage at the time.
The 1 2 3 spoken above is the same as the grandfather, father, son, method.
At one stage, here there was a Photo buddy system if you did not have family or friends you could leave a eternal drive with you could sign up to the scheme
I have not seen it for a long time now don’t know if it still exists
Plz do let us know how you get on

 

[johngpt]

I've filled several 2TB external hard drives backing up images, and now I'm working with 4TB drives

Just a question when you say several "backing up", are you doing all new backups each time, or are you using a Syncing app that compares your existing HD makes deletions and additions as required so it says in sync with the drive? I actually do both, I use Sync for the general backup, and then archive those things that I don't want to throw away but no longer need on a HD.

I have a folder that Lightroom uses for its catalog, named of course "Photo_folders_Lightroom" which contains all the folders of photos. There are folders by year, with subfolders by month and camera (3 Fuji cameras and 1 mobile phone).
To keep my Mac's hard drive clear, the main catalog folder is actually on an external hard drive. I import all photos from the SD cards using Lightroom to rename and organize into proper folders.

On the back up external hard drive there is a folder named Photo_folders_Lightroom_backup into which I put copies.

Since the Mac operating system is based on Unix, there is a command line app called Terminal.
In Terminal I use the rsync command to copy folders from the main catalog drive into the back up drive.

rysnc -avPh --delete

is the command I use, and rsync analyzes the folder and copies over only files that have been changed since last I had done this. The flags -a -v -P -h ensure that all the photo file attributes copy over, and the --delete flag deletes any photo files that I may have deleted from the original folder from the back up folder.

Here is what the command for copying looks like in practice:

rsync -avPh --delete /Volumes/4_TB_Blue_161103/Photo_folders_Lightroom/2019/2019-09_X100F /Volumes/4_TB_Black_190903/Photo_Folders_Lightroom_backup/2019


It's not as complicated as it seems as once the rsync -avPh --delete is written on the command line, Mac allows us to drag and drop the appropriate folders into the Terminal window and Terminal writes out the full thing.
So the above command copies anything that has changed in the 2019-09_X100F folder from the main catalog to the 2019 back up folder on the other external hard drive.
Clear as mud?


When starting a new back up external drive like I did last week, I start with the folder Photo_folders_Lightroom_backups and the subfolder of 2019. I'm only backing up folders from this month and going forward. The back ups on the back up drive I'm no longer using go up through August of 2019.

 

[AlanKlein82 21]

How are external WD Passports compared to a external hard disk?