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Photo Storage. Ideas?

Hello happy Darkroom people!
Ok so here's my boggle. I have a lot of photos to sort through and store. They are all digital. I have duplicate finding software I'm using and so far its working well. I'm getting the number down to a reasonable amount. The duplicates are mostly due to mismanagement of the initial SD card dumps.

The sorting is going well but where to store these photos? Right now, they are on a 1.5TB magnetic disk drive (no RAID).

So here are the options I have thought of. I'm sure I'm missing something obvious. What do you all do?
1. RAID the drive that's in my computer.
2. Use an SSD for dead storage. Toss it in a drawer and hope it works when I need it
3. Use an online service. Amazon, Microsoft, Icloud, etc.
4. install a NAS

I fix computers for a living so installing hardware and spending money on tech is always where I'm leaning (much to my wife's annoyance. hee hee).

What do you all do with your photos?
 
Family photos are saved online (Google Docs, but other services are probably just as good). It's not made to browse them though, it is slow to load a series of photos at a time, but it's cheap enough for me and unlike iCloud it doesn't force you to keep a copy on your computer or else it will delete it online.

I also keep a copy on a USB drive, and a copy on a homemade server with Samba.
 

EclipseRedRing

I smell like a Christmas pudding
I don't like or trust cloud based storage so I keep all my data: 1. On my laptop SSD, 2. Backed up to external USB 2TB hard drive kept in the home, 3. Backup up to a second USB 2TB hard drive kept outside of the home to provide off site backup. I update the backups to both external hard drives a couple of times per year and run some disk health tests to see if they need replacing due to anticipated failure. I was offered a free 4TB QNAP NAS unit but it was not necessary for my backup requirements and the other functionality it offered did not interest me.
 
I keep mine locally, as storage is pretty cheap these days, with a backup on iCloud. If you don't mind sharing, what de-duplicating software do you use? My wife takes multiples almost every time she takes a picture, so we could use something that removes the duplicates.
 

Legion

Staff member
I have two duplicate external hard drives attached to my computer, and another (not up to date...) in another location.
 

Phoenixkh

I shaved a fortune
I have two externals attached to my desktop... and another external separate from the desktop. I'm pretty good at keeping all three current.

I haven't been shooting as much recently but plan to change that as this year progresses. I've been working on the things I can do to improve my health so I can get out more frequently. That seems to be working... a little bit at a time.
 
I have an external drive connected to my computer and an unlimited space cloud solution, which doesn't compress photos.
 

Esox

I didnt know
Staff member
External drives. I have 16TB of backup drive space. Important things are copied on three separate external drives.
 
Do both local & cloud! I store on a portable SSD and the cloud. Many people don't know that if you're a member of Amazon Prime, you get free unlimited photo storage as a perk. (I discovered this recently):

 
Thanks for reminding me about the prime photo option. I rember seeing/reading about this.
I yse a flash drive and an external hard drive to keep all pics on. So 3 copies. I keep 4 copies of my music.
 
I keep mine locally, as storage is pretty cheap these days, with a backup on iCloud. If you don't mind sharing, what de-duplicating software do you use? My wife takes multiples almost every time she takes a picture, so we could use something that removes the duplicates.
It's called Duplicate Cleaner Pro. It works really well.
 
Interesting. It seems offline storage on drives with replication is what most people are doing.
I have a pile of 240GB SSD's sitting on my desk. Maybe I'll use those.
 
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