Latest Dilema - Hard Drive

I recently upgraded my computer system thanks to the advice I received here put together a great computer for minimal dollars in. The one thing I didn't need to upgrade were my hard drives as at the time these were not an issue. Unfortunately, all good things come to an end.

Current Hardware and use:

1. 1 GB SSD, OS and Programs.
2. 1 TB Western Digital Black, originally used for all data, now recent Photo's only.
3. 500 GB WD Black, originally an internal backup, now a second data disc for older photo's and other data.
4. 400 GB WD Green, used as file back up only.
5. External 1.5 TB used as File backup.

My problem is I've run out of space. My older and smaller hard drives aren't really useful anymore, and my somewhat recent purchase of a 1DsII has exponentially increased my photo file size. I recently ran out of space on my 1 TB, which required me to change my older 500GB from a back up disc to a data disc. This is a temporary fix to buy me time to address the bigger issue of what to do. Also, as part of this solution I'd like to ensure that I'm running safe. When I ran out of space, the first thing I did was backup everything to the external. I then moved non essential photo's to the 500 GB drive. During this move my 1 TB data drive hiccuped (possible operator error) and I nearly lost everything. Fortunately, my external backup was successful and I recovered everything but it was way to close for comfort. So, as part of this upgrade I'd also like to make sure I'm running with enough system backup.

I'm hopeful you guys will offer suggestions to which direction I should go, but with my meager knowledge of computers, here's what I've come up with so far:

1. Purchase 2 SATA 6, 2 TB drives as a pair and set them up as a raid. I've never done this before, but imagine it's not that hard to do. I guess this would prevent loss if one HD crashes, but would not have prevented my near miss last week. This would effectively double my current capacity for about $300. I would get rid of the 2 smaller drives and effectively have 3 GB for storagage assuming that the 1 TB could remain in the system but not in the raid.

2. Purchase 1 SATA 6 3 TB drive for a replacement of my main data drive. This would give me 4.5 TB to play with for about $200. Eventually I would have to upgrade my external HD to match capacity.

3. Don't buy anything and spend a week or so going through all files and delete everything not wanted. My current practice is to go through each shoot and delete anything which is not useable based on exposure or focus. However, I'm sure I could free up quite a bit of space if I were more critical and got rid of stuff which I don't think is adequate based on content, composition, subject, etc. One of the problems is I'm mostly a landscape photographer and bracket almost everything I shoot which makes each shot take up about 70 - 100 meg.

Other ideas and/or suggestions?

Specifically looking for SATA III/6Gbps is pointless. HDDs don't even saturate SATA II.
I would forget RAID and just clone. It's simpler. As for 3 vs 2TB, buy whatever's cheaper...and don't buy performance hard drives (e.g. WD Black) for data, it's largely a waste of money.

Thanks toxic. Your suggestion if I'm understanding right is to spend as little as possible and keep doing what I'm doing, and when you say clone you mean what I'm doing now which is manually copying to an external drive? Or does cloning refer to something else?

If you're storing a lot of RAW files, how well do they compress?

J-Blake wrote in post #12964248
Thanks toxic. Your suggestion if I'm understanding right is to spend as little as possible and keep doing what I'm doing, and when you say clone you mean what I'm doing now which is manually copying to an external drive? Or does cloning refer to something else?

Cloning is just make an exact copy of another drive. Same thing as RAID 1, basically, just not in real-time. There's software that does that for you, I just can't point you to any since I don't use Windows

And yeah, going through your old data and cleaning it out would be good, but inevitably you'll run out of space again. So start looking for deals on 2/3 TB drives.

J-Blake wrote in post #12962944
Other ideas and/or suggestions?

Raid is NOT a back up solution, it is for redundancy only.
In order to rebuilt an array the need the right sort of disc, with the same controller hardware or software.
If the controller fails, then your RAID is dead and useless.

I believe RAID is best left for those who fully know and understand it and want to play with it, or are using it in an enterprise level environment.

I run 4 x 2TB discs.
2 in the computer, one used as a working drive, the other an exact copy created using "Karens Replicator".

The other 2 are external back ups, one on site, the other off site, and again are exact copies.

This means if anyone disc dies, or if my whole system goes down, I can simply plug any of the other discs into another computer and read from them to start work again.
The idea is my data is independent from my computer.

toxic wrote in post #12964213
Specifically looking for SATA III/6Gbps is pointless. HDDs don't even saturate SATA II.
I would forget RAID and just clone. It's simpler. As for 3 vs 2TB, buy whatever's cheaper...and don't buy performance hard drives (e.g. WD Black) for data, it's largely a waste of money.

I have a combination of SATA II, SATA III, green and black drives, and there is a noticeable difference in performance.

The later SATA III drives, and the black series drives all have faster and large caches, which makes a noticeable difference when opening, and working from a LR catalog, or photoshop scratch file.
There is also an difference in general read write for importing and exporting files.

The price difference is also negligible, in fact when I last bought discs, the SATA III drivers we're cheaper than the SATA II ones.

Thanks Moppie. So, how often do you copy to these external drives and how often do you clone?

I like the backup system you described, though having the two offsite backups maybe one step to redundent for me. I think if I just have the one to start anyway, I'm probably safe enough. I'll have to work that out as I get into this new routine.

I was not aware of cloning software. Karen's looks like a good one and the price is right! I think I'll start by the purchase of two 2 or 3 GB drives which I'll put in my system and set up as the main data drive and the clone. I'm not sure what to do with my 1GB drive though. I guess I could keep it for all other non photo files and as a scratch disc, etc. Or maybe under this system I should just get rid of it. For backups, when my 1.5 external is to small, I'll buy either a new similarly sized external or maybe a hard drive enclosure.

Your solution above is great as far as safety and redundency are concerned, but what do you about the size of files and filling up the discs? Currently, I'm kind of on the side of the fence which keeps nearly everything I shoot. I delete anything unusable as I go through my shots, but I generally keep most everything else. This is definitely contributing to the frequency which I need to address disc capacity, but even if I were much more apt to delete shots the problem still exists and I'd fill up my drives eventually. How do you handle capacity?

Buy two 2TB or 3TB WD or Seagate disks. One goes in your PC for your photos, one is an offsite copy to protect against fire or theft. If you like you can batch to smaller jpeg files and keep them on an older drive offsite, but all drives fail eventually, so i'd go new.

The other key is deleting images you don't need. I delete 2/3 of wedding photos I take, and 3/4 of personal photos.

J-Blake wrote in post #12972378
Thanks Moppie. So, how often do you copy to these external drives and how often do you clone?

Always after every shoot, and I haven't shot in a while then when ever I remember just to the LR catalog keeps up to date on the back ups.

I'm using a 5D2, and find I shoot about 1TB per year currently.
The biggest thing I did to save space was learning to shoot less.
The higher my keeper rate, the less space I need for storage, the less time I spend shooting and the less time I spend processing and sorting images.

Moppie wrote in post #12976184
The biggest thing I did to save space was learning to shoot less.

I need to work on this skill.