[madison_wi_gal]

What did you find wrong with Drobo? I have one of their original ones which still works as intended, but it is also original USB, so it's slow, and a 5 bay one that also is fine so far. It's been in service for most of a decade.
I have found they like to be blown out from time to time or else the vents clog, but other than that I've had good service from them.

Several of my users bought them with cheap drives, some just died, DR support was not great. I'm a server admin (among other things) so these consumer grade things are fine for home use but not for critical data.

[Wheatfield]

Several of my users bought them with cheap drives, some just died, DR support was not great. I'm a server admin (among other things) so these consumer grade things are fine for home use but not for critical data.

That's funny. When they were being sold they were being sold as pro grade product not consumer grade.
Putting cheap drives into anyhing is a fools game at best.
I did a bit of research into them and found the major reason for failure was dust building up causing them to overheat.
I take the drives out if mine every so often and blow the machine out with compressed air, paying special attention to the cooling ports..
I expect thats why mine last.

[madison_wi_gal]

That's funny. When they were being sold they were being sold as pro grade product not consumer grade.
Putting cheap drives into anyhing is a fools game at best.
I did a bit of research into them and found the major reason for failure was dust building up causing them to overheat.
I take the drives out if mine every so often and blow the machine out with compressed air, paying special attention to the cooling ports..
I expect thats why mine last.

There were various grades of these things, as I recall. I had a few users who were frugal and cheaped out. I had one Drobo5 that rarely had all drive lights green for more than a few months.

[eric1965]

There is no "universal" way of storing your pictures. I am of the opinion take a sheet of paper and make a file structure you like. This can be date based folders like YYYYMMDD-Description/filename or anything to your liking.
As you are in the IT you have figured this out.
I would suggest changing some parameters in Lightroom Classic.
In Preferences Treat JPG files next to raw as separate photos (this setting makes your JPG files visible when importing from camera)
In Catalog settings Metadata check Automatically write changes to XMP. This setting is fairly important as it writes into the file (DNG,JPG,TIFF) or add a sidecar file (PEF,CR2,ARW,...) with all your ACR/LR settings as star rating, keywords etc... This used to slow down LR but did not notice a great impact in recent versions of LR.
I am of the opinion a structured folder structure is important but properly tagging, keywording your files is as important.
As you have checked write metadata to xmp a search through your OS e.g. spotlight would steer you to the right files.
Understand how the file system works into Lightroom (juggle with files and folders into LR and NOT directly with your Operating system)
My workflow:
When importing my camera files I assign a folder with a sequential job# - description of event/camera files
I select the files I want with a star system so I can filter them later out. I do my adjustments and export them as full res 100% qual. JPG (archiving, printing etc.) and 2048px wide JPG 80% qual. for mail and social media both in the srgb colour space. using a folder structure like /JPG/job#-short description-FullRes/files.jpg If you are not happy with jpg and space is no concern take tiff in 16bit.
In the earlier days of LR I did more of a clean slate approach once my "project" was finished tagged and saved to jpg/tiff, printed I exported the project into a smaller LR catalog for archiving ( as we used to do in CO sessions) and deleted from the main catalog file.
LR has become more snappier and robust and now I am more sloppy. I keep my work from the last 2 years into catalog.
Put your LR catalog file on your fastest local drive.
The most important in DAM (Digital Asset Management) is metadata make sure your files are properly tagged so you can retrieve the photographs of aunt Suzy with just a Windows search or Spotlight or whatever your OS is.

Regarding Backup strategy figure your strategy out, simulate a crash and see if you can recover your data!
Do not make stuff overly complex use the KISS approach.

[madison_wi_gal]

Do not make stuff overly complex use the KISS approach.

Actually, the most KISS approach is to import (and store) all images into ONE folder and let LRC collections sort them out.

[eric1965]

Actually, the most KISS approach is to import (and store) all images into ONE folder and let LRC collections sort them out.

I would rather not follow that path because the LR catalog file would be huge and once corrupt you loose everything. The folder approach has his benefits in case you want to jump ship or in the unlikely case Adobe goes bust. Lightroom collections are application specific as are virtual copies.

[madison_wi_gal]

I would rather not follow that path because the LR catalog file would be huge and once corrupt you loose everything. The folder approach has his benefits in case you want to jump ship or in the unlikely case Adobe goes bust. Lightroom collections are application specific as are virtual copies.

OK thanks, but I will have robust backups of the database, I expect Adobe will outlive me, and you might be using your own biases as far as folder organization.

Advantage of one gigantic folder (for now) is culling of duplicates. My exiftool method will put an -n suffix on all the duplicates. That makes it very easy to remove them.

Then if I care to, I can put into folders.

[zkarj]

I looked into getting a NAS but balked at the cost of an empty unit. I bought a 1TB Samsung T7 SSD for my "photo drive" and later upgraded to a 2TB one and sold the 1TB to a friend. It's wicked fast and really is shirt pocket carry size and weight. I back it up continuously to both a local and online backup, and also have a 'photo archive' (where archive means "never delete") online as well. A 2TB T7 costs less than an empty 4 bay Synology. Granted it's a bit easier to expand a NAS, but by the time I outgrow 2TB, I hope 4TB versions of the same will be reasonably priced.

Someone else has confirmed that with LRC, if you stop paying your Adobe subscription, you can't do any further adjustments, but you can still access your catalog and export photos.

Not only can you still access your catalogue, you can still edit your catalogue. The entire Library module is functional. I used it for years on just a free Adobe account for just that, because nothing else I've found has met my needs for keywords. I'm currently paying a subscription for... reasons... (what were they again?) but have no qualms that cataloguing will not be an issue should I decide to stop.

[outback traveller]

If you are concerned about safe guarding pics against unforeseen circumstances you need to store at least one copy of your pic repository off site so fire or theft do not result in a complete loss. Flickr can serve this purpose but if you do not upload your 'family' pics into the cloud then offsite archival storage is a must.

[GUB]

If you are concerned about safe guarding pics against unforeseen circumstances you need to store at least one copy of your pic repository off site so fire or theft do not result in a complete loss. Flickr can serve this purpose but if you do not upload your 'family' pics into the cloud then offsite archival storage is a must.

That is why I consider the Mdisc has potential. (#12) A dozen copies can be spread around for little cost.

[madison_wi_gal]

I looked into getting a NAS but balked at the cost of an empty unit. I bought a 1TB Samsung T7 SSD for my "photo drive" and later upgraded to a 2TB one and sold the 1TB to a friend. It's wicked fast and really is shirt pocket carry size and weight. I back it up continuously to both a local and online backup, and also have a 'photo archive' (where archive means "never delete") online as well. A 2TB T7 costs less than an empty 4 bay Synology. Granted it's a bit easier to expand a NAS, but by the time I outgrow 2TB, I hope 4TB versions of the same will be reasonably priced.

I have a 2 TB Samsung EVO in an enclosure and that will be the landing spot for all photos from the10+ drives and piles of SD cards I have accumulated. That will get me a curated (culled) master library which THEN can be sent to both Flickr and OneDrive. I've been looking at Lightroom discussions about having my photos on OneDrive and it appears that it works fine. Having the catalog on OD in not necessary (for me) since I don't plan on using more than one computer.