Storage solutions that do work....

  Ok, a couple of weeks ago I pointed out my somewhat disappointing experience with my WD MyCloud Drive, and promised to talk about some storage solutions that do work, so I figure it's finally time to deliver, so here are the functional solutions I use on a daily basis,

  For speed of workflow, I do all my editing on the 1 TB internal solid state drive I added to my macbook a while back. This is way faster than the old style internal disk drive I replaced. My personal images remain on the hard drive once they are edited and done, my professional work is moved off that drive to free up storage space once it's done.

  My primary hard drive is backed up two ways. First is a bomb proof on site drive. I like having a local backup for speed and easy access, but I wanted something survivable and very durable. After a bit of searching, I wound up going with an IO Safe Solo  3GB drive. Yeah, it's a bit bigger than my main drive, but that lets me keep multiple backups on it. The IO Safe drive is basically a hard drive built inside of a fire/flood proof safe. It is large, it is heavy, and it has an all metal case that is designed to be either locked to something via a (not inlcuded) cable lock or even bolted to something in your work space. I (luckily) have not had occasion to test either the fire or the flood resistance of this drive, but as a drive it's reasonably fast and it has functioned without any hitches or errors for several years now. I think I got my first one in 2013 sometime.

   I am completely paranoid, so for my personal images I also wanted an off site backup. Pics of my kids and family are more important than anything else. Worst case, if I lose a client's shots, I have insurance for that. But insurance won't return my family's memories. (I do back the hell out of my client shots too, but I don't worry about keeping those around for decades. Once delivered to the client, I figure that mostly becomes their responsibility, although I will keep their images for as long as I can. I'll talk more about that later, I haven't had to delete any yet and shouldn't for any time soon.) On the other hand, I have some pics in my personal collection that I will enjoy but are never intended for public presentation, so I was also very concerned with security when looking at off site options. I finally settled on SpiderOak. Again, I have not had a catastrophic failure that required me to really test the service, but it's worked for small file recovery. The main advantage of the service it privacy. They make a point of warning you that if lose your password, you're pretty much screwed, they can't help you. I like that. I'm sure the NSA or a really dedicated hacker could get to my stuff eventually, but for casual purposes, as long as I am a harder target than the next guy, my data is probably safe. So Spideroak works for me. It's pretty much seamless, does everything real time in the background. The only downsides are that it is really, really slow if you need to access anything, between network access and encrypt/decrypt times it takes a while to get to any of your stored data. It's also more expensive than other data storage options. I'm willing to trade that for security since it's not my primary backup. The one other random issue with the service is that it will NEVER delete any of your data on its' own. If you delete a file off your system, SpiderOak will move it to a "deleted files" bin. So your storage on their network can get larger than what is on your HD, if you want to clear it you will have to do it manually. This can be a lifesaver, but when you have to free up the space it takes a while, because if I didn't mention it, the service is slow. But again, secure, encrypted off site storage that isn't a primary or working drive, it's worth it to me even with the price and speed issues.

  That's the personal side. Now on to professional work. As already mentioned, while an initial set of images is being worked, it resides on my internal drive, and immediately upon import is backed up onto the same IOsafe that mirrors my internal drive. Once images are complete, then things differ. The finished, edited images are uploaded to my web site, which is hosted by PhotoShelter. Photoshelter offers web site design, sales back end, and also doubles as online storage. So images I have chosen and worked up for clients are backed up as soon as I upload them to my web page. I upload the full resolution TIFF edits. As for raw files and edited images on my internal drive, once a set is finished I move the entire folder (via lightroom) onto an external drive. Since I may still need to go back and rework these images, and it is my primary storage for work images, I wanted something that was still fast, so I went with a LaCie d2 Quadra 4TB Firewire drive. It's 7200rmp, looks good sitting on my desk, and isn't really too much slower than the internal SSD when working with photoshop or LR. This is mirrored / backed up on another IOSafe Solo 4TB disaster resistant drive. I don't worry about the off site storage, because for the main part, it's covered by photoshelter, as I already mentioned.

   That's the bulk of it. I do have one final drive, a Western Digital 4TB mybook USB 3.0 drive. This one serves double duty. It is primarily my scratch drive. I don't import every image I shoot into LR for further processing. The images I do import get the full backup treatment. But, since I am completely paraoid and storage is cheap, I move the images that I don't think are keepers onto this scratch drive where they will remain, just in case, until the drive fills up and I have to start deleting the earliest files to make room for more. Because you never know. that image I hated might be one the model remembered taking and really wanted for whatever reason. Or someone could wind up famous one day. Or whatever. I know, I am just really a digital hoarder. I also use this drive as a generic working space for video I am playing with, or other stuff that isn't vital and just takes up too much space for my internal drive but I want to work with at some point.

  That's it for now. As my needs evolve I am sure I will change things and / or add to this setup, but it's what works for me for now. If I ever need to test the disaster resistance of the IoSafe Drives, I will update you on how that works, but honestly, I hope I never have to get personal experience, until then, I will just rely on reviews like this...  looks pretty reliable to me.

  So there you have it, some storage solutions that I am fairly happy with.