Advice
04.11.18
04.11.18
Archiving and Hard Drives
A friend asked the following five questions about archiving and hard drives:
QUESTION
How does your archive/hard-drive backup system look? Do you have multiple hard-drives on your desk?
answer
I try to keep everything in one place, and minimize the number of Lacie Rugged 1TB drives that sit on my desk. Since I a.) used to shoot film and b.) try not to shoot a ton of images when I shoot, I’ve been quite lucky to get away with a single 20TB drive for everything (more on this below). I have a couple large ad projects (like the Mastercard library) backed up off this main HD in two places (on two different Lacie drives), to keep hundred of GB off the main drive.
I have two OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual drives, both 20TB total (two 10TB drives in each enclosure), and they are mirrored. One lives at my house and the other lives at a best friends house down the road. I love these drives, and have good experiences with OWC support over 5 years.
I try to sync and back up every other week. I use and love and advocate ChronoSync to any professional who needs to make sure her/his work is fully and completely duplicated, and I think it’s an awesome program that gives me peace of mind and is worth the price.
I try to be as active and dialed about image management as I can. The files are important, and you should keep them organized and backed up. It’s kinda like keeping your room clean: you could let everything go to shit by not dealing with it on the daily, or you could just keep things where they belong, and have a bit less of a cloudy sense of things. For example, I hate things lingering on my desktop for longer than a day, so everything is meticulously filed into folders, from finances to image files to things I’m selling on ebay. I’d go nuts otherwise.
QUESTION
Do you Drobo? Do you toaster? Do you cloud backup?
Answer
Never liked Drobo. I know some folks do like them. When I did have one, the software wasn’t to my liking. I truly wish I could have a backup in the cloud, but I haven’t found a system where I can get my existing 12TB in the cloud via hardwire, then begin uploading all future to the cloud (a shoot day for me is about 30-40 GB per day). If you know one let me know. All my selects and finals are kept/sent on Dropbox, which is a great way to build an archive in the cloud of your most important work.
QUESTION
How do you manage your archive?
Answer
Shoots (1st/root folder) > Year (2nd folder)> DDMMYY Client Project (3rd folder). Within that 3rd folder, all the RAW go directly in a their own folder (mostly because LR does it when I make a catalogue), then I do “_selects” and eventually “_finals”, with the underscore to keep them at the top of the folder. Each file is named “stangel-client-project-year-image number”. I’ve been pretty happy with the system. See attached.
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QUESTION
I assume you're using Capture 1 so when you need to search for a long lost image from 2010, do you go on a wild goose chase or are things key-worded/metadata-d?
Answer
I actually use LR, even with Phase files. I have just used LR so long, and felt like C1 never worked for me, and was confusing and I didn’t like the workflow at alllllllll, so I reverted to LR and am pretty happy. LR has its foibles, but I like all my presets, and it works for me. I do separate catalogues for each shoot after my whole catalogue went down, and I was like “let’s make a clean break and change this so it’s not a huge loss each time”. See below for searching.
QUESTION
How do you work on/manage a long term photo project? Do you export small files into folders? Are you able to search metadata keywords in C1?
Answer
I tend to shoot more for assignment, so it’s pretty easy to know where to go in to grab an image, because it’s organized by year, then month, then client. I am not a keyworder, it sounds exhausting. I like the chronological organization of folders and it works for my brain. If I were to work on a long-term project, I’d keep everything in one project folder based on the first shoot day, and know where it is.
QUESTION
How does your archive/hard-drive backup system look? Do you have multiple hard-drives on your desk?
answer
I try to keep everything in one place, and minimize the number of Lacie Rugged 1TB drives that sit on my desk. Since I a.) used to shoot film and b.) try not to shoot a ton of images when I shoot, I’ve been quite lucky to get away with a single 20TB drive for everything (more on this below). I have a couple large ad projects (like the Mastercard library) backed up off this main HD in two places (on two different Lacie drives), to keep hundred of GB off the main drive.
I have two OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual drives, both 20TB total (two 10TB drives in each enclosure), and they are mirrored. One lives at my house and the other lives at a best friends house down the road. I love these drives, and have good experiences with OWC support over 5 years.
I try to sync and back up every other week. I use and love and advocate ChronoSync to any professional who needs to make sure her/his work is fully and completely duplicated, and I think it’s an awesome program that gives me peace of mind and is worth the price.
I try to be as active and dialed about image management as I can. The files are important, and you should keep them organized and backed up. It’s kinda like keeping your room clean: you could let everything go to shit by not dealing with it on the daily, or you could just keep things where they belong, and have a bit less of a cloudy sense of things. For example, I hate things lingering on my desktop for longer than a day, so everything is meticulously filed into folders, from finances to image files to things I’m selling on ebay. I’d go nuts otherwise.
QUESTION
Do you Drobo? Do you toaster? Do you cloud backup?
Answer
Never liked Drobo. I know some folks do like them. When I did have one, the software wasn’t to my liking. I truly wish I could have a backup in the cloud, but I haven’t found a system where I can get my existing 12TB in the cloud via hardwire, then begin uploading all future to the cloud (a shoot day for me is about 30-40 GB per day). If you know one let me know. All my selects and finals are kept/sent on Dropbox, which is a great way to build an archive in the cloud of your most important work.
QUESTION
How do you manage your archive?
Answer
Shoots (1st/root folder) > Year (2nd folder)> DDMMYY Client Project (3rd folder). Within that 3rd folder, all the RAW go directly in a their own folder (mostly because LR does it when I make a catalogue), then I do “_selects” and eventually “_finals”, with the underscore to keep them at the top of the folder. Each file is named “stangel-client-project-year-image number”. I’ve been pretty happy with the system. See attached.
I assume you're using Capture 1 so when you need to search for a long lost image from 2010, do you go on a wild goose chase or are things key-worded/metadata-d?
Answer
I actually use LR, even with Phase files. I have just used LR so long, and felt like C1 never worked for me, and was confusing and I didn’t like the workflow at alllllllll, so I reverted to LR and am pretty happy. LR has its foibles, but I like all my presets, and it works for me. I do separate catalogues for each shoot after my whole catalogue went down, and I was like “let’s make a clean break and change this so it’s not a huge loss each time”. See below for searching.
QUESTION
How do you work on/manage a long term photo project? Do you export small files into folders? Are you able to search metadata keywords in C1?
Answer
I tend to shoot more for assignment, so it’s pretty easy to know where to go in to grab an image, because it’s organized by year, then month, then client. I am not a keyworder, it sounds exhausting. I like the chronological organization of folders and it works for my brain. If I were to work on a long-term project, I’d keep everything in one project folder based on the first shoot day, and know where it is.
