# Storage Device Recommendations



## Worjam (Jul 9, 2018)

I am a photographer with over 100k photos in my main catalogue.  Currently I use a Drobo 5D with with 20TB of storage, and yes, I have an off-site copy with CrashPlan.  I want to move away from the Drobo brand, their customer service really stinks and although I love the device, the past couple of times I had problems they were a nightmare to deal with.
What are photographers using?  i am open to any strategies people are using.


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## Jimmsp (Jul 9, 2018)

I currently have over 130,000 photos in my personal catalog, with upper level folders by year.
I break them into 4 groups: Archive, History, Active, and Work in Process. 
When I finish a set within "Work in Progress" which I have on a SSD, I move them to Active on an internal HD, which is 4TB .
I maintain about 3 years worth of photos in Active.
After that, I move then to History, also on the internal HD, where I have 4 years or so. I will occasionally go to photos in history, perhaps to reprocess, perhaps to use somewhere.
If I find myself not going to a certain year for a while, that year goes to Archive which is only on an external HD.

I then use external USB HD's to back them up multiple times.
 I don't use the cloud for backup. I just store a copy of a HD offsite.


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## Linwood Ferguson (Jul 9, 2018)

If you want to stick to a NAS type storage, are you the type that likes doing it yourself, or buying ready made?   Old PC's with decently new disks in a big cabinet, and running freenas or linux (or even windows with storage pools) make for decent NAS devices, and can be pretty cheaply put together with better parts than any of the SOHO NAS devices will have.

If you want off the shelf, hopefully someone else will answer.

I actually keep mine online on my desktop in a storage pool of 4 1GB SSD's, but that's a bit tight and if you are now on 20TB trying to go back to local storage might be a bit much.  I use a larger NAS I built from my prior desktop for routine backups, then also backup to to two large EHD's and once to the cloud.


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## BarrySchwartz (Jul 10, 2018)

My strategy is I have a 4-drawer JBOD (Just A Bunch Of Drives - No RAID) Thunderbay 4 enclosure from Other World Computing.  It's been solid, very reliable, easy to switch out drives, and has a second Thunderbolt 2 outlet.  I use Chronosync for data backup,  SuperDuper for bootable backups, and a disk devoted to Time Machine.  I have three copies of every disk.  Spinning drives have gotten really cheap, even the best ones, mine are all 7200 RPM.  My bootable backups are SSDs in portable enclosures, also from OWC.


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## happycranker (Jul 10, 2018)

I started of using Drobo, but quickly found it unreliable and yes poor customer service, So I have a Synology NAS mine is fairly old now but is the four bay model and have been gradually updating the size of the drives as my pictures grow bigger. The drives are hot swappable and  am currently running 4TB Western Digital discs. I understand there is a new six bay model just recently released, so that could be a better option.


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## LouieSherwin (Jul 10, 2018)

Some good suggestions already given but I think that you will want to spend some time researching and testing before committing to one or the other. 

I believe that the Dobro operates as a direct attached drive on the Mac. So I suspect from your description that you are currently using it as a single 20TB hard drive on your Mac. Changing from that configuration, switching to a NAS or partitioning on seperate drives, etc. will trigger a complete backup to CrashPlan. That is something to consider in your plans. It is possible that even if you make a copy of your current storage with the same name that CrashPlan will still see it as a different hard drive and backup the new hard drive from scratch. You should talk to Code42 support.

What is your interface connection between your Mac and the Dobro? I assume that it was fast enough for you needs. But you should consider what is available on you current system and possibly use a faster one if available. Keep in mind that a NAS (ethernet) is going to be slower than direct attached, USB3, USBc or Thunderbolt.  I also don't know if CrashPlan will directly backup a NAS. I do know that Synology has their own backup system. 

Keep asking questions as you learn more.

-louie


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## Victoria Bampton (Jul 12, 2018)

LouieSherwin said:


> will trigger a complete backup to CrashPlan. That is something to consider in your plans. It is possible that even if you make a copy of your current storage with the same name that CrashPlan will still see it as a different hard drive and backup the new hard drive from scratch. You should talk to Code42 support.


When I had to do something similar in the past, the trick was to not remove the "missing" drive from the Crashplan setup. Although it thought it had to upload the new drive, as it chugged through, it realised it already had all of the originals in the cloud, so it didn't reupload them. Definitely worth double checking that's still the case though.


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