Photography storage solutions - hard drive, cloud, or...?

[@ScottRadfordChisholm]

Thanks mate, great advice. You sound exactly like me, should cull pix after games etc, I have started doing that to some degree ;) I also shoot to a 1TB ext but when I bought it I didn't format to be able to swap between both Mac & Windows, so that has been a little bit of a pain. I am a PhotoShelter user so some of my jobs, not all go to that, I also have Cloud, Google Drive and Dropbox accts, and some jobs go to those. So yes, I know how bloody 'messy' it can get !!! My other issue, YES, my fault I know for not being organised better, is the fact that I have a couple of ext drives from my first couple of years, where I was filing jobs into folders WITHOUT a date in front and just a 'Job Name'. Hence I now file everything into a folder with date first and then job name in sequence. I am right now, going over those old drives and entering dates in front. I am looking at staying on ext hard drive as one back up and just sending the 'edits' folder of images to Cloud as my main backup. It wont be everything, but at least something to fall back on. Thanks for the tips. Cheers Scott from Oz !!

[@Talru]

Hi Scott, thanks for watching and commenting. Wow, you have a lot of images and a lot spread around storage types. It's tricky knowing what's best to do with them. I definitely want to spend some time properly archiving all my work at some point, and being more ruthless in culling what I don't need!

[@NikCan66]

Used a combination of the set ups over the years. Cloud is ok but a major disadvantage you have a slow 🐌 download speed in some locations depending on the local network could be a bottleneck or the plan you use with your ISP needs changing. I use NAS storage devices with 2 external SSD 4TB drives at different events and back up when i get back home to 2 other locations

[@Talru]

Hi NikCan66, thanks for watching again! That sounds like a good setup. I think NAS storage is definitely the way to go. I have lofty plans to properly sort out a home office, and try to set a NAS up in the process. Whether it will ever come to fruition who knows!

[@NikCan66]

@@Talru I know you will get a great system in place. Maybe some solutions offered by the various people you work with might also offer the best type of Hard drives or NAS units that might be worth checking out.

[@sasifoodie]

Do you know much about Dropbox and the compression of files? I'm looking into Dropbox as my cloud solution but I'm worried that my files will be compressed and lose the quality - has this happened to you? Do you know any settings to avoid this happening? Great video! :)

[@Twobarpsi]

Solid advice!

[@grahamclark2299]

Using a 72TB NAS with RAID configuration. In addition I get a pair Samsung T7 4TB SSD each year, one lives at home with the other at a relatives house. Have a Dropbox account but only really use it as a basic FTP so should investigate it further. Typically I'm shooting circa 3TB a year on military, transport and architectural projects, guess you sports lads shoot far more in a season🙂

[@mikekolleth6168]

Nothing will change your attitude and practice towards storage more quickly than moving to a mirrorless 47MP camera that shoots 20-30 frames per second. If as a sport shooter, you decide to keep all of your files on hard drives, it will be a very short time before you could buy a new camera/lens versus storing multiple terabytes of information across that you will never access again. I’ve been doing this for a long time and I can count on one hand the number of times that I was asked to go back and check through Files for photos that were not already published. And as I look back on it all of those times were a complete waste of energy. Two years ago, I took the leap to not store any pictures that were not tagged/rated during the culling process. One of the better decisions I’ve made in recent years - photographically speaking. My wallet is happier and I don’t feel the weight of caring around so much useless digital baggage. If I were Ansel Adams and my work were important for future generations to study… Then I might feel differently. But paying a price - financially, and otherwise - to lug around out of focus files from a junior varsity basketball game from 2016 stopped making sense.

[@Talru]

Thanks for watching and commenting. You're so right, I'm going to stop the practise of keeping everything. Looking back on old drives this week, I noticed a few years back I used to just keep the main match edits from games. I think I'll go back to doing this which means keeping approx 30-50 per game. My main reason for doing this, shooting the same team all of the time, is I am frequently asked for pics of certain players from past years! Thanks again for the reply and the advice!

[@fasttracksportsphotography6311]

Curious what percentage you are keeping. I save 5% to 10% and all client photos are saved in the cloud. I shoot 70 soccer games in 2023. Total games in all sports was 133 games and have no time to keep junk files

[@Talru]

Depends on the game, but on average keeping 5-10% I guess. I definitely need to reduce the number I'm keeping.