# External HD Question



## silvestography (Aug 1, 2013)

Hey Forum,
I just had a hard drive die and I'm working on creating a safer, more reliable system for running my workflow and backing it up. I just installed a 512gb SSD, which should be great for storing some things and as a startup disk, but I'd prefer to run my Lightroom library on an external hard drive. I already know I'm going to be backing up to a time machine-like setup (airport extreme + 4tb hard drive), but I was wondering what your recommendations were. Here are my criteria:

- Preferably 1tb+
- 7200rpm
- Thunderbolt interface
- Portable

USB 3.0 is not an option since my macbook pro is the late 2011 version. I'd consider firewire 800 but it's still much slower than thunderbolt. Cheers!


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## SwissBear (Aug 1, 2013)

For reliability, any single drive solution (like your backup plan) are prone to fail, or better said, if they fail, everything is lost. A 5-8 disc NAS would be much safer, and offers a bit more storage space.

In your situation, i would use a "current work" LR catalog on the laptop (should work nice&fast on a SSD), and after finishing a project, export the catalog on the NAS, then import it to the full catalog which is also stored on the NAS. This is a bit flimsy, but as far as I can tell, adobe has not yet implemented something to automate this process.


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## weixing (Aug 1, 2013)

Hi,
NAS with at least 2 disk (configure as RAID 1 or higher depend on number of hard disk) is a much better choice + at least 2 external hard disk to backup your NAS... One external hard disk for current backup and the other one store at different location. 

This way you'll be well protected:
1) If one of your NAS hard disk failed, your photo will not be lost due to the RAID protection.
2) If your NAS failed, corrupted or all the hard disk failed, you still got your current external hard disk backup.
3) If your NAS failed, corrupted or all the hard disk failed and the current external backup hard disk also failed (example, when something very bad happen to your office), you still got one more external backup hard disk out there.
4) If the world end, forget about your photo... run for your life...

Have a nice day.


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## lilmsmaggie (Aug 1, 2013)

I would give Other World Computing (OWC) a call or visit their site. 

They may be able to provide you with some alternatives:

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire


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## Lloyd (Aug 1, 2013)

The following, which is a cut and paste from a prior thread, is what I am doing. It works well, but the Pegasus does not meet your portability requirement. However, a couple of GoFlex drives might work with a similar setup absent the Pegasus. The GoFlex thunderbolt system can be found at http://www.seagate.com/external-hard-drives/desktop-hard-drives/backup-plus-desk-mac-thunderbolt/

I have an iMac and all my documents, photos and data are stored on a Promise Pegasus configured under raid 5 with about 5TB available and connected via thunderbolt. I have two external 3tb Seagate GoFlex drives which are connected one at a time via thunderbolt. I swap the GoFlex’s out every week bringing one to my office. I use Carbon Copy Cloner to automatically and daily clone the Pegasus to one of the Seagate GoFlex’s. It clones all the files on the Pegasus to the GoFlex except for Time Machine backups. I use Time Machine to back up the iMac in separate backups to the both the Pegasus and the GoFlex drive currently connected to the iMac via thunderbolt. 

As a result of this process, I have daily backups of both my data on the Pegasus and my iMac on one of the GoFlex drives and have at least a weekly backup at my office of both the iMac and the Pegasus. Right now it works well as I have less than the 3tb of data capacity of the GoFlex drives. The only issue I have noted is that FCPX sees both the projects on the Pegasus and the GoFlex with the same names, as they are duplicates of each other, and gives me a warning, which I have been ignoring and hopefully not at my peril.


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## leGreve (Aug 1, 2013)

Wait till Caldigit comes out with their Thunderbolt hardware soon.... it's going to be the best bang for the buck.


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## kyamon (Aug 1, 2013)

SwissBear said:


> In your situation, i would use a "current work" LR catalog on the laptop (should work nice&fast on a SSD), and after finishing a project, export the catalog on the NAS, then import it to the full catalog which is also stored on the NAS. This is a bit flimsy, but as far as I can tell, adobe has not yet implemented something to automate this process.



There are, in fact, various solutions to automate this procedure. The choice of software that mirrors hard drives (or individual folders) is huge, some using the cloud, some doing it directly. That takes care of the type of backing up as you suggest it without requiring any manual work. I find this a most secure solution since it normally also allows you to directly get a copy off-site.


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## SwissBear (Aug 2, 2013)

kyamon said:


> SwissBear said:
> 
> 
> > In your situation, i would use a "current work" LR catalog on the laptop (should work nice&fast on a SSD), and after finishing a project, export the catalog on the NAS, then import it to the full catalog which is also stored on the NAS. This is a bit flimsy, but as far as I can tell, adobe has not yet implemented something to automate this process.
> ...



You talk about general backup solutions. This is not what i mean, because a huge 100k pictures LR catalog does not fit on a 500GB drive 
I would like to have in lightroom an option to "relocate" old stuff to a NAS without kicking it out of the catalog, but that is currently not easy to achieve - working with two catalogs is much easier. I also heard that a small catalog works fater. 
Of course, you could create for every project a new catalog and then just copy it over to backup - but then you can't browse "all" your work.

Another point: physical separation of the backup: a second backup (single disc acceptable) which is at your workplace/parents/friend can be handy when something comes like sandy


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## kyamon (Aug 2, 2013)

SwissBear said:


> kyamon said:
> 
> 
> > SwissBear said:
> ...



Size is a point - I am not a pro, so my catalogue rather is in the range of 30k photos...
But what I meant does not actually suffer from that. Granted, it may make it a bit slower, but there is no size limitation to whatever you use to mirror your main pc to. Use 500GB if it is sufficient, use 100TB if you need that. Basically, my point is that if you mirror everything to a second computer then you at the same time get a backup and a second workplace. And it can be off-site, in case sandy decides to come back 

But I agree with that point - any backup system only makes sense if you have at least one copy geographically separated from the main storage system. Hardware failure is only one way to lose data - disasters, fire, theft, etc. are others. Off-site storage is an absolute must IMO.


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## SwissBear (Aug 2, 2013)

kyamon said:


> [...]
> Size is a point - I am not a pro, so my catalogue rather is in the range of 30k photos...
> [...]



A full backup works as long as your catalog does not exceed the stoage size of your system. If this is the case, my previously mentioned solution is the best thing I can think of as it still offers the option to browse all your work, at least if you are somehow connected to your NAS.


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