SSD or regular portable external hard drive?

[A900ss]

I'm looking for an external drive of circa 1TB (or 2 x 500GB) to store RAW photos.

I currently use a MacBook Pro to download my RAW photos to, I then PP the images I want and save them as JPEG's to my iCloud account. However I then want to keep the RAW files but not on my MacBook.

I know SSD's are much faster writing and reading than regular Hard drives but are significantly more expensive. £350 vs £50.

Comments and recommnedatukns welcome.

PS - the files only go to the HD AFTER I've done my PP and are for backup only.

[Simpo Two]

I'm no computer boff but IMHO the benefits of SSDs (low temp, low power, speed) aren't relevant for archiving. Hence I'd save £300.

[AndWhyNot]

SSDs are also reported to suffer higher failure rates than regular HDs, which can be emphasised in an environment where the data is regularly changing.

I have a similar initial workflow and use MacBook pro with SSD for processing and local/ portable storage. My initial backups are done to a WD Passport USB HD, to which my LIghtroom library refers for master files. I then have further home HDs and cloud storage for longer term backups.

[ExPat2B]

External Hard Drives are a very cheap but VERY unreliable archive method. Much higher failure rate than internal drives due to power supply and vulnerable to impacts and various other factors. You should never rely on a single backup kept on an external hard drive.

You won't see the benefits of an SSD in an external archive drive, so get a regular drive.

Best to buy 2 external drives, and mirror across to both. However, you will still be vulnerable to data corruption, theft/and fire, so the better solution is to buy one drive, and use crashplan to backup to the cloud.

NEVER EVER keep anything you would miss on an single external drive.

[rich888]

Am sure that in a few years time SSD will take over in terms of capacity and reliability from conventional hard drives, but I don't trust them enough just yet, plus they have a finite number of write times before they stop working.

I've been using WD 2TB external hard drives with my MacBook Pro and also my iMac for several years now, they are relatively cheap and have proved themselves to be extremely fast and reliable, though as has been said by others on here, make sure you back up your files onto more than one HD just in case the worst happens. I've purchased all my WD external hard drives from the local PC World store. I believe that 4TB and larger WD drives are now available. BTW, don't bother with the Mac version of the drives which costs more, simply format it for the Mac using the inbuilt Disk Utility software on the Mac.

I've been using Carbon Copy Cloner software to mirror the contents of the drives on a daily basis and this works very well indeed.

I also upgraded the 500GB HD in the MacBook Pro to a 1TB HD because I found 500GB just wasn't big enough.

What I really ought to do is have a great big clear out of pics because I'm finding myself to be a bit of a hoarder, which isn't good when you consider just how large image and video files are becoming!

[Mr Will]

rich888 said:

...sure you back up your files onto more than one HD just in case the worst happens...

There is very little point backing up to two external drives then just leaving them sat next to each other at home. For critical data you need three copies, two locations. In my case, that's one on the PC, one on the backup drive and one in the cloud (crashplan).

rich888 said:

...I've been using Carbon Copy Cloner software to mirror the contents of the drives on a daily basis and this works very well indeed...

Another flaw there - if your data gets corrupted then you'll risk copying that over the top of your backups and destroying them too. Much better to only copy the changes, not the entire drive.

[A900ss]

Is there a recommended cloud storage provider for circa 1Tb?

Flickr won't accept RAW files but it'd be great if they did as it's free. Guess that's why they don't accept RAW....

[sgrimshaw]

A900ss said:

Is there a recommended cloud storage provider for circa 1Tb?

Flickr won't accept RAW files but it'd be great if they did as it's free. Guess that's why they don't accept RAW....

I have a 1TB Dropbox account and it costs $99 per year, so around £65.

Also, I use OpenDrive for Backup and Syncing data (been using it for years).

You can build a custom package if their standard ones don't suit your needs.

I use the Personal Unlimited Package, which has (as it implies) unlimited storage space, this costs $129 per year, around £85.

https://www.opendrive.com/pricing

You can try their services for free, and they do have a basic package which gives you 5GB for free.

[sgrimshaw]

A900ss said:

Flickr won't accept RAW files but it'd be great if they did as it's free. Guess that's why they don't accept RAW....

Will Flickr accept a RAW file if you change the file extension to jpg ?

Just a thought

Bulk renaming programs are freely available ..........

[Mr Will]

A900ss said:

Is there a recommended cloud storage provider for circa 1Tb?

Flickr won't accept RAW files but it'd be great if they did as it's free. Guess that's why they don't accept RAW....

There are two sorts of cloud storage; easy access and long term.

Dropbox is your typical example of easy access. It's fast, flexible and you can access single files just as easily as you would on your computer. The downside is that it's expensive (per gb).

Crashplan is longterm. It's slow, it only really does one job and you can only access your files in bulk, not one by one. The advantage is that it's cheap and reliable. There are no storage limits (In fact it keeps every version of every file, not just the latest one), no bandwidth limits and once set up your entire PC will be kept backed up with minimal user input.

Which one is better? It depends on your needs. If you want a backup solution then there are much better options than Dropbox. If you want to share files with others or between your own PCs then Crashplan just won't do the job. A lot of people will need both.

[Craikeybaby]

To answer the OP's original question - a regular spinning disk hard drive is fine for archive storage vs SSD. However as previously mentioned you need more than one.

The problem with the cloud back up solutions is that it takes bloody ages to upload a cards worth of RAW files after a shoot, even with a decent connection. That is before you even think about the initial upload!

I keep my raw archive on a couple of external drives, a desktop GTech drive, which is partitioned to also be my Time Machine and a LaCie Rugged drive, which is kept away from the house. Each week, or after downloading a lot of images I use CCCloner to copy my archive onto the LaCie drive and return it to its storage away from the house.

[Mr Will]

Craikeybaby said:

The problem with the cloud back up solutions is that it takes bloody ages to upload a cards worth of RAW files after a shoot, even with a decent connection. That is before you even think about the initial upload!

If you are doing it manually, you are doing it wrong. A proper cloud backup solution will run continuously in the background, uploading automatically whenever the connection is idle.

My suggested workflow is this:

1. Import images into Lightroom (or whatever you use).
2. Cut and paste images from card to external hard drive archive.
3. Remove card.
4. Begin editing
5. Leave computer running overnight to allow Crashplan to do it's thing.

Aside from leaving my computer on, uploading to the cloud takes no effort what so ever. The backup service will scan the whole computer and take a copy of every single file that is new or has changed. This includes all my raw files, jpegs, documents, Lightroom catalogue, the works. If anything fails or it doesn't manage to complete the whole lot, it sends me an email in to morning to tell me.

For £3.25 per month, it's an absolute bargain.

[A900ss]

Mr Will said:

Craikeybaby said:

The problem with the cloud back up solutions is that it takes bloody ages to upload a cards worth of RAW files after a shoot, even with a decent connection. That is before you even think about the initial upload!

If you are doing it manually, you are doing it wrong. A proper cloud backup solution will run continuously in the background, uploading automatically whenever the connection is idle.

My suggested workflow is this:

1. Import images into Lightroom (or whatever you use).
2. Cut and paste images from card to external hard drive archive.
3. Remove card.
4. Begin editing
5. Leave computer running overnight to allow Crashplan to do it's thing.

Aside from leaving my computer on, uploading to the cloud takes no effort what so ever. The backup service will scan the whole computer and take a copy of every single file that is new or has changed. This includes all my raw files, jpegs, documents, Lightroom catalogue, the works. If anything fails or it doesn't manage to complete the whole lot, it sends me an email in to morning to tell me.

For £3.25 per month, it's an absolute bargain.

Hi, the OP again.

Just to be clear I'm not looking for a 'backup'. My SSD in my MacBook Pro is far too small to store all my images. I store my completed JPEG's in iCloud and am looking for another storage solution for all my RAW files. I don't really want to store any images on the MacBook, the thumbs in the 'Photos' app is more than sufficient.

Thanks all.

[Morbid]

I back up to a 1TB Transcend external drive, and have on order a USB 3.0 WD Passport Ultra Premium 1TB drive (£47 from Amazon), so that I have a second back-up copy. All JPG files, once edited and saved from raw upload to Flickr using the Flickr uploader (so no effort needed here, just leave the laptop running).

[Craikeybaby]

Mr Will said:

Craikeybaby said:

The problem with the cloud back up solutions is that it takes bloody ages to upload a cards worth of RAW files after a shoot, even with a decent connection. That is before you even think about the initial upload!

If you are doing it manually, you are doing it wrong. A proper cloud backup solution will run continuously in the background, uploading automatically whenever the connection is idle.

My suggested workflow is this:

1. Import images into Lightroom (or whatever you use).
2. Cut and paste images from card to external hard drive archive.
3. Remove card.
4. Begin editing
5. Leave computer running overnight to allow Crashplan to do it's thing.

Aside from leaving my computer on, uploading to the cloud takes no effort what so ever. The backup service will scan the whole computer and take a copy of every single file that is new or has changed. This includes all my raw files, jpegs, documents, Lightroom catalogue, the works. If anything fails or it doesn't manage to complete the whole lot, it sends me an email in to morning to tell me.

For £3.25 per month, it's an absolute bargain.

In my experience it took a couple of days for my cloud backups to upload after each shoot. So I'll stick with my manual method which has a copy of my files stored away from the house in less than half an hour.

A900ss said:

Hi, the OP again.

Just to be clear I'm not looking for a 'backup'. My SSD in my MacBook Pro is far too small to store all my images. I store my completed JPEG's in iCloud and am looking for another storage solution for all my RAW files. I don't really want to store any images on the MacBook, the thumbs in the 'Photos' app is more than sufficient.

Thanks all.

You really should be backing them up.

Will you be referencing the files in your editing software, in which case a faster drive/connection (USB3/ThunderBolt depending on what your Mac supports) may be beneficial.

[ExPat2B]

A900ss said:

Hi, the OP again.

Just to be clear I'm not looking for a 'backup'. My SSD in my MacBook Pro is far too small to store all my images. I store my completed JPEG's in iCloud and am looking for another storage solution for all my RAW files. I don't really want to store any images on the MacBook, the thumbs in the 'Photos' app is more than sufficient.

Thanks all.

So want to keep a single copy of your data on an external drive ? That is a *terrible* idea unless you you don't mind losing the data.

[AndWhyNot]

ExPat2B said:

So want to keep a single copy of your data on an external drive ? That is a *terrible* idea unless you you don't mind losing the data.

I'm reading the OP's particular requirement as portable storage, not backup. Just so he has a copy of files to travel alongside MacBook in addition to whatever HD/ Cloud backups he already has in place.

[Simpo Two]

ExPat2B said:

So want to keep a single copy of your data on an external drive ? That is a *terrible* idea unless you you don't mind losing the data.

They are RAW files, the processed (JPG) versions of which are stored elsewhere.

Almost all my RAW files are binned once I have what I want from them.

[ExPat2B]

Simpo Two said:

ExPat2B said:

So want to keep a single copy of your data on an external drive ? That is a *terrible* idea unless you you don't mind losing the data.

They are RAW files, the processed (JPG) versions of which are stored elsewhere.

Almost all my RAW files are binned once I have what I want from them.

Serious lack of vision - neural net upsampling and noise reduction, new deconvolution algorithms are all being tested right now and the results are incredible. When the wholesale switch to 4k TV's happens and people start viewing files on 50 inch displays thern you are going to wish you kept the RAWs and could re-process.

You might as well be printing off 6x4's and binning the negatives.

[rich888]

Mr Will said:

rich888 said:

...sure you back up your files onto more than one HD just in case the worst happens...

There is very little point backing up to two external drives then just leaving them sat next to each other at home. For critical data you need three copies, two locations. In my case, that's one on the PC, one on the backup drive and one in the cloud (crashplan).

rich888 said:

...I've been using Carbon Copy Cloner software to mirror the contents of the drives on a daily basis and this works very well indeed...

Another flaw there - if your data gets corrupted then you'll risk copying that over the top of your backups and destroying them too. Much better to only copy the changes, not the entire drive.

The OP was looking to copy the files onto an external drive due to the relatively small SSD drive on his MacBook and I totally understand this issue. If he wants to also back-up the contents then he could pick up a 2nd external drive and mirror it. The WD 2TB hard drives are not much bigger than a packet of cigarettes and are powered off the USB port or external powered USB hub.

Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) can be configured to first copy all the files/folders specified to a HD of your choice and this may take some time, then only make copies of new or modified files depending upon what settings and frequency have been chosen. Check out their website for more in-depth info.

Hope this helps.