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ejg1890
Inspiring
November 26, 2017
Question

How many drives used to store photos

  • November 26, 2017
  • 4 replies
  • 925 views

I have a curious question on how many drives do people use to store their photos.

I use 1 catalog; however, my photos come to almost 2TB‘s so a single 2 TB drive will no longer work. My options are a single 3 or 4 TB hard drive or 2 2TB hard drives. There are pros and cons to each. However, a single 3 or 4 Tb harddrive is much bulkier than a 2TB hard drive so the 2 2TB hard drives are much easier to fit in the sleeve and transport. On the other hand it is more convenient to have all your photos in one location or drive.

I know many people have a significant higher number of photos requiring much greater storage. So I am interested to know if these photos are on multiple drives and how many.

THanks

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    4 replies

    J
    Community Expert
    Jao vdLCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    November 27, 2017

    I use a RAID array with 12 TB effective space. Not very portable though but very reliable and uses redundant storage to minimize dataloss. I also backup everything.

    KR Seals
    Community Expert
    KR SealsCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    November 27, 2017

    It sounds like you are using a laptop. Is that right?

    When I travel with my MacBook pro, I carry two external hard drives, one for the images and one for a back up. If you are traveling, having images on two hard drives, in my opinion will require having two more for backup. BTW, for travel, I keep my laptop and external drives in three different bags to prevent the loss of everything.

    Ken Seals - Nikon Z 9, Z 8, 14mm-800mm. Computer Win 11 Pro, I7-14700K, 64GB, RTX3070TI. Travel machine: 2021 MacBook Pro M1 MAX 64GB. All Adobe apps.
    JP Hess
    JP Hess
    Inspiring
    November 26, 2017

    Everyone has their own preference on how to divide up their photos. My "main" hard drive that has my programs installed on it is a 1 TB SSD. I occasionally import images to it, but typically don't leave images on it because I haven't noticed any increase in performance by having them on that drive. My main drive for my images is an internal hybrid hard drive, And I have a second internal hard drive where I store my scanned images. Then I have two external hard drives, one for my Lightroom backups and my image backups, and the other for my system backups. That will probably sound a little convoluted to some, but it has worked fine for me for a number of years. No complaints. I don't think there is really any one right answer. Find something that works for you, feels right for your situation. Get it working for you, and then stick with it.

    dj_paige
    dj_paige
    Legend
    November 26, 2017

    Is this a Lightroom question?

    If you are using Lightroom, it is no more convenient to use one drive than to use two drives, in my opinion.

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