As a professional photographer, hard drive space is a constant battle! Of course, we hear all the time how "cheap" HD space is, so what's the problem? Well, what most people "experts" don't acknowledge is the real cost of adding space to your working system. I'm talking about the hours of researching reliable drives, planning for future growth, installing and reconfiguring your current system and/or paying for someone to help to do all of that for you. Time is money and there's a lot more involved than cost per/GB when it comes to running things reliably and professionally. Second, you rarely hear talk of a serious back-up plan which should at a minimum consist of two complete copies of all your data (one being off-site). With file sizes as large as they are as well as the addition of HD video to most cameras this can start to add up quickly, even for "cheap" space! If your system is getting full (say a single drive in an iMac for example), then you're stuck either upgrading that drive or adding external drives. If adding externals, buy drives with the fastest connection your computer will handle (eSata, iScsi, Firewire 800, Firewire 400, USB), but realize this solution is simply a band-aid. Externals are great for archiving or back-up to, and yes, I'd include the drobo in this group, but not so great when editing large photography or video files (5D Mark II or larger) (New drobo (iscsi) may be an exception, but I've heard mixed reviews on speeds). With the exception of eSata, Read/write and transfer speeds of externals becomes too difficult to work with. You need your drives working FAST, especially on data you access daily. At some point you'll need to upgrade to a box (Mac Pro). More on the back-up plan below.
If you already own a Mac Pro, still running out of space, there's another solution for you. The beauty of the Mac Pro is the ability to expand from 4 drives into 6 or even 8 by taking over the optical bays (Screenshot below). A few weeks ago, I found myself in this situation and opted to add two Samsung 2TB drives in the 2nd optical bay (below the DVD drive/burner) via a Pro Caddy 2 from Transintl for roughly $450. This is awesome! The future possibility for growth here is: 8 bays x 2TB drives = 16TB of onboard data.
My current Mac Pro is set-up as follows:
-Early 2008 2.8Ghz 8 Core Mac Pro
-16GB RAM
-Hard Drive set-up:
Bay 1 - 320GB Factory Drive - Holds OSX and all Applications
[Drives 2-4 are set as a software RAID 0 (through the disk utility in your applications]
Bay 3 - 1TB Western Digital Black
Bay 4 - 1TB Western Digital Black
-NEW: 4 Terabytes of space for $450
[Note: There are cheaper 2TB drives on the market. They don't look as reliable as the Samsungs. Saving $40 on an HD that is of questionable reliability, which 2TB still are, even the Samsung, is about the most insane thing you could do as a photographer, in my opinion.]
In summary, the "Mounted" drives sitting on my desktop are as follows (remember drives 2-4 and the optical are set-up as RAID "0's" so they appear on your desktop as 1 drive):
Mounted Drive 1 - OS/Apps
Mounted Drive 2 - 3TB in RAID 0 - Current years work with 64GB partition for Photoshop scratch disk
Mounted Drive 3 - 4TB in RAID 0 - All data (Photos, Documents, Music, Motion/Video)
WARNING -- ***DO NOT SET-UP ANYTHING IN RAID 0, WITHOUT A REALLY, REALLY SOLID BACK-UP AND RESTORE PLAN (In my current set-up, If my "bay 2 drive" crashes, then I lose all photography (data) across 3 drives (bays 2-4). So in my mind, I have to ask myself - "When a drive crashes, can I get my photographs back?" AND "How long will it take to restore the data?"
BACK-UP PLAN
Probably the most important part of your data management plan as a photographer is to have a consistent back-up plan in place. When I say consistent, I really mean automated. If it's not automated, something will slip through the cracks.
Mine's not foolproof, but it's solid and a good place to start...
STEP 1: Back-up all of your live data locally and continuously.
Part A) Drive #1 (OS/APPS) backed up via Time Machine to a USB drive
Part B) Drives #2-6 backed up to Server via Gigabit ethernet. My main block of live data (i.e. Photographs, video, docs, music) spans 5 hard drives within my Mac Pro, equalling 8 Terabytes of space. My server consists of a 10 Drive, RAID 6 box which will handle all 8TB's of data. RAID 6 just means that two drives can completely fail and the data will still be in tact within the server. A drive will fail on you at some point. Plan on it. If you can't afford or don't need a server, get a Drobo or even a simple external Hard drive from Costco that has enough space to completely mirror your entire data set). Another option if your a Mac Pro user, is to simply use the remaining Bay's for back-up (remember you have up to 6 bays with the Pro Caddy 2). This is the cheapest and cleanest method if the space is available.
STEP 2: Back-up all of your data offsite.
You need to back-up your data to a place that will still be around if current location experiences a natural disaster such as a flood or fire. The external HD's get backed-up and stored securely off-site at least monthly and more often if possible.
STEP3: Back-up offsite again - Online.
I'm currently evaluating CrashPlan and Backblaze for online back-up (both around $50/year). I'll let you know soon which I prefer. So far I'm leaning toward CrashPlan for 2 reasons 1) You can send a 1TB upload initially via a Hard Drive and 2) If and when you have to restore the data Crashplan is a few hundred dollars, Backblaze is several thousand. Both programs run continuously in the background and update only the files that have changed/added on your computer.
STEP 4: AUTOMATE everything.
I use Chronosync ($30) to automate my main drive back-up (Drives 2-5) to my Server. I also use chronosync for my monthly external, offsite back-ups. The beauty of this program, is that you don't have to re-copy your entire library of photographs. For example, let's say I go into Lightroom and tweak my Saturation on a RAW file shot way back in 2005. When I sync my hard drives with Chronosync, it will notice the change to that file (XMP) and add the saturation change to the back-up.
STEP 5: BACK-UP one more time.
IF you're extremely paranoid (like me), hook-up an additional external drive (or box) via eSata, FW800, or Ethernet directly to your Mac Pro (iMac or PC) to acts as another back-up source to either all of your data or your most important files/folders. A drobo would be an example of such a box.
*IF you're on a budget, take STEPS 1 and 3 at a MINIMUM. This is the least expensive, yet viable option.
I realize this could either be completely overwhelming to you OR too basic, depending on which camp you fall into on the techy side of things. Don't stress too much if it sounds overwhelming, just enough to decide to put a back-up plan in place! If you have questions about your particular system or where to start, please put them in the Comments section and let's generate a good discussion.
Also, please chime in with your experience and plan for both adding more space for data and backing it up. I would love to hear your thoughts!
-Kevin
--
