House keeping photos on a PC

Porky · Jan 12, 2019

Hi all, I’ve done a search for the above title but with no luck.
I’m just starting to get an overload of photos on my desktop and was wondering the best way you guys keep them in order (house keeping) via adding them to files with dates or locations.

What the best/easiest way of doing it? I’m using an iMac

Any suggestions would be much appreciated Thumbswayup

bushie · Jan 12, 2019

I first of all store all my photos on a NAS I have networked throughout my home. I do a daily back up to a second NAS and also to cloud storage.
A can also upload from my laptop to the NAS when I am on the road.

I keep a separate directory for each camera (Video, SLR, Phone, wifes phone etc and now my MAVIC)

I then create a directory for each group of photos. If I am on a trip over several days all the photos from that trip will go into the same directory. I give the directory some meaningful name and a date. On a longer holiday I may create a directory for the holiday and then sub-directories for each day.

When I was working I also included the project number in the directory name.

Meta4 · Jan 12, 2019

Porky said:
I’m just starting to get an overload of photos on my desktop and was wondering the best way you guys keep them in order

What works for me is:
When I copy the image files to the computer, I change the DJI folder name to a name consisting of the date and the location.
Then I copy that folder to this year's Drone Photos folder on the computer.
If I make changes/edits to a photo, the new version is saved with the same file name but with an A after it to distinguish from the original version.

Porky · Jan 12, 2019

Thanks guys for your feedback. I was looking at a NAS for my network or a external HD to link up to my iMac, don’t know what way to go with that at the mo.

Meta4’s idea is a much cheaper way of doing it so I try that way for now. My HD size is 1.2 TB which should be ok for now. I think but further down the line I’ll have go with one of the above ideas.

Porky · Jan 12, 2019

bushie said:
I first of all store all my photos on a NAS I have networked throughout my home. I do a daily back up to a second NAS and also to cloud storage.
A can also upload from my laptop to the NAS when I am on the road.

I keep a separate directory for each camera (Video, SLR, Phone, wifes phone etc and now my MAVIC)

I then create a directory for each group of photos. If I am on a trip over several days all the photos from that trip will go into the same directory. I give the directory some meaningful name and a date. On a longer holiday I may create a directory for the holiday and then sub-directories for each day.

When I was working I also included the project number in the directory name.

@bushie could you please give me more info on what model/make your nas is. I do like the idea about doing things remotely say while on holiday.

Many thanks

bushie · Jan 12, 2019

Porky said:
@bushie could you please give me more info on what model/make your nas is. I do like the idea about doing things remotely say while on holiday.

Many thanks

The NAS i have is a model no longer available, but it is built by QNAP. All their products use similar software. Here is my setup mounted in a rack in my garage.

Porky · Jan 13, 2019

Im impressed, looks like a great setup

I think that would be “over kill” for me. I’ve started doing what Meta4 suggested but I’m still researching other ways of storing my photos locally. Great keeping them on my pc HD but I love the idea of saving them elsewhere which I know you can do with a double bay NAS. Better to be safe than sorry I suppose.

Thanks for replying @bushie Thumbswayup

lmel2005 · Jan 13, 2019

I keep my photos in a 3 Tb drive, in my pc.
I also keep a backup of them, in another external 3 Tb drive. This drive is used for backup only, and is in a safe place all the time.

I have organised my photos in folders with meaningful names, but I have tagged my photos too.

So, using software like Adobe Lightroom, I can view them any way I like.
For example, I can query my photos pool, to show me photos from London, with my children and me.

My pc is connected to my home network, so I can access my photos from any device connected.

Kilrah · Jan 13, 2019

Got 2x6TB drives in RAID0 in my PC to make a 12TB volume for all my data.

I'm backing that up to 2 external dual drive RAID boxes with the same 2x6TB in RAID0 config. One's at home and I update it every couple of days using a program like freefilesync that will look at the changes and update the backup copy with any changes made. 2nd one is stored offsite at a friend's, and I swap them every week or 2.

I often have to go abroad for extended periods, and wehn I do that I just take one of the external boxes with me and have all my data to work with. I also take another small 2.5" drive, and set up a daily backup onto that of only the files that have changed since the start of the trip. So I can work as normal on my data drive, BUT if it decided to fail I'd still have a copy of the work I've done since I left on the smaller drive, and anything older is obviously still on 2 copies at home and at friend's. When I come back I do a reverse sync to carry across what I've done onto the PC.

Photos are sorted as folders with alphabetically sortable date and descriptions, then by camera inside of that. All of that accessible in Lightroom catalogs. Videos separately in a similar way. I keep saying I should use LR's tagging a bit more but never got around to it.

My PC is also always on when I'm home so no point for a NAS that would be slower for working on the data from the main PC. Accessing such large data over the net is way too slow as well, so if I need heavy data on the move I just take the backup drive with me. All the light daily work stuff I have a synced copy of on my laptop anyway.

FoxhallGH · Jan 13, 2019

Porky said:
Im impressed, looks like a great setup I think that would be “over kill” for me. I’ve started doing what Meta4 suggested but I’m still researching other ways of storing my photos locally. Great keeping them on my pc HD but I love the idea of saving them elsewhere which I know you can do with a double bay NAS. Better to be safe than sorry I suppose.

Thanks for replying @bushie

Q-NAP is a good name - and has a lot of support in the Mac world ... You'd not have to go for a rack-mount unit running RAID4 like shown in the photo above, but there are a lot of 2-drive NAS's about. The 2-drive set-ups run a disk-mirroring type of protection. So you'd install a pair of e.g. 4 TB hard drives - and that would give you 4 TB of storage, but protection due to it being able to cope with and fully protect your data in case of one of those drives goes into melt-down.
Something like this ... Qnap Ts-231p2-4g 2 Bay Encl - NAS Ebuyer ... and then you can purchase hard drives for it according to your budget and how much storage you want ... The largest hard drives at the moment are 10 TB Seagate IronWolf 10TB 3.5" NAS Hard Drive
You can configure this NAS for remote [web] access if you want ...

Porky · Jan 13, 2019

Thanks guys for all that mind blowing information, much appreciated. I’ve got so much research to do before I jump in and buy, it needs to work best for me. It’s getting to the stage now where I’m taking so many photos, putting them through post then my desktop is now getting cluttered with files.

I will only need something for photos, nothing else but it needs to be big enough for future projects. I don’t want to buys something that’s to small, memory wise so making the right choice 1st time is my goal.

Now I’ve got great information from you guys so now it’s just searching the net and doing tons of reading. Keeps me out of trouble I suppose.

Kilrah · Jan 13, 2019

FoxhallGH said:
The 2-drive set-ups run a disk-mirroring type of protection. So you'd install a pair of e.g. 4 TB hard drives - and that would give you 4 TB of storage, but protection due to it being able to cope with and fully protect your data in case of one of those drives goes into melt-down.

Remember that RAID is not a backup and mirroring only protects against a single scenario among a dozen, single drive failure, which is not even the most likely one. The only real advantage of mirroring is availability, aka in that one scenario if a drive fails you can continue working without interruption, which may be valuable for a business for example but is mostly worthless for home use.

You definitely want a separate backup if not 2 if you value your data at all. For the same investment you're way better off using the 2nd drive as an independent backup than setting it up as a mirror in the NAS.

Porky · Jan 13, 2019

Taken on board, thanks Kilrah.

FoxhallGH · Jan 13, 2019

Kilrah said:
Remember that RAID is not a backup and mirroring only protects against a single scenario among a dozen, single drive failure, which is not even the most likely one. The only real advantage of mirroring is availability, aka in that one scenario if a drive fails you can continue working without interruption, which may be valuable for a business for example but is mostly worthless for home use.

You definitely want a separate backup if not 2 if you value your data at all. For the same investment you're way better off using the 2nd drive as an independent backup than setting it up as a mirror in the NAS.

Sort of but I'd debate that statement! ... Using mirrored drives not only keeps things accessible in the case of a drive fail, but it also means that you don't lose your data in the case of a drive fail. In my experience setting up servers for businesses, the primary use of RAID is to preserve data integrity in the case of hardware failure. Rebuilding a server from cloud back-up can take a long time! So being able to do a drive change and have the system operational while that data re-sync's keeps the business running.

In a home scenario, I've actually seen it as being just as critical, because ALL of the family history tends to get saved to the NAS. If you use the 2nd drive as a storage space extension - rather than a mirror - then you risk loosing all of your data [on that drive] if a drive fails!

I do agree however, that there most certainly should be a second level of data back-up going on, whether it be to off-site cloud storage, or just to a separate USB hard drive. If you are going to use the NAS as a single storage array with no mirroring - then I'd definitely recommend off-site cloud back-up, even though it can take a long time to get your data back (depending on your broadband service), if you need to do a restore. There are a lot of on-line cloud back-up services out there including things like Google Drive & Dropbox.

FoxhallGH · Jan 13, 2019

Porky said:
Thanks guys for all that mind blowing information, much appreciated. I’ve got so much research to do before I jump in and buy, it needs to work best for me. It’s getting to the stage now where I’m taking so many photos, putting them through post then my desktop is now getting cluttered with files.

I will only need something for photos, nothing else but it needs to be big enough for future projects. I don’t want to buys something that’s to small, memory wise so making the right choice 1st time is my goal.

Now I’ve got great information from you guys so now it’s just searching the net and doing tons of reading. Keeps me out of trouble I suppose.

Just a basic note ... You do know that you don't have to put files on your Mac's desktop? You can create folders in other places on the Mac (e.g. your 'Home' folder), and then create sub-folders for each set etc. and hide everything tidily away in there.

Kilrah · Jan 13, 2019

You don't understand.

FoxhallGH said:
If you use the 2nd drive as a storage space extension

You don't use it as extension, you put a whole copy of everything that's on the NAS on it.

FoxhallGH said:
or just to a separate USB hard drive

That's exactly what I'm suggesting the 2nd drive to be used as.

Mirroring does nothing good if the NAS itself fails, if a power surge destroys both drives, in case of fire/flood, or even just if you delete a file by mistake. An external drive (preferably 2) that is not permanently connected and preferably stored offsite handles all those cases.

FoxhallGH · Jan 13, 2019

Kilrah said:
You don't understand.

You don't use it as extension, you put a whole copy of everything that's on the NAS on it.

That's exactly what I'm suggesting the 2nd drive to be used as.

Mirroring does nothing good if the NAS itself fails, if a power surge destroys both drives, in case of fire/flood, or even just if you delete a file by mistake. An external drive (preferably 2) that is not permanently connected and preferably stored offsite handles all those cases.

OK - I think I know where you are coming from @Kilrah - BUT - I regularly build servers for customers (I run an IT & Telecom's company), and In my experience, although a power surge may blow fuses or even fry a Power Supply Unit [PSU] in a Server or a NAS, the protection offered by the PSU is such that the hard drives will survive. Replacement of the PSU gets you back up and running pretty quickly. However - we protect the PSU by running the server or NAS from an Uninterruptible Power Supply unit [UPS] that not only gives you a bit of time to close things down in a mains-fail situation, but protects the Server / NAS from over-voltage, under-voltage, and power spikes.

When you say "You don't use it as extension, you put a whole copy of everything that's on the NAS on it." - you are describing Drive Mirroring - so you may as well let the NAS do that for you that gives the benefit of keeping an operational NAS in case of a fail. If you simply copy all your files to the second drive, that drive is not bootable and won't be any use until you re-build the primary drive on the NAS and copy all the data back to it.

Porky · Jan 13, 2019

FoxhallGH said:
Just a basic note ... You do know that you don't have to put files on your Mac's desktop? You can create folders in other places on the Mac (e.g. your 'Home' folder), and then create sub-folders for each set etc. and hide everything tidily away in there.

Hi @FoxhallGH I’ve got them on my desktop until I know exactly what I’m going to do with them. Only temporary at the mo

but yes as per Meta4 advice I’ve started putting them into folders on the PC just to clear my screen up

I know I’m stupid but not that stupid, lol

lol

FoxhallGH · Jan 13, 2019

Porky said:
Hi @FoxhallGH I’ve got them on my desktop until I know exactly what I’m going to do with them. Only temporary at the mo but yes as per Meta4 advice I’ve started putting them into folders on the PC just to clear my screen up I know I’m stupid but not that stupid, lol lol

Wasn't accusing @Porky - but in my profession - I've learnt that you ask the obvious questions first! There is actually a very good reason why that IT help-desk person asks if the computer is plugged in as step 1 ...