- This topic is empty.
Using 2 external HD’s for backup.
-
I have a 21″ iMac with a 500gig HD. I also have a WD 500gig external HD which I am using with Time machine for backing up.
I have 100’s of RAW files catalogued in Lightroom which are taking up a massive amount of space and potentially slowing down the Mac. I am quite diligent about deleting images I know I will not use so as to save space but even so my mac is filling up at an alarming rate.
So I have images on my internal HD. backups to an external HD and I also back up to DVD
I have ordered a Samsung 1 TB external HD and I am looking for advice as to what is the best way to utilise the 2 external HD’s whilst freeing up space on the internal one.
Thanks in advance.
Mark S.
Obviously you want to have the same file on multiple hard drives in case of failure so anything you move off of the mac to create space should be kept on both external hard drives.
Since you have 2 x 500 GB and 1 x 1TB you could do something like split the 1 TB into 2 x500 gb, one partition keeping a backup of things kept on the mac and the other keeping a backup of what is kept on the other external hard drive. That way you always have 2 copies of the file.
Slightly off topic but relevant when talking about backups, is that if you keep all of the hard drives in the same place as the computer you could still suffer a single point of failure that could result in the loss of all data eg flood or theft.
With large amounts of data three issues come to the fore.
1) Storage space.
2) Redundancy
3) Speed of access reading / writing.The only reliable method is a RAID array, where identical discs are grouped together to form 1 larger physical disc / volume.
Standards have moved on, and I believe Apple are using Thunderbolt for transferring data. And again even Thunderbolt has evolved into Thunderbolt II and probably Thunderbolt III is on it’s way.
I did use a SCSI RAID One Zero Array, but it was limited to 320 Mega Bytes a second sustained transfer speed. But at a size of 300 GB, it was too small. Currently using a SATA RAid 1 array, which at 2 TB is good on space, but very very slow. I am currently upgrading to SAS 3G array which will get me up to 2 TB storage but at a transfer speed of 700 Mega bytes / second (approx), which will help for a while.
But again… the array is located in my normal PC, so if the computer PSU goes up in smoke, then my array data could go up in smoke too.
If you are staying in the MAC system, see if your IMAC has thunderbolt connectivity, and see what prices are involved for a external Raid 10 (One Zero) array would be. http://www.elara.ie might be one place to have a look.
Building a RAID array used to be the abode of exotic, but it is becoming much cheaper and easier to buy / install.
The easiest scenario would be to use one of the external hdd’s as your main photos drive and the second one as your backup hdd and then wipe all photos from your mac to free up space. The setup you could use is
All OS, programs, personal files etc on your macbook HDD. Use time machine to back this up to the cloud or another HDD if you want.
HDD 1 has two folders – Originals & Processed. Inside of these folders you can store all your photos in dated folders like “150701 – Day in Wexford”, “150702 – Gaa Match” etc. so they can be easily indexed. If I were you I would create a new LR catalog for each folder and all your lightroom catalogs can be stored inside each folder also. This means smaller catalogs which speed up things greatly.
HDD 2 is an exact copy of HDD 1 using some kind of sync software – on windows I use Synctoy, I’m sure there is something similar for Apple.
I’m probably not explaining this very well but the way I use it above works very well. It means that you do all your photo work from HDD 1 and with either a thunderbolt/usb 3.0 connection it is blazingly fast. It also means that when it fails, and it will eventually, you have a copy of everything on HDD 2.
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
