I lost EVERYTHING! My workflow & backing up your photos/videos.

[@PeterMcKinnon]

Anyone else have drive crash stories? What did ya lose? Let's hear em! I lost 2 years of high res photos :( #lessonlearned

[@wtfmategaming]

I don't have stories but I run a data recovery facility in Mississauga. If you ever need help, contact me 1.877.681.4131 Chris

[@p_a_t_h6237]

i lost 1TB of files

[@YonatanAvhar]

My mom just lost 100GB of RAW and JPEG from the internal hard drive

[@PeterMcKinnon]

Ha! Amazing. Thanks dude :)

[@DeeDogg]

i had just backed everything up to my external because i was doing a refresh on my machine....once my machine was done my harddrive was toasted....meaning i lost everything. photos, videos, all gone....now i make sure i back up all the time and just keep it in a safe area...

[@doublecheckityt]

Pro tip about dates and file names: the format 20191015 will display your folders in chronological order. Most other date formats will end up being out of order because files are sorted are alphabetically.

[@13xBran]

Great tip, was glad to figure that one out after many attempts at different formats or putting ABC infront of file names or something like that.

[@ripple4612]

Will 10.15.2020 work as well? Of does it have to be yearmonthday with nothing separating them

[@JustinRY]

@@ripple4612 depends on your workflow and how often you'll have October as your starting title. I would suggest with the year first, then break it down by month, date, and title. This just prevents 2020 October being mixed up with 2011 (or some other year for example.)

[@chaos2kProductions]

yup I usually do 2020.07.28 - Name of Event. that all goes in a main folder for the year. much easier to scan by date

[@doublecheckityt]

@@ripple4612 I just tried a few combinations and found that only the YYYYMMDD or YYYY.MM.DD or YYYY-MM-DD will work. one thing to note is file names can get too long after they are in folders, and then those folders are in other folders so keeping it as short as possible is a good idea.

[@thatshawdude]

Pete, this was AWESOME! Would love to see an updated version of how you handle your footage, and what you archive/keep "in-case". Thanks m8! You're killin' it as always!

[@NaughtyShepherd]

I lost 7 years of family photos, mainly of my children growing up. Still makes me sick to think of it...

[@ahamartist9492]

I know that feeling buddy😖

[@josephcontreras8930]

Oh man my digital sympathies.i had the same happen to me in early 2000s with stack of 1.44 MB floppies an early early digital camera and mega bite sd cards.

[@Noodles2408]

@@josephcontreras8930 Floppies!! Man now that's a time to remember haha.. Makes you think about the first time you found out what a gigabyte was ( for myself at least )

[@Jammanboe]

Same thing happened to me with my own photos growing up… Now I back up everything online and at least to a RAID1

[@nickfanzo]

That’s why having physical photographs is better

[@PerplexityStudiosOfficial]

Video title: "I lost everything" video begins and I see how you handle hard drives Me: "Oh that's why"

[@gabrielcampos417]

This had me laughing, super underrated comment!

[@thefunnytech4612]

ATTENTION !!!!!!!! WHY CREATED FULL SIZE FOLDER AT 9:15

[@idontknowwhatmyusernamesho5540]

Silly guy

[@rc-wingman5719]

1# never work with a file if you don't have a copy on a other storage that is physically disconnected from your system. 2# Use external USB-HDD for backups EVERY DAY. Your NAS has a program on it that can do it automatically so you just have to check if its working properly from day to day. 3# BUY a 50$ PC, WINDOWS 2003 50$, Acronis Server and a LTO4 or LTO5 Data storage (100-200$) and make a backup server that is in a other room than your NAS. It's semi automatic. 4# Never save Files on your computer, Always save them on your RAID. ===> You will be 99% save of dataloss.

[@thefunnytech4612]

ATTENTION !!!!!!!! WHY CREATED FULL SIZE FOLDER AT 9:15

[@rouseinthehouse_]

Do you know of a video tutorial on this? I’m not tech savvy!

[@garrysingh3337]

#3 for what?

[@fishmonkeycow9246]

Love you content buddy. ;) Word to the wise though. Raid is not a backup, Its redundancy. It guards mostly against hardware failure. However it does not guard against file corruption, human error(Deleting wrong files), catastrophic(water, fire etc), viruses & malware, software bugs, hardware issues(Controller malfunctions, firmware bugs, voltage spikes etc). The saying is don't put all your eggs in the same basket. Same applies here with your backup/workflow, you seem to be only using one thing here. Your raid setup. If this fails which it can! You will lose everything. Make sure you have a off site backup. Amazon drive or crash plan etc, something that auto sync's your data from your raid box to a cloud platform in the background. So if shit hits the fan and your raid box fails, you have your data backed up to the cloud provider. RAID IS NOT A BACKUP. haha some form of cloud backup is cheap, go get one and your sorted & covered. :) Keep up the awesome work man.

[@fishmonkeycow9246]

Yea thanks. I would cry if a fire burnt down my home and I didn't have an offsite backup. All my beautiful photos gone. Makes me cringe just thinking about it. Also I've experienced 5+ instants of raid 5 & 6 failing and been non recoverable... Its in those times your happy you have a tested & working backup. Raid 10 ftw. ;)

[@sebulban]

Fish Monkey Cow +1 These raid arrays are meant to be as a working drive, not a backup.

[@marcschneiderphoto]

Ah fortunately someone posted it... Was a bit disturbing nowadays watching someone still claiming raid is an alternative for backup drives... Get a NAS or a raid tower, doesn't matter. Just get what suits your bill and needs. Then get a second device (eg cheap prosumer nas) and fill it with drives and let some software mirror with a defined schedule on that device. Preferably offsite at your friends house (that's what I'm doing)... Then you are safe(r). For speeds sake I'm keeping current ongoing projects on the workstation itself, but let ir automatically mirror to my nas and backup it offsite. So there's triple redundancy / backup. And the two NAS have raid just in case... And once in a while there is a dump to another drive that goes to another location. I'm ready when shit hits the fan.

[@erikaberg4689]

I came here to comment the same thing but saw that you beat me to it. This has to be further up. Can't stress it enough. raid is NOT a backup!

[@thelinthicums3295]

True that. I have two Synology boxes on site (one is redundant), a third off site, and my fourth backup is Google Drive. Periodically I do a quick cull and throw out the old, bad, or useless crap.

[@Mecholable]

Great video and you clearly stated why RAID 6 is the way to go (and not RAID 5). However, I wouldn't mix archiving with backup, because your RAID 6 is not a backup. Usually the best strategy for backup is the 3-2-1: 3 copies, 2 of them local on different mediums (say drives) and 1 offsite.

[@stellaqaustralia]

That’s the formula. Even one of the onsite ones in a firebox to be extra careful. That’s all you can do, but worth doing all of it now - not when it’s too late. 👍

[@aanjneygupta]

My gawd he's so close to a million subscribers and he deserves every bit of it.🙌🙌🙌

[@DestinMeeks]

PETER! Bought your lightroom presets and I'm in love!! Can you PLEASE make a video along the same lines as this one, but a bit more intricate. I'd love to see your workflow starting where this video leaves off. The pictures are organized, then what? Import into lightroom? How do you organize your catalog? Do you keep the files local while working on them? Do you keep your catalog local? Do you only edit at home connected to your RAID? How do you handle editing while traveling? Do you make a new catalog while out of the house then merge it with your master catalog back home? Would LOVE to see your process on this topic!

[@MochilerosOrg]

That disk is awesome... a backup for backups. Paranoid proof!

[@thefunnytech4612]

ATTENTION !!!!!!!! WHY CREATED FULL SIZE FOLDER

[@igalaviz]

The general rule is to have 3 copies of any data worth saving.

[@Pingucado]

"If you still lose everything I would recommend finding a new hobby" LOL

[@SamGarfield1]

Or backing up properly, which is not what Peter is doing here.

[@ikereed6847]

I prolly wouldve said it differently, but...yeah. This. (full disclosure: learned this the hard {really, really hard} way. Lost 16tb data on personal server)

[@BradNewton]

I would cry

[@willparsons32]

Looks as though he uses a Macbook or iMac,,, If this is the case, Doesn't the cloud save & back up as well?

[@Jakeu1701]

windows also has an online backup, if you set it up.

[@itseleniaman]

Falls in love with the idea of LaCie Raid, clicks the Amazon link, sees the price, exits the browser, finds a corner to meditate...someday...someday...

[@meanpicker]

I have a Business and a Personal folder, also organized by year, then I assign a job name and number to each new job folder (1701, 1702, etc.) and then I create a folder for each camera and sub-folders for each file type (MOV, RAW, JPG). I also assign a -001, -002, etc to them if I need to send out Invoices, Revisions, etc. at multiple phases of the job. I have one main and one backup USB drive, a Dropbox backup and I only move/keep files on the computer while I am working with them. Would love to have a super fast giant RAID setup someday though!

[@Pixelbip]

Thanks for showing your storage structure. I always wonder what other photographers use but you are the first youtuber I came across that actually showed it.

[@jurebrus9097]

Watched this video a year ago. Started using your file organisation method. It saved me a lot of time and nerves. Still using it, its amazing. Thanks!

[@MarkDuffyPhotography]

I've been told another recommended method to backup is to write onto DVD ROM (slower and awkward I know), but it's seen as a physical copy of the files

[@6590651]

I have a suggestion for improving your workflow just a little: in your 2018 folder you can use folders like 01/01-04 (Iceland) I'm always frustrated by how 10/01 orders before 01/01 sometimes, so with the extra 0 infront this won't happen! Then you also have all your folders ordered chronological and with the description as well!

[@Got2EatPizza]

I’ve just lost all my data - last Friday - my drive fell 2 feet onto the floor. Bought the cheapest rugged now as it withstands shock. Storage isn’t cheap.

[@NathanBerry]

I lost 3 years of memory on an old Seagate hard drive once and never backed it up on anything else. Lesson learned! This vid was super helpful Peter - thanks so much! I'm the guy that uses 15 orange Lacie rugged drives to edit Vlogs :)

[@floraartlife]

Peter, you are awesome! I have binge watching your videos as I just recently discovered you. THANK YOU, I have learned so much from you this week. Love your positivity.

[@portjonesy]

if i had $3k to spend on hard drives i totally would 😂

[@AsherSmithFilms]

I feel that

[@js_filming7701]

Just spend 50€ in unlimited Google drive LOL

[@FatmaYousuf]

@@js_filming7701 no

[@js_filming7701]

@@FatmaYousuf Why not? Its unlimited

[@FatmaYousuf]

@@js_filming7701 It's not unlimited. It costs $299 for 30TB per month

[@joshbrathwaite104]

I've learned a lot from this video. You explain things so well. I'm learning new stuff, about photography because of Peter!!

[@joespn18]

If that extra backup drive fails just do what Pete said and get a gym membership and release your anger there😂 😂

[@PeterMcKinnon]

Joespn LOL

[@joshmoxey.]

SPORT

[@TimPM]

6 Years later and I stumbled upon this video again. Watched about 6 already to figure out something that works and this is it! Thanks Peter!

[@avi8r66]

My favorite storage array solution is unraid. You can use an older PC and add drives as needed. This gives you 1 to 2 drives of parity to guard data against loss while also allowing for terrific expandibility as your needs grow. It works great as an archive server, so you would work from local storage, or something like the external raid box featured in this, but then archive off old stuff to the unraid box, which then guards them long term. The biggest perk to unraid is you dont have all the drives in the array spinning 24/7, which lets them live much, much longer, and it keeps the heat and power consumption down to a minimum.

[@garrysingh3337]

what are all the different options that we have out of which unraid is better?

[@DanielWillen]

Actucally the two drives aren't set as "recovery drives". The parity bits (the bits that can help calcualte "lost data" is actually spread out across all other harddrives, for a total of 2 drives' worth of space.

[@pomhub283]

I was skimming through the comments wondering if someone really gets raids. Not hating on Pete but he’s wrong completely: 1) raid 0 and raid1 are way more safe then raid5 and raid6 because they don’t use parity bits. 2)raid is NOT a backup. It’s just a lot of space with easy access. 3)raid 10 is the way to go with 6 bay drives. Fast enough and doesn’t use any parity. 4)raid5 and raid6 is just scary to use any HDD over 2 TB for. Rebuilding a drive is such abuse! Rebuilding e.g. a 8tb HDD can take more then a day at full throttle! HDD full throttle for more then a day. Imagine that

[@garrysingh3337]

@@pomhub283 so whatever new data I get I should transfer to raid10 and use from there? anything else I should be doing?

[@HenryOrtlip]

Buy a 4TB Rugged RAID. Split it into 2TB & 2TB (RAID 1 configuration). This allows you to edit on 2TB and backs up your footage on the other 2TB. I shoot with the 1DX as well and when traveling on projects this set up works great for me. This workflow only costs about $400 too. This would be my suggestions to those looking for an all-in-one back up, that is mobile and doesn't break the bank. - - - Great vids Peter! Look forward to when our paths cross in the future! :)

[@teohyc]

Henry Ortlip I hope you mean 2 separated physical drives.

[@HenryOrtlip]

The Rugged RAID 4TB is made up of two 2TB drives, but you have to configure it to a (RAID 1) which then separates their usage and give you back up. It comes in a (RAID 0) configuration-- meaning the two drives work together and split information for added speed, but you don't have back up in (RAID 0). Hope this helps! :) This workflow has been amazing for me the last two years, especially on the road.

[@waawaaweewaa2045]

lacies are garbage

[@Eli-lb1lc]

Don’t edit off of those. They are not very fast. You need an ssd.

[@mysticalwhat]

So with your folder structure, how do you utilize Lightroom's cataloging? Or do you not even bother with it?

[@JoesCoralReef]

I had the same question. Lightroom's catalogs seem to complicate everything.

[@TheDalseth]

What Ryan Levy said! Pete, let us know the answer!

[@PratameshMistry]

Same doubt here

[@YessikaMarmol]

Ryan Levy was going to ask the same thing

[@IDark17]

Maybe this is more for his photoshop workflow...? Can't be 100% sure though

[@ednizar]

I didn't lose much thankfully cos I have a friend who's a beast at tech stuff. Your folder organisation is pretty much left me speechless.

[@Dezwrr]

Bro, words cannot describe how happy I am that I found your video. Thanks a TON for this valuable info. It’s literally the corner stone starting my channel💯💯💯💯💯

[@scyfox.]

Well I don't shoot a gizillion images but have a 2 drive system. Raws on backup, make a copy to another disk to edit and make files. Delete the ones that suck. And create a final catalog on the backup drive again. Then, I delete the original backup folder. Nostalgia makes us keep files even when you know you won't touch them again ever again...

[@thefunnytech4612]

ATTENTION !!!!!!!! WHY CREATED FULL SIZE FOLDER AT 9:15

[@Ironfranko]

Additional note: I recommend always to perform a dry test simulating one disk failure before storing actual data on the RAID :) Just in case

[@ashoornable]

I came here in the intension to leave soon. But it really hooked me up.Thank you Peter for explaining your workflow. Its truly valuable.

[@BrandonOwen]

You are a life saver! That is the most logical file organization design I've ever seen.

[@rainm4v]

Ask Linus to build you a server 😂😂

[@zohairkhan4098]

Totally

[@hygog]

i remember his server room disaster episode though....

[@misaalanshori]

@@hygog Well, that's just what happens when you have so much hard drives and computer hardware running basically 24/7 with multiple users reading and writing to the drives everyday...

[@Chunkylover1582]

That's a collab I would like to see

[@REALIVH]

I don't think they are so smart to understand how a real backup and real server works and maintained, I know he is not gonna read old comment from old video

[@AshtonZeeTV]

Yeah, but peter thats a 3500 dollar workflow brother, my budget for storage is like $800, any alternatives?

[@jan.bednarik]

Online backup into Amazon Drive. Very reliable and costs only $60/year per TB.

[@HenryOrtlip]

Ashton see my comment above. The Rugged RAID 4TB for $400

[@PischkePerformance]

You could get something like a G-Technology G-RAID 10TB 2-Bay Thunderbolt 2 RAID Array. It will run you about $640 and you still get the speed of USB 3 or Thunderbolt for editing photo/video directly from the drive. Because it is only 2 drives you don't get RAID 6 capabilities, but you can run RAID 1 which means if a drive fails, you have a carbon copy backup. The more you shoot, the more you will make and the more money down the road you can put toward data safety.

[@dsong00]

Build a low powered PC and throw a bunch of good price/GB hard drives into it. Install windows (Windows 10 is free if you ignore the activation prompts :^)), upgrade your router, and get some CAT 6 ethernet cables and you have yourself some cheap Network Attached Storage which is pretty easily upgradeable.

[@MeaDz2]

Build your own NAS, use for example Ubuntu server software combined with Samba. Easy to manage and works like a charm. I have a massive home server that handles video/photo/films etc and is able to share that all to every single PC that I allowed from Samba.

[@arxvphoto809]

THIS JUST happened to me. Is there something in the air that's killing hard rivers this time of year?! WTFFFF

[@kennethwilliamsinc]

ARXV Photo the eclipse did it! 🌙 ☀️

[@Diggler72]

I was leaving the UK to move to New Zealand. I was on the floor of my mates apartment with my MacBook Pro copying photos across for my mate as we had just done an epic road trip through the USA. I had one external HD with everything on it. My other friend, Beaver, who's real name I actually do not know, tripped over the cable in a drunken stupor and my drive went flying across the room. All of the 7 years of photos gone, forever, just long lost memories. Sucks. So I am going to get a RAID system. I have everything on a whole bunch of drives now but like you said Peter, it gets messy. Thanks for the great video and the advice. Big fan by the way. Keep up the great work. ;)

[@babiloo.]

You are a such nice person, coming from bottom of my heart.

[@TobyKate]

I lost 6 years of photos and videos and memories from age 10-16. So pretty much everything in my childhood. Gone.

[@BermyBwoy]

DO NOT rely on RAID 6 either. All that does is improve on RAID 5 by allowing 2 drives to fail (instead of 1) before the entire array fails however no RAID is absolutely fail safe. RAID is just a way to use large volumes by combining multiple drives (and improved performance.. more disks the faster it gets) but you must BACKUP!!! Use RAID 6 for your working/live data but you must store that data on multiple offline disks as well.. take one of the backup duplicates to another house... that is if don't want to pay the equivalent to store them in a cloud solution.

[@NirateGoel]

Glad someone else releases this

[@sunny21892]

Best​ advise ever.... backup backup and backup..your drive gonna fail but the question is when 😂😂

[@follow_freeman]

Love this man. Just bought my 3rd rugged... traveling Europe with one right now.. as my only drive... the temptation is so real.

[@jordanalvarez7416]

I am definitely adopting the way you organize your files! Thanks again Pete!

[@LiamSwain]

i love how hes trying to talk seriously about hard drives and he still makes sound effects by banging his chest😂

[@LukeSherran]

"and if it still fails... get a new hobby" - Hahaha, awesome!

[@thefunnytech4612]

ATTENTION !!!!!!!! WHY CREATED FULL SIZE FOLDER AT 9:15

[@LandonBacy]

This was very helpful, thanks! And I'm also super pumped for 1 Million subs on your channel!!!

[@eliseoborrerobass]

Thanks for taking the time to do all this videos. You work hard and I am glad you are having great success. I am a 60 year young musician trying to develop my music education channel am a big fan!

[@bvstreet6688]

My external drive totally crashed but I SAVED IT! After I heard the click of death, I wrapped the drive in a towel and put it in a freezer ziplock bag and stuck it in the freezer for a day. This sounds crazy, but my friend who works in IT says it sometimes works. I was desperate so I gave it a try. Once the drive was frozen I plugged it into my mac and it worked long enough for me to transfer all the files to a new external drive. If you're out of options like I was give it a shot.

[@SA-zq7fz]

kiss of death

[@LeeZavitz]

Your file structure is the same way I do it. The curse of shooting with so many different cameras lol

[@pathway1]

Can you explain what's the difference between "Final Edits" and "Full Size"?

[@Eli-lb1lc]

AsummusA I believe what Final edits are is once he is done editing he drags the image from raw to final edits. Then he exports it and puts that final edit into the full size folder. So they are the same image but full size is an exported jpeg while the final edits are still the RAW file. I think that is what he means. I was kinda confused also.

[@MarcAlbertBegin]

Pete, I love you man, but this drive is $3k 😧😓😭

[@johnleedaveyjr]

I like your workflow / folder structure. Don't like your backup strategy to much. You are still working off of your backup set it seems. Yes RAID 6 is a double redundant but what about a fire, flood or theft. If you loose the entire box in one shot your still SOL. Also the large drives like your 8TB ones take a long time to rebuild and seem to have a higher failure rate than the smaller drives. I use 3 and 4 TB drives for this reason but you have more data than I do so you are probably stuck with the larger drives.... Look at Backblaze. it is cheap. It will take a long time for the initial backup but once it is done you are protected. I am in no way affiliated with them. Also once you have the data copied to Backblaze I would use your system drive or one of your rugged drives for the current project. Copy the daily work to the RAID. Then make sure it has all made it to Backblaze before you wipe the data from the current area. This gives you two copies with one off site at all times... yea, it's confusing but it is the only real way to be protected. And honestly some people will say you need a third set but I think that cost is overkill for what you are doing as the likelihood of loosing your data with this is slim. But it is your data and you are the only one who really knows what it is worth.

[@Lida22]

I have been sorting and storing computer files since waaay back when DOS filenames were limited to 8 characters plus a 3 character extension. The only way to operate then and still find a file was subdirectories (now called folders). Learning that then has served me well all these years. I totally agree with David Kreutzkamp about putting the DATE first on the foldername, and frequently on the file name as well, EXCEPT that you should always put the date in the format YYYY-MM-DD, followed by a space, then the name of the folder/file. The reason for this is that you can then sort by name (as Peter does) and they will always come out in proper order by date. You also add a descriptive name to the date so it is apparent what is in that folder or file. Believe me, when you have even six days worth of pictures in a folder named for a place, without an apparent description in addition to the date, you won't remember what you did that day even a month later. SO NAME YOUR FOLDERS AND FILES PROPERLY! Example: 2018-03-27 Concert at church 2018-03-27 Orchestra Party 2018-03-28 Peter McKinnon's Ballet Recital 2018-03-29 Swimming in a Coffee Vat 2018-03-30 Vlog on Nosepicking Maybe I should do a tutorial on this. (Heh heh)

[@MrJasenboychair]

I have the exact workflow! Works like a charm. I let the raid handle the hassle of backing up the files, and it's easy to find.

[@clancyoneill]

"Just pick a sport.. and give it your all!" 😂

[@joel4christ]

Pete' what lens do you use for your sit down videos?

[@CronicGaming94]

Dude I just need a drive in general. When i finish uploading a vlog i have to delete everything because i don't have a drive. But i'm also completely broke. But for reals a drive is my next investment for sure.

[@PeterMcKinnon]

Kerry Cronic Vlogs look into cloud storage. Might be a good cheaper solution.

[@CronicGaming94]

True! You always got some bad ass tips up your sleeves man.

[@alexxander3436]

Kerry Cronic Vlogs use Google Photos.

[@gambii483]

yo, get google photos... it provides with unlimited storage, so...

[@CronicGaming94]

DebbyAbqNM I'll check out the Google thing everyone is mentioning. But sadly I because use a newer Imac I don't even have a disk drive :/

[@causecaos]

I just had to go back to this video and Say this is where it all started for me! I'm still here! Super awesome stuff! Love your content and personality!

[@Cruzboy]

another good tip for creatives watching your channel is to work straight from Dropbox. I bought a 1TB membership and work on my indesign, illustrator and photoshop files straight from a Dropbox folder. I don't have to worry about losing work, theyre synced across all my computers and I can access them anywhere if I need to. Its saved me a lot of headaches. Once in a while I'll still back up those files to a physical external drive. Any large video files i'll still send to the NAS, and pull them from the NAS as I need to work on them.

[@ry92ukwj]

What's the story with the other drive? What did you lose? Thanks Pete for the video! :)

[@blvnk4545]

Rory Marion he lost two years of high res images... I think he either broke or his rugged drive got corrupted. Really sucks but he has definitely learned and remedied it

[@DrippyVisuals]

I don't know why but the way you were slamming the hard drives on your desk really pissed me off.

[@13xBran]

I feel like the editing and sound effects really exaggerated it, making it seem like slamming

[@thefunnytech4612]

ATTENTION !!!!!!!! WHY CREATED FULL SIZE FOLDER AT 9:15

[@noufalmugairin4118]

@@thefunnytech4612 I wondered, too

[@davidkreutzkamp6602]

Does anyone else also add dates to their folder titles? I always start a folder with 08212017 for say todays date and then add a title like "08212017 Waterloo Air Show" I find it helps keep things a bit more sorted and easier to keep track of a years worth of events and back ups.

[@ying1246]

Yea. I store my files in dates too.

[@zakwaddle]

David Kreutzkamp that's what I do, except I do yymmdd, keeps them in order if you have multiple years. So today would be 170821_eclipse

[@Mew__]

The most efficient method to date your files is yyyymmdd, since they're fully and correctly sortable in ascending and descending order. Any other method will have you end up with some kind of setback.

[@TaylorCraneandRigging]

We catalog all our folders with the date first. "20170821 Subject Title." We do it in Year/Month/Day format for easier scrolling.

[@RodolfoPimenta1998]

I usually store by date too, but i use /. As i have adhd, it gets kinda anoying reading without it. Like, 2017/08/21 - Name

[@DragVideosAustralia]

Love the File Structure i do the same the only difference is i start with January > 01-01-2018 Iceland 2018 so then the month is still in numerical date in the root folder so at the end of the month iceland isnt in the middle starting with I . Works for me and just a tiny extra step. Keep the killer vids coming.

[@JoaquimGonsalves]

I'm so happy to see that I was already following your organisational style with folders since 2015. :)

[@AngelDigitalis]

Nice video yet RAID is NOT backup, it's redundancy, the controller may fail so you still need to backup the RAID. And configured as a raid 6 only 2 drives can fail, if 3 fail it's gone. To minimize this you need to use NAS quality drives.

[@davidhorizon8401]

Well said. Peter makes is sound like you can lose all but one drive and still get it back. You should backup your data and store if off site. If you have a fire, you will lose everything at that location.

[@linuxuser071]

Thank you I always get the calls from people saying, it was in raid and I have to be nice and tell them that RAID is not a damn backup also data recovery is more expensive

[@leobosco9205]

if it is in mirror configuration, then it is backed up indeed. But his is not. If its mirror, its backed up locally in the same place, so to be extra safe you do need another back up somewhere else.

[@benedikt5974]

IT-admins have a saying: "RAID is not a backup!" - Don't rely on a RAID only!

[@askeen8796]

that is true, but raid 6 is a backup of the raid itself.

[@WhiteEvo6]

It still fails, seen several over the years. We had to rely on the backup tapes, never rely on spinning disk in any configuration as your backups.

[@KarlMathiasMoberg]

Came here to say this exact thing! RAID IS NOT A BACKUP!

[@ry92ukwj]

What did you do for the Eclipse?

[@According2Marcus]

I'd love to see a video about that

[@jas_bataille]

"The process of finishing a project from start to finish" - this, my friend, is the greatest artistic challenge of all time.

[@MarceloGori]

Peter, you are a Chap!!!!!! not far from what I do, just love the confirmation that it works on a bigger scale!!!!!!! Thanks so much!!! 😁🤩

[@User-re8nl]

50k to 1mil my man Pete growing so fast

[@dylanmcgovern5513]

Is the 5d iii for 1mil giveaway

[@EvHocks]

Dylan McGovern it is but only when he reaches 1 million

[@MrHarryGray]

yes it is

[@bennyfoggy2579]

it's a 5d MK iv

[@kunsunrethy]

thats his lmao

[@KeyurMetaliya]

Early notification squad, where r u guys??

[@cheerfulcharlie7374]

This is just what I was looking for, awesome storage and work flow advice! I need to start with a more basic smaller option but thanks for explaining the RAID system & how us regular people could potentially use it 🙌

[@pixelrangerstudio86]

man, the first time i've seen your videos, you had 50k subs. I was like yeah this guy has great energy its great to watch and listen. But now, im not sure if it;s even half a year later... almost 1M subs! All I can say is just heats off man, what you are doing is great and you deserve it! Totally! Great job, keep it up!

[@MacherTV]

*1:52** reminds me of the wolf of Wallstreet scene with Matthew McConaughey* 🤣🤣

[@mynameistim3701]

hahahah I lauged so hard, when peter said "find a new hobby"

[@cyfromearth]

Only 50k shy of 1,000,000!!

[@tylerhunnie9610]

Thanks a lot Pete. This is speeding up my workflow like crazy and now I'm organization is on point!

[@robertcalloway6685]

Nice info. Wow!!! You are almost at 1,000,000 subs. Amazing!! I am glad to be a part of your community.

[@JahimTheCreator]

I was drinking coffee and spit it all out when I saw the price of that facking Lacie Raid geez louise

[@p_a_t_h6237]

there are other raid for a lot cheaper, like the Synology DS1515+ (without drives), it doesn't look as pretty as the laci, but does the same job

[@JahimTheCreator]

Oh Thank Gawd... I don't care about pretty I just want to backup my stuff...lol I will certainly be looking into this...Thanks for the info

[@johngrady7390]

And Lacie was bought out by Seagate. Not good....

[@rotospace]

Comment of the day (well, 4 days ago) my friend. True lol here... 😂 Hopefully you didn't spit coffee all over your laptop & fry your HD. Oh, the irony...

[@sharifsircar]

Any Linustech subscribers here won't be impressed lol

[@RomainFiou]

His explanation of RAID 6 isn't correct. -First let's explain the basics of RAID 6 (redondant array of independent / inexpensive drive): You need an array of at least 4 drive. In this array every file is copied 3 times on 3 different drive. Here comes the redundancy of RAID: because the information is copied on multiple drive one can fail but the info is not lost. -He explain it like that: on your 6 drive, 2 are locked. In case of a drive failure you can rebuilt the array with 2 drive, so you can have up to 4 drive failure at the same time (very rare on a 6 bay array). -BUT it is the opposite: On your 6 drive you have to 2 locked (this part is correct). But you can only have 2 drive failure at the same time (because the file is copied 3 times) and the array will rebuilt it self with the 4 non-corrupted drive. This is the advantage of RAID 6 over RAID 5 witch only have 1 redondant drive but it's slower and need more computing power. It's used to prevent failure of a second drive when rebuilding after a first failure.

[@David-cq6zx]

I believe the word you are looking for is 'redundant'

[@corneadoug7598]

A Raid is not enough, thats why we talk about the rule of 3 for backup. You want at least a full backup on a different location. So many things can happen to a NAS on top of having all drive failling around the same time (Fire, robbery, Flood, Drop etc...). I would advise the $150 per year unlimited crashplan backup. Saved me once, now I'm even more carefull

[@meerrraaa004]

Love his videos because he literally that best at describing things in detail!

[@thefunnytech4612]

ATTENTION !!!!!!!! WHY CREATED FULL SIZE FOLDER AT 9:15

[@turkeyphant]

1. RAID is not backup. 2. RAID-6 is pointless with only 6 drives. 3. You kept saying you have 48 thousand gigs when you already explained due to redundancy it's sctually 8 TiB less. 4. There are potential URE issues with even RAID-6 at >50 TiB levels. Which drives are you using? 5. For the love of god, use ISO date standards not with the year or day number last in each folder! 6. Also, do you really not use keyboard shortcuts in Finder?!

[@danielgmur6486]

Why is it pointless with 6 drives? I don't get this point.

[@turkeyphant]

You might as well have 2 x 3 drive RAID-5. The (n-2) redundancy numbers only really make sense at higher numbers of drives.

[@danielgmur6486]

Ah makes sense. Thanks for clearing up. I try to learn as much as i can because i need to upgrade my storage soon. Do you know the tool stablebit.com/DrivePool ? I think i will use this to create one big mirrored drive on my PC. I also have a 128 GB SSD that i can use to speed up reading of the most recent files.

[@RobCartwright]

So glad someone mentioned using a number-based dating system. I was yelling at my computer when he went through that. As soon as he titles a folder "February 2018," it's going to be placed alphabetically above "January 2018." That would drive me insane.

[@JorgeAF]

Hey, could you expand on your points 5 & 6 plz? What do you mean by ISO Standard? What shortcuts you use? Have a nice day

[@SnehitK]

Go hit up Linus Tech Tips to get a much better server

[@yukonchris]

I've been using a NAS RAID system for years, and it's backed up. I have yet to loose any photos but that's really just the beginning of the problem, because lots of storage just means more opportunity to store crap. This year, I began methodically rooting through every monthly file and deleting as many old photos as possible. It's a colossal job! In the end, My goal is to eliminate enough photos from my NAS that I can fit whats left from each year on a few flash drives. Why? Because no matter how good we think our photos are, unless your name is Karsh or Ansel, or something, nobody, other than you, really cares and sooner or later someone is gonna be faced with the choice of rooting through terrabytes of images or just dumping the lot. Guess which one they'll choose? By narrowing things down to the essentials, you won't look like a digital pack rat, and you may wind up with a concise and representative collection that might actually be worth keeping. Well, that's my take on the whole, drowning under data, story. Good luck with the RAID storage solutions.

[@jv_lamsen10]

This is my first time commenting on your vlog, and i really love this because i often get worried if i start vlogging then suddenly what if i have so much files it might slow down my laptop. So, this video really helped. Thanks a lot Peter Mckinnon! I love your videos btw! I hope to be as good as you one day! 👊🏼 love those cinematics and those B-roll!

[@AlexCio]

You're so right! I already had a kind of workflow when I started and also improved it through the time I was vlogging more and more! There is at least one hard drive with the most important things you take with you. Taking more would just mean to carry weight and also work you already did and that can get lost without any recovery possibility! No company would ever carry their important sources all with them everywhere they go, why should a single person do it! :)

[@philippblank]

Great video. What helped me is making a "preset day" with all the possible cameras I could have on the shoot so I would just copy DAY PRESET 5 times if the trip is 5 days long. Also make a Graphics folder, a Music folder, A sound effects folder in that "preset". You might have a few empty folders if you don't end up getting gopro footage for example but it saves time with creating 30 folders every day. Don't delete the empty folders, you might delete footage by accident. Almost 1 million, keep it up homie

[@AaronGeyer]

Thanks Peter! Great advice! This is the reason I carried 2 identical drives when traveled to the Philippines! I copied the files from my camera to both just in case one got lost or damaged.

[@patrix87]

That file structure is pretty good, I've been using something similar for about 10 years, Year -> YYYY-MM-DD - Event -> Photographer A, Photographer B, Photographer C -> RAW, FULL SIZE, HD It is easy to keep organized, it is fast to search, you never run into filename conflicts, you always know what version of the picture you're looking at.

[@theShinySheep]

Excellent advice. I got myself a Drobo a few years ago and it's saved my life. I still use a Cloud storage solution for off-site backups, but having a NAS to local backups is amazing.

[@timwood3840]

I fully appreciate your file organization system. I am exactly the same way and I am given the gears by so many people! I do go one step more and I use a numbered prefix (1-, 2- etc) to sort the folders by flow. So RAW would be 1 - RAW and then edited would be 2 - Edited for example just so it has some flow but that’s a whole other step of OCD! Great videos, please keep them coming!

[@davidsaylors]

Thank you for the sneak peek into your workflow. I see I should be shooting WAY more b roll. WAY more... thank you so much for your knowledge.

[@KyleFazzari]

From a computer guy: you should be using RAID 10. For your 8 bay machine, you would group the HDs into 4 pairs. Each HD mirrors the other in each pair, and then data is striped across all pairs. You end up with only 32TB this way, but the benefit is that the process of recovering from a failure isn't a resilvering process using parity, but a simple, fast, byte-for-byte copy from a single HD. Much safer with today's larger drives and likelihood for read failures.

[@aboutrightmediagroup7962]

IT Guy here! I would like to suggest that you these types of data management: RAID drives, storage drives, and off site storage. One thing to note about RAID: It is not a backup! Depending on your RAID setup, even if you have cloned drives, you're still at risk if the RAID controller can't rebuild the arrays. For another storage management option, You could build a nice and small computer with a crap ton of ECC RAM and use the RAID software "FreeNas" as your secondary storage management. You could also buy a NAS rack with some NAS hardrives and schedule regular backups as fault tolerance for your RAID drives. Off site storage, well, thats self explanatory. Buy separate hard drives, back the data, and leave it at another location in case of a fire or robbery.

[@aboutrightmediagroup7962]

If I might add (I feel corny for replying to myself), Cloud storage is a good option, but there are too many variables: price quotes per month, storage limits, possible server maintenance or DOWNTIME from the company, etc. Unless its an email server or something, I feel more comfortable with my data managed by myself.

[@BrianLamb-rocketmanblamb]

Thanks for talking about this!!! (1) Local SSD or RAID for current use/edit -> (2) Onsite backup to Raid 1 NAS ---> Offsite Backup to another RAID 1 NAS (or cloud Service e.g. BackBlaze) Automate copying of (1) to (2) and Cloud storage has an agent to handle automatic uploads in the background too. If you want to be somewhat slick you can have a software solution that can RAID-1 two USB drives. (SoftRaid for Mac will do this) and then they will sync up whenever both plugged in together. Also there are easier budget versions that can do this stuff without totally breaking the bank - get serious about backup it will be worth it!

[@gwenaelf.8667]

Pete, that is a nice setup to protect yourself against disk malfunction but there is still a small chance of device malfunction. And it's not protected against people leaving with your device... I would recommend Off Site backup. For example every time I go to see my folks (4-5 time a year) I bring a backup disk with me that I swap with the one I've left there.