What are good storage and backup options for a large digital photo library?
Asked 8/6/2010
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A professional photographer is accumulating thousands of high-resolution images per month, and managing backups on burned DVDs no longer feels practical. What external, network, or offsite storage approaches work well for storing and backing up a growing photo archive reliably?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
16y ago
2 Answers
12
To expand on what Nate has suggested you have the following options:
- A dedicated server with RAID
- External USB device as a secondary storage medium.
- Network based NAS with RAID support
- External USB based drive caddy that you could then use like a tape backup system and also ensure HDD stored offsite incase of fire
There is also some software that can create an ISO image (CD/DVD Image) that can contain recovery bits and store that inside the ISO or as a separate file. You can then use this to recover data from the medium as it becomes faulty.
Update: The software I have been searching for is called: DVDisaster
Oh, and the most important part, always have more than one copy! You should also be aware of bit rot that can occur in media so its always worth re-copying your entire catalog to another medium to ensure the bits are reset.
Originally by user154. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user154
16y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
For a large photo library, DVDs are generally not a practical long-term workflow. Better options mentioned were:
- a dedicated server with RAID
- a NAS (network attached storage) with RAID support
- external USB drives as secondary storage
- a drive caddy with removable hard drives for rotating backups offsite
RAID can improve availability and simplify expansion, but it is not a backup by itself. The key advice is to keep more than one copy of the data, with at least one copy stored offsite in case of theft, fire, or other loss.
A NAS can be a good balance of capacity, organization, and expandability for photographers with growing archives. External USB drives also work well for secondary backups. Some users find certain RAID appliances convenient but slow, so performance matters if you plan to edit directly from the device.
Also keep in mind long-term media integrity: data can degrade over time (“bit rot”), so periodically verifying and re-copying archives is wise. Optical-disc recovery tools exist, but for ongoing high-volume photo work, hard-drive- or NAS-based backup systems are usually more practical than managing stacks of DVDs.
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