The Dreaded Photo Storage

Here we are. You have a TON of photos and no idea how to store them. Sure, you can just put them on your computer’s drive and call it a day, but you are putting yourself at a huge risk by not having a storage solution. If there is some disaster and your computer’s drive is no longer accessible then what are you going to do? If you’re a hobbyist, you will be out personal memories. If you are a (semi-)professional, you could potentially lose money and clients. Having a proper storage solution is extremely important. Now a days, storage is cheap and well worth the investment for any type of photographer.

The most common storage method is the 3-2-1 method:

• Three copies of your data

• Two different media/devices used (internal drive and external drive)

• One copy is off-site (cloud storage)

Three Copies

By having three different copies you have a solution in case of a device failure. Your main drive crashed? No problem, you have two more copies of your data to use as a backup. Close call, I know. Now you’re up and running. But wait, what if your backup has failed? It happens, drives can stop anytime for any reason. Good thing you had a SECOND backup, right? RIGHT?

Two Devices

So you have three copies of your data and it’s all in your PC. You installed 2 extra hard drives in your PC and now all three of your copies on there (main drive + two secondary drives). What happens if your motherboard fries all THREE of your drives? I know, slim chance. But it can happen. Or how about a thief breaks in and steals your PC? Depending where you live, maybe another slim chance but a possibility. If you had your back ups elsewhere, you would have your data.

A popular option is to use a NAS (Network Attached Storage) for your second device. This is somewhere in your house on your network. It can be anywhere on your network. You could also set up RAID for an little bit more of piece of mind. At the very least, you should use an external drive.

One Copy Off-Site

Now, some disaster strikes and the place where your computer calls home is no longer available. Fire, flood, or another natural disaster of some kind kills both your computer and local backup. Now what? Well, good thing you stored your third copy off-site to cloud storage. By having your third copy off-site it ensures you will always have your data when disaster strikes. There are a ton of options out there for cloud storage.

My Storage Set Up

I employ the 3-2-1 method using a PC, a NAS, and Backblaze. My PC has 2 secondary drives set up in a mirroring configuration (RAID 1) with Windows 10 built-in mirroring. It’s another piece of mind in case of drive failure. I can simply swap another drive and keep going, plus the single good drive will continue to work. My main Lightroom catalog sits on these drives. In Windows 10, both drives are shown as a single drive.

Next up, I have a QNAP NAS on wired ethernet for fastest speeds. This is a 4 bay but I am only using 2 bays at the moment. I have two drives in a RAID 1 configuration, again providing a piece of mind. This is powered on 24/7 in a closet.

Last, my cloud storage of choice is Backblaze’s B2 Cloud Storage. It’s relatively cheap for uploads. They charge more for downloads but if you rarely use it then it’s a bargain.

The Backup Process

You are probably wondering, “What’s the process to copy my data?” I’ll break it down as it’s pretty simple. My PC backs up to my NAS which backs up to Backblaze. See? Simple. OK, I can do better. I use Microsoft’s SyncToy (yes, it works on Win 10!) on my PC to back up every morning at 12AM to my NAS. At 2AM, my NAS backs up to Backblaze.

I’ll break it down further:

• PC

  • Has main catalog and all of my photos

  • Every morning at 12AM, PC wakes up from sleep

  • SyncToy checks my catalog for any changes, comparing to the data on my NAS

  • Any changes are synchronized on my NAS, including new, modified, and deleted files

• NAS

  • Every morning at 2AM it performs a backup to Backblaze

  • This is a one-way sync to Backblaze meaning no deleted files are synced. Only new and modified

• Backblaze

  • One big bucket of my data

It does suck that my QNAP NAS does not support synchronized backup to my Backblaze storage but it has everything instead. This also may be an issue with Backblaze supporting this but I have not investigated the cause of this. You could also create buckets on Backblaze that hold your data and can have as many as you want. Some people may do a bucket for monthly backups and another for weekly backups. They charge by the storage so whatever works for you.