Suggestions About More Storage Options Wanted

[mobilehomer]

Another option is to invest in a number of sd cards. 512 gb, high quality. These are reliable and easy to store. Yes, they occasionally fail, but not very often.

 

[Lister]

Removable hard drives are convenient, but, for Windows users at least, they have one problem you need to be aware of. Each time you remove a drive and insert another one Windows reassigns the Drive Labels. Drive "F:" might become Drive "M:", for example. If other programs aren't aware of these changes, important links are broken. Bad news if you don't know where to find those files.

No idea if MacOS does this.

 

[Robert Prior]

Removable hard drives are convenient, but, for Windows users at least, they have one problem you need to be aware of. Each time you remove a drive and insert another one Windows reassigns the Drive Labels. Drive "F:" might become Drive "M:", for example. If other programs aren't aware of these changes, important links are broken. Bad news if you don't know where to find those files.

No idea if MacOS does this.

Macs don't have drive letters. Each drive has a name, which you pick when you format it and can change from the Finder. This name is retained when the drive is disconnected.

My Aperture library, for example, resides on an external drive very unimaginatively named "Aperture Library". It is generally only connected while I'm actively working on pictures (which is a minority of the time).

 

[BobaFut]

Removable hard drives are convenient, but, for Windows users at least, they have one problem you need to be aware of. Each time you remove a drive and insert another one Windows reassigns the Drive Labels. Drive "F:" might become Drive "M:", for example. If other programs aren't aware of these changes, important links are broken. Bad news if you don't know where to find those files.

No idea if MacOS does this.

Depends on how you set them up. My enclosed backup drives are W and X and stay that way every time I plug them in. My other enclosed temporary drive is always G. Thumb drives and SD cards see some variation (usually F or I), but are never given the same drive letter as my enclosed drives.

 

[mobilehomer]

You can name drives in Windows also.

 

[Grandpa]

You can name drives in Windows also.

If memory serves correctly, you can also assign drive letters in Windows.

 

[rgarjr]

get a NAS, Synology or QNAP.

 

[Aerophile]

To cut to the chase...

• Media (drives) for storing data are dirt cheap, and getting cheaper every day.
• If you care about your data (images, videos, whatever) back them up regularly (see below). Because...
• All drives WILL fail, eventually. Yes, all of them. Count on it.
• Drives with spinning disks inside (non-SSD drives) generally fail more often, more quickly, are way more prone to damage from casual bumps, and are much cheaper than SSD drives (the old saw about "you get what you pay for" is often/usually true when it comes to drives of any kind).
• SSD drives do fail, but are much more "bulletproof", or at least more "forgiving" (less prone to failure due to common abuse) than non-SSD drives (they're also more expensive).
• For serious photographers, I believe the consensus for backup strategy seems to be that you need three independent backups to really cover your bases. One of those backups needs to be offsite (if all you backups are in the same location, what happens if your house or office burns down or is wrecked in a hurricane/earthquake or other disaster? Don't laugh, it happens).
• You need two onsite backups. Two because one of them may (will) fail; both of them failing at the same time is extremely unlikely; but because Disasters Happen, you also need a third backup that's located somewhere else. That "third" backup could be an online/cloud service, or in theory could be a removable physical device that is regularly taken elsewhere...the problem with that (removable device to go elsewhere) is that most people are not diligent enough to do that task as often as needed. That's why...
• All your backups should be automated, and frequent. You have better/more important things to do than backup your files (or, god forbid, remove a drive and take it someplace safe offsite). Set up whatever backup frequency is appropriate for you (depends on how much/how often you shoot, how important your stuff is). Set it and forget it (though do check to be sure your backups are happening and are being managed correctly!). The day WILL come when this saves your bacon.

Personally, I have a big stack of large (8-16 TB) old-school external, spinning hard disk drives that have 25 years of photos (mostly travel photos, and more recently now drone photos and videos, too) stored on them. I always preserve every single original, untouched file; if I've worked on the file in Photoshop, Lightroom, Premier, etc., then those files are saved separartely (the originals are left unprocessed). Each of those drives is a "pair", where once a week, the contents of one drive gets "cloned" to a second drive that backs it up (I use Carbon Copy Cloner, an excellent backup app for Macs). My primary computers (two Macs) have external SSD drives (4 TB each, to match the size of the computer's internal/boot drives). My Windows computer (which I don't use much, and has little that's really critical on it) also is backed up to a pair of external hard drives.

My backups run once a week (that's the right cadence for me, yours might be different). SOME (not all) also gets backed up to online/cloud services (Backblaze and others). I'm more selective about stuff getting backed up to online/cloud services (I don't backup financial/passwords/highly sensitive things to anyone else's computers...because, everything "out there" that's owned by somebody else gets hacked eventually. Those selective/sensitive things do get backed up to my phone). Each app/service reports the status of the last backup (ie, if any backup failed or had issues, I get a notification; if all backups go smoothly, no notification).

Having a drive go bad on you is inevitable, so you should plan on it happening, because it will. If you don't care about losing files, then you don't need to backup. If there's anything you would really hate to lose, then you should have a solid plan in place, because no drive lasts forever, and when one goes, IME it always seems to have something on it you really want.

That's is how I approach backups. It works for me. YMMV. Good luck.

 

[LoudThunder]

Yes, they occasionally fail, but not very often.

If you have a MicroSD Memory Card fail, it might still be under warranty. Some manufactures issue 1-year, some 5-years, and at least one issues a 10-year warranty.

I had a Samsung card fail. It came with my Mini 2 when I bought it from Costco and it failed after about 6-months. I wrote them, provided a copy of the receipt for the drone and the advertisement showing the MicroSD Card was part of the deal. They replaced it in one week.

I know, you very well might have lost some very precious photos or videos, but it is at least a small comfort that the MicroSD memory card is not just trash.

Of course, the thorny issues are that you still have to have the purchase receipt and it still has to be under warranty…

Good Luck!

 

[LoudThunder]

Depends on how you set them up. My enclosed backup drives are W and X and stay that way every time I plug them in.

For Personal Computers running Windows… You do realize that no matter what drive you are using or viewing, including thumb drives, Cursers, Memory Cards (all types…), installed hard drive, separate volumes, no matter what, even using a MicroSD Card with an adapter from your drone can have a separate, user friendly name.

When the drive is installed in your PC, Right Click on the drive and this window will pop up and you can provide a user friendly name.

In the attachment, I'm named my L: Drive "Back Ups 2021" and I've done this even for my thumb drives and all my Memory Cards.

 

[joehandersson]

I'm quickly running out of storage space like many Speed Test of you can understand. I still have time but I can see the end approaching to my 1tb SSD limit.. lol. These videos sure take up a lot of space.

So, here's where I'm at: I originally had/have a Personal MS 365 subscription which allows me another single 1 tb of storage. The problem is that it is a "back up" which is copying my pics and vids that I already have. So, now both the OneDrive storage and my local pc storage fill up at the same time basically. I DO have an older Samsung Portable SSD T5 1tb external drive but its several years old. Its solid and healthy, though.

For just pennies more I can upgrade my Personal OneDrive subscription to a family plan which (amazingly) allows SIX (6) tbs of storage! Is this a viable option? It seems super cheap to purchasing hardware storage drives. OneDrive has never lost files that I know of in over a decade so what's the negative here, people?

Should I rely on OneDrive online storage or buy hardware every (x) amount of years for fear of failure?

Thank you so much for your suggestions.

Buying a few large hard drives is a one time expense I can live with.

 

[skycam509]

I picked one of these 8TB external drives on sale at Costco for around $120, if I remember correctly. The next time they went on sale, I bought another one to use as a backup for the first one. They have worked great. I also store all my finished photos on my Google drive since the jpg's don't take up much space.

https://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Backup-Desktop-Recovery-Services/dp/B07KFG2ZYN/ref=sr_1_4?gclid=Cj0KCQjwnvOaBhDTARIsAJf8eVM4OwsktJdyzaPk7tiTJCt8wFjEOkpTW1LmFPkMb1xx615rJF_dE7waAhPXEALw_wcB&hvadid=177260206303&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=9033784&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=e&hvrand=1266539736720091977&hvtargid=kwd-44194701184&hydadcr=18063_9813246&keywords=seagate+8tb+external+hard+drive&qid=1667061610&qu=eyJxc2MiOiIzLjM1IiwicXNhIjoiMi45NiIsInFzcCI6IjIuMzgifQ%3D%3D&sr=8-4

I also use a Sandisk Extreme 1TB SSD external drive as my "working drive." I can plug it into my laptop or iPad's USB C port and work on photos and video straight off the drive. I try to always have my files saved in 2 places - on the drone's data card and the SSD at first, then when I upload from the SSD to the 8TB storage drive, I delete them from the drone's data card. Once they are on the storage 8TB and the backup 8TB, I can remove them from the SSD if I'm running out of room.

 

[devellis]

Although it's an expensive solution, I've opted for a Synology NAS (network attached storage) system. In addition to drone footage, I shoot ground-based video at resolutions as high as 6K in raw format. Those files are huge! I like keeping the raw files even after I've edited and rendered the footage to a less cumbersome format. I also have decades worth of photos and slides that I've scanned and now store in electronic form. Then there are hundreds (actually, probably more than a thousand in total) of LPs and CDs that I've digitized. I can store everything in high quality codecs without worrying about space. And everything is accessible from anywhere on my home network, either throug Plex for viewing/listening or directly for editing. I also have all my text documents on the NAS so that I can work on anything from any computer in the house with direct access and storage to a central location.

The Synology units come in a variety of sizes and you can populate them with a single or multiple hard drives of your chosen capacity. It's a flexible long-term solution. You can also run a Plex server on some models of the NAS and use that to stream your videos to any device in the house or even anywhere on the net if you choose. Actually, my drone videos are probably the smallest category of content on the NAS at this point but I hope to add more as my skills improve and I use my drone more to capture video.

On my WIndoes computers, I can mount each drive as a shared folder on every computer and assign a drive letter to each. It's as convenient to access as any drive attached directly to a computer.

There's a little bit of a learning curve but nothing horrendous and there are many YouTube videos that explain it all. Bitibg the bullet was a bit painful intially but in the long run, it's a solution I'm glad to have.