Space, HDDs and Archiving?

weepete

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Hi all,

I have somewhere aroung 15000 photos in my computer and now I'm quickly running out of space on my old machine. I'm going to be upgrading my computer in the next week or so so was wondering what size of hard disk people have?

Also what's the best method for archiving? I was considering burning all my files to disk and then just keeping the jpegs but have you got a method so as not to take up huge banks of memory?
 
Current computer has three internal hard drives:
C:\ ... only for program files
E:\ ... 1TB for documents and current year's photos
F:\ ... video files
Everything on E:\ drive is also backed up each week to two external 1TB hard drives (one kept off site)
At the end of a sports season I transfer all those photos to three 2TB hard drives (one kept off site). I then delete that season from my E:\ drive.
I never use disks as a backup tool: too small, takes too long to burn and organise and store, disks becoming unreadable over time or the technology becoming redundant.
So at any one time I have three copies of each file with one set off site.
I just wait until external hard drives are on special and upgrade memory size. Sweet spot at the moment are 2TB drives.
I have a total of 11 hard drives but that is because I separate different files to their own set of hard drives (eg sports photos to one set of three hard drives, other photos to another set, documents to another set, video files to another set)
 
(2) 2tb internal drives, (1) 1tb external drive for OS backup. The 2tb drives BOTH have approximately 62,000 images I've shot in the past 7 years, one is a backup of the other. In addition, I keep (2) backups on DVD, one at home and one at my office. When the two drives on my computer start to get full I'll delete some of the older images since I have duplicates on DVD.
 
I didn't have any computer space issues until I started keeping RAW & JPGs of all the 'keepers' I was shooting with my 60D. As my 200 gig data storage drive (not the Windows drive) was quickly filling up, I finally decided I'd never in a million years need to go back and re-edit the RAW images once I had 'finished' editing them shortly after taking the pictures.

But since going to a 60D, my time in Lightroom was 10-15 minutes each, mostly waiting for the single-processor computer to 'do it's thing'. So I built a new computer...quad processor AMD FX-4100 running at 4.7ghz, 16gb RAM, 128gb SSD for Windows and 'currently in process' photographs, and a 1tb hard drive for 'long term storage' of everything else. I also have a twin of the SSD and hard drive, and everything is on slider bays. So, when needed, I simply clone one to another and leave the (new) clone in the computer, putting the (old) drives on a shelf. I also have a 1tb portable drive kept off site that I back it all up to 'whenever'.
 
I have 750 GB of internal storage, and 2 TB of external storage.

Archiving is another story. I have 3 sets of digital archives - the 2013 archive on my image editing workstation, archived files on CD/DVD in client folders, the off site archive.
There are some file handling differences between working and archive files.
Working files need a rigorous backup system because they are being changed. Archive files are more static which simplifies backing up.

If you would like the full 'skinny' on managing your digital assets, get and keep handy for reference - The DAM Book
 
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Personally, I have two computers. Desktop designed for gaming and intensive CPU stuff; 1.16 Terabytes. Thats with 2 500gb HDDs, and a 160gb SSD for the OS. I then have a 1TB external for backing up everything. I plan on purchasing a 1tb or 500gb external for my Mac Air, as it only has 256gb of SSD storage and I dont wanna eat that up too fast. So soon ill have a total of roughly 3.5TB.

Always back up your data, I work with computers every day, cannot tell you how often modern HDDs fail, whether user inflicted or over time.
 

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