Storage space an issue

kreuzn · 11-02-2014, 11:54 PM

When I was a teenager, foraging into the photography world, an oft repeated concern was where to store all those photos we were taking.
Yesterday I hit the digital equivalent. Between the size of a RAW files (& their jpegs), plus the editing software, and of course taking into account the size of my iTunes library, plus other must have apps, my Mac decided it is full.
I tried deleting stuff, not enough space saved. I'd love to buy a new Mac, but I'm meant to be saving not spending my hard earned $. So, after some googling & asking on a Mac forum, I'm in the process of moving my iTunes library to an external hard drive. Afterwards, if I still need more room I'll move my photo library too.
So much for digital photos being better, because there isn't photos and their negatives taking up space. Now the issue is how much data one has.
Anyone else ran into this issue? Or were you more sensible than me and upgraded your storage before it ran out?

photolady95 · 11-03-2014, 12:45 AM

I added an external harddrive to keep all my photos on, plus I burn to them to DVDs now. You might look for an external harddrive in a size like mine, 1TB but they also make 3TB drives, too. A friend carries three 1TB external drives to use with his laptop when shooting.

Anthen · 11-03-2014, 12:56 AM

I save my whole Lightroom library on an external hard drive. Its just so much more convenient and less headache with the whole space issue. Just out of curiosity, how much space do you have on your mac?

**GUB** · 11-03-2014, 01:01 AM - **1 Like**

Originally posted by kreuzn

When I was a teenager, foraging into the photography world, an oft repeated concern was where to store all those photos we were taking.
Yesterday I hit the digital equivalent. Between the size of a RAW files (& their jpegs), plus the editing software, and of course taking into account the size of my iTunes library, plus other must have apps, my Mac decided it is full.
I tried deleting stuff, not enough space saved. I'd love to buy a new Mac, but I'm meant to be saving not spending my hard earned $. So, after some googling & asking on a Mac forum, I'm in the process of moving my iTunes library to an external hard drive. Afterwards, if I still need more room I'll move my photo library too.
So much for digital photos being better, because there isn't photos and their negatives taking up space. Now the issue is how much data one has.
Anyone else ran into this issue? Or were you more sensible than me and upgraded your storage before it ran out?

I am constantly amused at how fast I keep filling up the giant steps forwards in data storage technology. Only a few years ago I was happily burning my backup archives to archival cds-- a ridiculously small 700 MBs. And now I see the 2terabyte drive I bought a few months ago is already 1/3 full.
It is an old habit to put your images in the appropriate "my pictures " folder on your OS. I feel it is bad idea and increases the likelihood of losing your data if your OS crashes. It is a far better idea is to use separate harddrives for your images and backups.
I used to think I had a good photographic archive of 35mm images. When I got around to scanning them I found I had a lousy 4000 odd images recording the first half of my life, family and friends. Popping that many out a year now and not at all complaining about the space I am using. Just grinning at the learning curve and memories collected.

JohnX · 11-03-2014, 01:07 AM

It's essential that you have at least two separate drives to store your photos. If the HDD on the Mac fails....

External hard drives are cheap. Think how you'd feel if you lost all your precious photo memories to hardware failure.

FWIW I have four back-ups. OTT I know.

kreuzn · 11-03-2014, 01:17 AM

Originally posted by Anthen

I save my whole Lightroom library on an external hard drive. Its just so much more convenient and less headache with the whole space issue. Just out of curiosity, how much space do you have on your mac?

My Mac has 4gb of internal memory. Not a lot really! I bought it early in 2009, and I love it, but boy I'd love s new one too!

---------- Post added 11-03-14 at 06:18 PM ----------

Originally posted by JohnX

It's essential that you have at least two separate drives to store your photos. If the HDD on the Mac fails....

External hard drives are cheap. Think how you'd feel if you lost all your precious photo memories to hardware failure.

FWIW I have four back-ups. OTT I know.

Yes, I agree with you there. I've got one external drive that I back up to, and now a second drive, that has my iTunes library. Think I'll invest in at least one more, for photos.

---------- Post added 11-03-14 at 06:20 PM ----------

So, as an extra comment to my original thread, how many of you also back up to the cloud, as another place to backup? Which service do you use? Why?

LensBeginner · 11-03-2014, 01:31 AM

Originally posted by kreuzn

So, as an extra comment to my original thread, how many of you also back up to the cloud, as another place to backup? Which service do you use? Why?

No cloud services here (BTW I've seen more than one complaining because they have been burned when a service shut down abruptly), just external hard-drives.
I keep one of them off-site just in case.
3TB disks from WD are a little more than 100 Euros a pop on Amazon...
Upgrading to the K-01 wasn't really a big trauma because the PEFs from the K100DS weren't compressed, so the increase is from about 10MB to 18MB tops, it's the jpeg (output from PP) which have tripled in size!

JohnX · 11-03-2014, 01:39 AM - **1 Like**

Cloud back-up is fine, but storage companies fail too. There's a case going through the Courts in France, and has been for over a year now. Cloud storage company went bust, administrators won't allow the firm's customers (which include some big games developers, etc) access to their stored data. As I understand it the administrators are not prepared to get in the staff to start up and manage the servers, etc, and just want to sell off the hardware to cover the companies' debts, plus there's a debate over who owns the data.

MarkJerling · 11-03-2014, 01:49 AM

External drives. Note the 's' Drives! Please make sure you back up. Preferably, keep one drive in a separate location. In my case, All electronic data (not just photos) are in two separate locations. Unless there's a major disaster killing both locations (which are 15km distant from each other, I am pretty sure I won't loose my data. I do not trust cloud services entirely. (no concrete reason) CD's are not reliable. Hard-drives are not reliable.
So I'm with JohnX above - make suer you have your photos in two places, minimum.

Anthen · 11-03-2014, 02:52 AM - **1 Like**

Originally posted by kreuzn

My Mac has 4gb of internal memory. Not a lot really! I bought it early in 2009, and I love it, but boy I'd love s new one too!

---------- Post added 11-03-14 at 06:18 PM ----------

Yes, I agree with you there. I've got one external drive that I back up to, and now a second drive, that has my iTunes library. Think I'll invest in at least one more, for photos.

---------- Post added 11-03-14 at 06:20 PM ----------

So, as an extra comment to my original thread, how many of you also back up to the cloud, as another place to backup? Which service do you use? Why?

4gb!!! Are you sure you don't mean ram?

I don't use cloud because a) I'm in china, and services arent that great and b) its too inconvenient, especially when you can't access it when you really need it. If I were in the US, this would probably be a more enticing option.

kreuzn · 11-03-2014, 04:07 AM

Hmmm, I wrote the gb size while doing something else, so it's entirely possible it's actually RAM. I'm at my iPad right now, I'd get up to check my Mac but I'm icing my swollen knee. Anyway, that doesn't matter too much. Far more important is all I'm learning about storage, backup etc.
As I've been going through this process, it occurred to me I should have an extra, off site backup going on. The place I bought the external hard drive from today sells 1tb & 2tb drives, but no 3tb. Think I'll do some online searching, see what is available.

NKK · 11-03-2014, 04:31 AM

I have signed up for an O365 subscription, that was 1TB of online storage before - they just made it unlimited

Other than that my first "copy" goes to my NAS Storage and then a copy to Crashplan (Backup)

dakight · 11-03-2014, 06:02 AM - **1 Like**

I'm a huge fan of RAID drives, the simplest of which is a mirrored pair. If one drive fails your data remains intact on the second. It's not 100% failsafe but as stage one of a well thought out fault-tolerant storage scheme they are hard to beat. In fact just 2 days ago having mirrored drives on one of the servers at work saved my @$$ and many hours of work in the middle of the night.

tvdtvdtvd · 11-03-2014, 08:37 AM

Lots of great advice here. Storage has indeed become cheap, making it easier and more affordable than ever to store LOTS of data,
even with the ever increasing size of that data. All the same, it is good practice to self edit as you go along. Review each batch of
files you download from the camera and delete the junk; out of focus, bad exposures, etc.

MarkJerling · 11-03-2014, 12:24 PM

Originally posted by dakight

I'm a huge fan of RAID drives, the simplest of which is a mirrored pair. If one drive fails your data remains intact on the second. It's not 100% failsafe but as stage one of a well thought out fault-tolerant storage scheme they are hard to beat. In fact just 2 days ago having mirrored drives on one of the servers at work saved my @$$ and many hours of work in the middle of the night.

Yes, agreed. We use this for work date. The only problem we've had with that is that the older RAID controllers did not inform you in any way if the RAID controller was malfunctioning. So, instead of writing to both drives (like you think it's doing) it wrote to only one drive. Luckily, a routine inspection of the machine for another unrelated issue, (BIOS battery) meant that the tech person checked everything and realised the RAID controller was not actually writing date to both drives. I understand that some of the newer RAID controllers have a user interface that allows you to see this sort of problem at a glance.

11-02-2014, 11:54 PM	#1
kreuzn Senior Member Join Date: Jan 2013 Posts: 105	Storage space an issue When I was a teenager, foraging into the photography world, an oft repeated concern was where to store all those photos we were taking. Yesterday I hit the digital equivalent. Between the size of a RAW files (& their jpegs), plus the editing software, and of course taking into account the size of my iTunes library, plus other must have apps, my Mac decided it is full. I tried deleting stuff, not enough space saved. I'd love to buy a new Mac, but I'm meant to be saving not spending my hard earned $. So, after some googling & asking on a Mac forum, I'm in the process of moving my iTunes library to an external hard drive. Afterwards, if I still need more room I'll move my photo library too. So much for digital photos being better, because there isn't photos and their negatives taking up space. Now the issue is how much data one has. Anyone else ran into this issue? Or were you more sensible than me and upgraded your storage before it ran out?

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11-03-2014, 12:45 AM	#2
photolady95 Otis Memorial Pentaxian Join Date: May 2009 Location: Cruising the forum watching his back Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 12,712	I added an external harddrive to keep all my photos on, plus I burn to them to DVDs now. You might look for an external harddrive in a size like mine, 1TB but they also make 3TB drives, too. A friend carries three 1TB external drives to use with his laptop when shooting.

11-03-2014, 12:56 AM	#3
Anthen Forum Member Join Date: Mar 2014 Posts: 79	I save my whole Lightroom library on an external hard drive. Its just so much more convenient and less headache with the whole space issue. Just out of curiosity, how much space do you have on your mac?

11-03-2014, 01:01 AM - 1 Like	#4
GUB Loyal Site Supporter Join Date: Aug 2012 Location: Wanganui Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 5,760	Originally posted by kreuzn When I was a teenager, foraging into the photography world, an oft repeated concern was where to store all those photos we were taking. Yesterday I hit the digital equivalent. Between the size of a RAW files (& their jpegs), plus the editing software, and of course taking into account the size of my iTunes library, plus other must have apps, my Mac decided it is full. I tried deleting stuff, not enough space saved. I'd love to buy a new Mac, but I'm meant to be saving not spending my hard earned $. So, after some googling & asking on a Mac forum, I'm in the process of moving my iTunes library to an external hard drive. Afterwards, if I still need more room I'll move my photo library too. So much for digital photos being better, because there isn't photos and their negatives taking up space. Now the issue is how much data one has. Anyone else ran into this issue? Or were you more sensible than me and upgraded your storage before it ran out? I am constantly amused at how fast I keep filling up the giant steps forwards in data storage technology. Only a few years ago I was happily burning my backup archives to archival cds-- a ridiculously small 700 MBs. And now I see the 2terabyte drive I bought a few months ago is already 1/3 full. It is an old habit to put your images in the appropriate "my pictures " folder on your OS. I feel it is bad idea and increases the likelihood of losing your data if your OS crashes. It is a far better idea is to use separate harddrives for your images and backups. I used to think I had a good photographic archive of 35mm images. When I got around to scanning them I found I had a lousy 4000 odd images recording the first half of my life, family and friends. Popping that many out a year now and not at all complaining about the space I am using. Just grinning at the learning curve and memories collected.

11-03-2014, 01:07 AM	#5
JohnX Pentaxian Join Date: Jul 2009 Location: London Posts: 1,116	It's essential that you have at least two separate drives to store your photos. If the HDD on the Mac fails.... External hard drives are cheap. Think how you'd feel if you lost all your precious photo memories to hardware failure. FWIW I have four back-ups. OTT I know.

11-03-2014, 01:17 AM	#6
kreuzn Senior Member Join Date: Jan 2013 Posts: 105 Original Poster	Originally posted by Anthen I save my whole Lightroom library on an external hard drive. Its just so much more convenient and less headache with the whole space issue. Just out of curiosity, how much space do you have on your mac? My Mac has 4gb of internal memory. Not a lot really! I bought it early in 2009, and I love it, but boy I'd love s new one too! ---------- Post added 11-03-14 at 06:18 PM ---------- Originally posted by JohnX It's essential that you have at least two separate drives to store your photos. If the HDD on the Mac fails.... External hard drives are cheap. Think how you'd feel if you lost all your precious photo memories to hardware failure. FWIW I have four back-ups. OTT I know. Yes, I agree with you there. I've got one external drive that I back up to, and now a second drive, that has my iTunes library. Think I'll invest in at least one more, for photos. ---------- Post added 11-03-14 at 06:20 PM ---------- So, as an extra comment to my original thread, how many of you also back up to the cloud, as another place to backup? Which service do you use? Why?

11-03-2014, 01:31 AM	#7
LensBeginner Veteran Member Join Date: Sep 2014 Photos: Albums Posts: 4,696	Originally posted by kreuzn So, as an extra comment to my original thread, how many of you also back up to the cloud, as another place to backup? Which service do you use? Why? No cloud services here (BTW I've seen more than one complaining because they have been burned when a service shut down abruptly), just external hard-drives. I keep one of them off-site just in case. 3TB disks from WD are a little more than 100 Euros a pop on Amazon... Upgrading to the K-01 wasn't really a big trauma because the PEFs from the K100DS weren't compressed, so the increase is from about 10MB to 18MB tops, it's the jpeg (output from PP) which have tripled in size!

11-03-2014, 01:39 AM - 1 Like	#8
JohnX Pentaxian Join Date: Jul 2009 Location: London Posts: 1,116	Cloud back-up is fine, but storage companies fail too. There's a case going through the Courts in France, and has been for over a year now. Cloud storage company went bust, administrators won't allow the firm's customers (which include some big games developers, etc) access to their stored data. As I understand it the administrators are not prepared to get in the staff to start up and manage the servers, etc, and just want to sell off the hardware to cover the companies' debts, plus there's a debate over who owns the data.

11-03-2014, 01:49 AM	#9
MarkJerling Moderator Site Supporter Join Date: May 2012 Location: Wairarapa, New Zealand Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 20,406	External drives. Note the 's' Drives! Please make sure you back up. Preferably, keep one drive in a separate location. In my case, All electronic data (not just photos) are in two separate locations. Unless there's a major disaster killing both locations (which are 15km distant from each other, I am pretty sure I won't loose my data. I do not trust cloud services entirely. (no concrete reason) CD's are not reliable. Hard-drives are not reliable. So I'm with JohnX above - make suer you have your photos in two places, minimum.

11-03-2014, 02:52 AM - 1 Like	#10
Anthen Forum Member Join Date: Mar 2014 Posts: 79	Originally posted by kreuzn My Mac has 4gb of internal memory. Not a lot really! I bought it early in 2009, and I love it, but boy I'd love s new one too! ---------- Post added 11-03-14 at 06:18 PM ---------- Yes, I agree with you there. I've got one external drive that I back up to, and now a second drive, that has my iTunes library. Think I'll invest in at least one more, for photos. ---------- Post added 11-03-14 at 06:20 PM ---------- So, as an extra comment to my original thread, how many of you also back up to the cloud, as another place to backup? Which service do you use? Why? 4gb!!! Are you sure you don't mean ram? I don't use cloud because a) I'm in china, and services arent that great and b) its too inconvenient, especially when you can't access it when you really need it. If I were in the US, this would probably be a more enticing option.

11-03-2014, 04:07 AM	#11
kreuzn Senior Member Join Date: Jan 2013 Posts: 105 Original Poster	Hmmm, I wrote the gb size while doing something else, so it's entirely possible it's actually RAM. I'm at my iPad right now, I'd get up to check my Mac but I'm icing my swollen knee. Anyway, that doesn't matter too much. Far more important is all I'm learning about storage, backup etc. As I've been going through this process, it occurred to me I should have an extra, off site backup going on. The place I bought the external hard drive from today sells 1tb & 2tb drives, but no 3tb. Think I'll do some online searching, see what is available.

11-03-2014, 04:31 AM	#12
NKK Inactive Account Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: Malmö, Sweden Photos: Gallery Posts: 583	I have signed up for an O365 subscription, that was 1TB of online storage before - they just made it unlimited Other than that my first "copy" goes to my NAS Storage and then a copy to Crashplan (Backup)

11-03-2014, 06:02 AM - 1 Like	#13
dakight Veteran Member Join Date: Sep 2014 Location: Phoenix, AZ Photos: Albums Posts: 1,216	I'm a huge fan of RAID drives, the simplest of which is a mirrored pair. If one drive fails your data remains intact on the second. It's not 100% failsafe but as stage one of a well thought out fault-tolerant storage scheme they are hard to beat. In fact just 2 days ago having mirrored drives on one of the servers at work saved my @$$ and many hours of work in the middle of the night.

11-03-2014, 08:37 AM	#14
tvdtvdtvd Veteran Member Join Date: Jan 2010 Posts: 1,665	Lots of great advice here. Storage has indeed become cheap, making it easier and more affordable than ever to store LOTS of data, even with the ever increasing size of that data. All the same, it is good practice to self edit as you go along. Review each batch of files you download from the camera and delete the junk; out of focus, bad exposures, etc.

11-03-2014, 12:24 PM	#15
MarkJerling Moderator Site Supporter Join Date: May 2012 Location: Wairarapa, New Zealand Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 20,406	Originally posted by dakight I'm a huge fan of RAID drives, the simplest of which is a mirrored pair. If one drive fails your data remains intact on the second. It's not 100% failsafe but as stage one of a well thought out fault-tolerant storage scheme they are hard to beat. In fact just 2 days ago having mirrored drives on one of the servers at work saved my @$$ and many hours of work in the middle of the night. Yes, agreed. We use this for work date. The only problem we've had with that is that the older RAID controllers did not inform you in any way if the RAID controller was malfunctioning. So, instead of writing to both drives (like you think it's doing) it wrote to only one drive. Luckily, a routine inspection of the machine for another unrelated issue, (BIOS battery) meant that the tech person checked everything and realised the RAID controller was not actually writing date to both drives. I understand that some of the newer RAID controllers have a user interface that allows you to see this sort of problem at a glance.