[retired2007]

i am sorry if this is in the wrong forum, if so please let me know and i will move, i am looking for an external hd 4-5 tb, want to be able to put my sd card in pc and download to ex hd, not pc , then upload to lr or on1. and be able to make folders in hd to catalogue my pictures, just want to keep the computer semi free, have the k1 and large files filling up, it is a pc not mac.. any suggestions on what to get, , been looking at the seagate brand?? thanks

[jatrax]

Brand enthusiasm will be someone subjective. I personally would not use anything Seagate if someone gave it me. Others like them and don't like other brands. These days I suspect it does not matter much, get what size you need at the best price.

I do wonder at your process of copying to the external drive and then loading into Lightroom. That is two steps and not needed. Just have the External drive attached and when you import to Lightroom designate that drive as the destination within your import preset. But perhaps you have a reason to do it the way you do, just mentioning it in case you did not know.

[gm4life]

If finances allow I recommend this...

I have had it for two years running raid 1 and I love it. Two 4TB with a mirror image of each other and it is networkable and hot swap ready if one red WD drive goes bad put in another. Best investment I made in 2015.

https://www.wdc.com/products/external-storage/my-book-duo.html#WDBLWE0080JCH-NESN

[Stilettodude]

Hi there. For the same reasons (K1, monster file sizes), I have settled on two 5Tb Seagate drives for drag-and-drop file storage, and two 2Tb Seagate drives for Norton backups. A bit overdone, perhaps, but one only needs to lose an entire evening of shots to become this paranoid. Works for me.

[C_Jones]

I have always used Western Digital external hard drives on my PC. They are basically plug and play, and have always performed well. They plug into a USB port on the PC. Following is a shortcut to a 4TB one.

https://www.amazon.com/Book-Desktop-External-Drive-WDBFJK0040HBK-NESN/dp/B00E3RH61W/ref=sr_1_cc_2?s=aps&ie=UTF8&qid=1484623667&sr=1-2-catcorr&keywords=Wd+4tb

[UncleVanya]

If finances allow I recommend this...

I have had it for two years running raid 0 and I love it. Two 4TB with a mirror image of each other and it is networkable and hot swap ready if one red WD drive goes bad put in another. Best investment I made in 2015.

https://www.wdc.com/products/external-storage/my-book-duo.html#WDBLWE0080JCH-NESN

Forgive me. I'm an IT guy with a background in infrastructure. I need to either correct your terms or inform you of a glaring hole in your protection.

RAID 0 offers ZERO protection. It is a method of extending across disks at the hardware level across more than one drive via striping. In RAID 0 the loss of any of the drives renders all the data on all the drives useless.

RAID 1 is more commonly used with two drive cabinets like that. In this version of RAID, you have half the total capacity (4TB for a pair of 4TB drives) and each time the drives are written to both drives write the same data before the write is considered complete.

Other forms of RAID exist but with only two drives the only other commonly used configurations are independant drives or JBOD neither of which offer any data protection.

So I hope you are using RAID 1 and you just didn't state things correctly - because if you are using RAID 0 - you have a major risk to your data - more than if you used each drive as a separate 4TB volume since either disk failing will take the entire 8TB down.

The way you describe it sounds like RAID 1. 4TB total capacity - with two fully redundant drives holding identical copies of the same data. In the event of failure the dead drive should be replaced and the cabinet should mirror the data over if it includes a hardware raid controller. If not then your OS will accomplish this.

---------- Post added 01-17-17 at 01:03 AM ----------

Oh and the WD Duo is reasonably well respected and a rational way to implement RAID 1 mirrored drives. It is supposed to have a hardware raid card which is a good idea since it offloads a lot of CPU tasks to the controller rather than the main CPU.

[Bengan]

As UncleVanya points out some kind of disc redundancy is necessary if you value your photos. The less costly solution is to use multiple USB drives and copy files to more than one. This is however very time consuming and nothing that I would recommend.
I would suggest that you invest in a solution like the WD Duo or a little more expensive NAS.
Personally I would buy either the WD My Cloud Expert Series EX2 (https://www.wdc.com/en-ie/products/network-attached-storage/my-cloud-expert-...BZ0080JCH-EESN) or Synology DS216 (DS216 - Products | Synology Inc.) or the corresponding 4 drive products. I Have a preferens for WD Red HD's to fill the cabinets with.

[k22]

If RAID drive, avoid RAID 0. Make redundant backups with offsite storage. Sleep better.

[retired2007]

As UncleVanya points out some kind of disc redundancy is necessary if you value your photos. The less costly solution is to use multiple USB drives and copy files to more than one. This is however very time consuming and nothing that I would recommend.
I would suggest that you invest in a solution like the WD Duo or a little more expensive NAS.
Personally I would buy either the WD My Cloud Expert Series EX2 (https://www.wdc.com/en-ie/products/network-attached-storage/my-cloud-expert-...BZ0080JCH-EESN) or Synology DS216 (DS216 - Products | Synology Inc.) or the corresponding 4 drive products. I Have a preferens for WD Red HD's to fill the cabinets with.

i am not a tech gut , i know a little . is it pretty easy to set up, the WD My Cloud Expert Series EX2?

[gm4life]

Forgive me. I'm an IT guy with a background in infrastructure. I need to either correct your terms or inform you of a glaring hole in your protection.

RAID 0 offers ZERO protection. It is a method of extending across disks at the hardware level across more than one drive via striping. In RAID 0 the loss of any of the drives renders all the data on all the drives useless.

RAID 1 is more commonly used with two drive cabinets like that. In this version of RAID, you have half the total capacity (4TB for a pair of 4TB drives) and each time the drives are written to both drives write the same data before the write is considered complete.

Other forms of RAID exist but with only two drives the only other commonly used configurations are independant drives or JBOD neither of which offer any data protection.

So I hope you are using RAID 1 and you just didn't state things correctly - because if you are using RAID 0 - you have a major risk to your data - more than if you used each drive as a separate 4TB volume since either disk failing will take the entire 8TB down.

The way you describe it sounds like RAID 1. 4TB total capacity - with two fully redundant drives holding identical copies of the same data. In the event of failure the dead drive should be replaced and the cabinet should mirror the data over if it includes a hardware raid controller. If not then your OS will accomplish this.

---------- Post added 01-17-17 at 01:03 AM ----------

Oh and the WD Duo is reasonably well respected and a rational way to implement RAID 1 mirrored drives. It is supposed to have a hardware raid card which is a good idea since it offloads a lot of CPU tasks to the controller rather than the main CPU.

Don't worry I meant 1 and said zero! Opps...

---------- Post added 01-17-17 at 07:48 AM ----------

i am not a tech gut , i know a little . is it pretty easy to set up, the WD My Cloud Expert Series EX2?

I would say that would be a good solution.

[eddie1960]

I run two 4TB drives at the moment (and have a large number of others) almost all are seagate passport style drives (ie no need for external poser) I import all photos using lightroom they go straight into the catalogue and on import there is a copy to the second drive as a failsafe , once drives are close to full i secure one someplace else and leave the main one with the system so i can go back and edit revisit etc. I got burned both losing some to theft and having to recover a failed drive now everything is backed up (I will also do dvd backups in case of failure/theft) I really should move to running a server because i could put it in spots thief's wouldn't look and be able to upload when traveling (I'd still carry one portable as a backup) the only thing holding me up ois the cost of building a server

---------- Post added 17th Jan 2017 at 09:28 ----------

Geographically displaced redundancy is a good thing.

this can't be repeated enough, having lost a drive to theft and finding the backup corrupted it meant some lost data and hours of work recovering the data, never again,

[Bengan]

i am not a tech gut , i know a little . is it pretty easy to set up, the WD My Cloud Expert Series EX2?

You don't have to be IT specialist. The equipment comes with instructions and wizards. If you're used to handling your computer, that would probably suffice. You do need to know that you want RAID-1 with two HD's.


I think that the Synology is a bit easier to manage. Booth products are aimed for home use and small working groups. If you run into trouble, you can always ask here, there are plenty of "tech guys" around. Remember to take your time setting it up.

[UncleVanya]

Don't worry I meant 1 and said zero! Opps...

Good to hear. I was worried your photos might be at risk.

[reeftool]

I've been using Western Digital My Book drives for a few years now. I've had good luck with them and they've been reliable. As my photos library has grown to over 1 TB, I now keep all my photos on external drives. You can do this with any brand of hard drive. I hear some gripes about Seagate drives but I have only had one of their drives through the years and I had no issues with it.

What you want to do with your file management is something you do in your OS and editing software settings. Lightroom imports my photos to my external drive and I work off that drive also. You can set that all up in preferences. Some people with SSD's will keep current folders on their SSD for speed reasons and then move them to the external later. Since I don't have an SSD, there isn't much benefit in doing that for my library. Keeping all your files on externals makes a lot of sense. Our librarys get bigger every year. I bought a new computer in November. I never paid much mind to file management for a long time until it became time to replace stuff. I spent close to a month organizing my photos and straightening out my mess.

[eddie1960]

I bought a new computer in November. I never paid much mind to file management for a long time until it became time to replace stuff. I spent close to a month organizing my photos and straightening out my mess.

My new computer is what got me to setup the 2 - 4tb drives (I realised i had close to 3 tb in photos alone) . i like the lightroom option of creating copies on import should make the next computer upgrade easier since i did the same and spent time reorganizing how my workflow goes