Backup/working storage for multiple photogs?

Hey guys. After a few external HD failures and some network & LR incompatibilities, my partner and I are left scratching our heads in regards to a working/backup storage solution.

At the moment, we have a few 500GB-2TB external HDs as well as a brand new Lacie 2Big Network 2 Raid server.

Initially, we had planned to use the Lacie as a working backup but realized it wasn't that fast and LR doesn't like it when you store catalogs on a network.

A working storage solution would be easy to set up if it were just one photographer but having two people involved in post makes things a lot more complicated. We're considering returning the server and starting fresh. If we can keep it, that would make things convenient.

Do you guys have any suggestions for a multi-photographer storage system? Would it be smart to have an external HD to work off of and then back that HD up using the Lacie server? (This would require us to pass the HD around leaving one of us unable to edit at the same time since we share catalogs and don't want to mix up our working files.)

Advice would be greatly appreciated! We just want a simple working solution with safe backups...

What computer are you working off of? I have a 12 TB OWC RAID server that is fire wire 800 and it works fine. I mirror my main drives to it. Then I have 2 backup sets with one off site. The RAID server should work fine as long as it is not your main drive, or USB.

rklepper wrote in post #14540331
What computer are you working off of? I have a 12 TB OWC RAID server that is fire wire 800 and it works fine. I mirror my main drives to it. Then I have 2 backup sets with one off site. The RAID server should work fine as long as it is not your main drive, or USB.

My partner uses her iMac and I use my Macbook Pro. Would it make sense to use 2 separate external HD's per computer? 1 HD is for weddings/commercial and the other is for portraits. Once we dump the RAWs on the externals, we could then backup those external HDs over the RAID network which would then be placed in a separate location. How does that sound?

Can you share what your current workflow is?

joeblack2022 wrote in post #14540396
Can you share what your current workflow is?

Sure thing. After a shoot, we delegate who will edit what. Say I took the lead on a commercial shoot. I would then dump the RAWs onto my computer's HD then backup the RAWs on the external HD. I would then work off the external HD. Afterwards, I would then upload the edits onto Zenfolio.

My partner recently signed us up for cloud storage and once we fill up our external HDs, we would either get a new external or back it up onto the cloud server. Cloud storage is a bit expensive and we have yet to fill up our external HDs. This lead us to purchasing a Lacie 2big Network 2 RAID server. Once we fill that up, we'll add additional HDs and store the filled HDs in a secured location.

We initially wanted to use the RAID server as a working HD but it has proven to be too slow and cumbersome.

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