UKC

I have started getting into photography more seriously and have changed from shooting JPEG to RAW files and I have currently used about a third of 1TB computer Hard Drive. To avoid running out of space I have ordered a 5TB external hard drive to store all my pictures. I was thinking of leaving Lightroom and the catalogue on my PC and linking to RAW files on external hard drive and exporting JPEGs to store on C drive. Also was thinking of using idrive cloud service to back everything up.  Anybody got any experience of doing this or other suggestions?

In reply to marky:

I store RAW files on external SSD drives and keep my lightroom catalogue on my internal drive. Works well. Basically what you suggest. I have gone with and SSD (Sandisk Extreme drives - the small rubberised ones) over HDD to access images faster and reduce the risk of failures. I haven't used cloud storage for backup but would be interested in other's suggestions. My backup process is woeful so best not get into it.  

In reply to marky:

I do exactly that. Catalog and output on PC drive, external SSD(s) for all my RAW files biggest issue I found was when windows randomly maps your external drive to a different letter, but easy to resolve.

I am suspicious tho that accessing via an external drive slows lightroom down a touch

In reply to balmybaldwin: thanks is it best to copy the existing files on PC to hard drive via windows or Lightroom?

In reply to Brian Pollock:thanks

In reply to Brian Pollock:

I also use an SSD. In addition, I back up my photos off site to Google drive (not Google Photos, so no degradation in quality) and pCloud. I use a utility called rclone to do the backup. If you are familiar with rsync rclone is similar, but can back up to almost all cloud providers.

pCloud is a cloud storage service where you make a single payment to buy your storage i.e. it's not a subscription service. It has been around for some years and doesn't look as though it's going to go out of business.

In reply to marky:

I swapped from internal to external drives for the photos a few years ago (retained LR and the catalogue on the internal drive) and it was easy to do once you plan and set it up first. As mentioned watch out for the drive letter that you set up the external drive on. I have the drive letter marked on the drive itself as a reminder as I also backup the external drive to another external drive (which of course has a different letter) and plug them in the correct order to use. Windows still manages to change it occasionally for whatever reason, but you soon know as LR comes up with an error.

Also, personally, I back up the catalogue itself occasionally to a separate external drive just in case internal one goes down.

Assuming nothing has changed since I did it, it can be either, iirc, though there is a slightly different steps involved. I think I read that Abode suggest using windows/Mac to transfer now a days as some used to have problems using LR. Plenty of tutorials online of how to do it. Can’t remember now which way I did it but I know it failed the first time and so I had to start again; importance of having a backup!

No matter which way you decide to use, I would suggest the safety route and retain a complete copy of your photos before you start. That way if it fails you still have retained your photos and can start again. Remember you may need to update folder location before using LR again if the catalogue looses the link depending how you proceed.

Once the transfer is done and working, it’s back to using LR for any future shifting within your overall folder to retain the catalogue links.

In reply to marky:

If you want online Backup (versus storage), then Backblaze is 5*

https://www.backblaze.com/backup-pricing.html

US$70 per year unlimited.  Currently have 7 TB backuped with them.

Works with Internal/external Hard drives. NAS tricky, but I mirror a raided NAS to another external (which I would do anyway, for further backup) then Backblaze backups the NAS backup.

The initial upload time to the cloud can be very significant (like as in weeks and weeks) if you have average speeds & a lot of data. 

But when complete, its then automated in background. Gives great piece of mind. If you have a massive failure/loss, they can 'rent' you hard drives that they send to you with your data, rather than you downloading everything (which you can do, in part or all of it). Very slick.

In reply to ChrisJD: thanks I have just subscribed to iDrive which looks great and gets good reviews and got a great deal for 1st year only £3!

https://www.idrive.com/pricing?subtag=tomsguide-gb-3708302242093732400

In reply to marky:

Looks good as well. And handles NAS, nice.

In reply to marky:

SSD for longterm storage is a waste of your money. Store your photos on 2 WD / Seagate / LaCie / G drives. My workflow: SD card to SSD for editing then WD for storage. Lightroom catalogue lives on SSD so I can travel with it and is backed up to storage drive once per week. Once project / job is finished it goes from SSD to storage / server and location of that folder is updated in Lightroom. Covert you RAWs to DNGs