My Photo Storage System: Two External Hard Drives
As a professional digital photographer, I work with Adobe Photoshop and with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom every day. After eight years in the business of digital photography, I have shot about 30,000 images. I need a cost-effective, and scalable way, to store all of these images, but I also need a way to access any of these files from either my laptop or from my desktop.
Now there are many different ways to put together your image storage system. After years of experimentation, I have finally found a hardware / software setup that works really well for my needs.
Before we go any further, please let me define a couple of words here. When I use the term “cost-effective” I mean a storage media that is within my budget. External hard drives have got to be one of the world’s greatest bargains. With today’s prices, you can store huge amounts of data on an external disk for pennies per megabyte!
“Scalable” here means that my system can grow over time as I shoot more images without having to open up my computer and fiddle around with any of its internal hardware. My image library currently takes up about 300GB of disk space which fits beautifully on a LaCie d2 Quadra external hard disk.
When I get close to maxing out the free space on my 500GB disk, I will replace it with a 750GB or 1TB disk. Sure, I will have to buy another disk, or as you will see disks plural, but it is an easy process to copy all of my files from the almost full external hard drive over to its replacement. No tools required and minimal downtime for my business.
Last, I had better carefully define the phrase “access all of these images from either my laptop or my desktop.” I need to make it clear here that I can only work on these files using one computer at a time. I don’t mean to imply here that I am working with my images through some sort of network in my office. If I want to use Lightroom or Photoshop on the laptop then I need to physically connect my photo storage external hard drive to the laptop. If, on the other hand, I want to work with my images on the desktop then I must physically connect the external drive to the desktop. The drive can only be connected to one computer at a time.
This is not a “shared or network enabled” disk for two simple reasons. First, Lightroom doesn’t like network disks. It has major issues with network connections and shared files. Second, I only have two hands so I can only work on one computer at a time! Working alone here in my office, there is simply no need for two computers to be reading and writing to the same files simultaneously.
Now that we have cleared these issues up, let me explain that my computer’s internal hard drive holds all of my programs. I am talking here about the boot disk, the main Macintosh hard drive, or the “C:” drive for Windows folks. Program’s like Adobe Photoshop, and Lightroom, run off my main internal hard drive. The boot drive holds my programs, but it does not hold any of my images or my Lightroom Catalog files.
In my system everything photographic, regardless of file format, is stored on my “Photo Library” external disk. As you can see in this screen shot, this disk has just two top-level folders. One folder holds my Lightroom Catalog components, and the other is the parent level folder for all the sub-folders which contain my digital images.
Top Level Folders on My Photo Library External Disk
Again let me point out here that I can easily work with any computer since this one hard drive contains everything photographic. If I need to work on images on the desktop, I just plug this drive into the desktop and away I go. If I need to go out on the road, I grab my laptop and this external drive, and now I have access to any image plus my entire Lightroom Catalog while I am traveling. Since everything photographic is saved to this external disk, nothing ever needs to be “updated” or “synchronized” when I get home.
Hopefully, I have convinced you at this point of the elegance and simplicity of using a single external hard drive for your photo storage. Please don’t stop reading here though, because there is great danger in this setup. When my Photo Library disk breaks, I could lose everything. If you put all of your eggs in one basket and then drop the basket what’s left? See the danger of storing everything on a single external disk is that eventually it will fail!
Thus, part two then of my system is to plan for total disk failure. Sitting right beside my Photo Library disk is a second external hard drive. The second disk can be a different brand and a different size. Identical brands or models is not the important part. What’s essential here is that the second disk is regularly updated so it contains a perfect copy of every file that is on the Photo Library disk. I use backup software to keep these two disk identical. My software makes my backups daily, but the schedule is far less important then the results. What matters is that if my Photo Library disk dies right now that I will lose nothing! The demise of one external hard drive is not going to wipe out my entire business or destroy all of my precious images.
Acronis True Image Home 2010
I don’t care what program you use but please don’t expect any one hard drive, of any brand, to last forever. Plan and prepare daily for disk failure!
Please click here for my recommendations on brands and models of external hard drive. You might also want to read this article that I wrote on the difference between a backup and an archive.
Filed Under: Getting Started • Hardware • Tutorials • Workflow
About the Author: David Marx has an extensive knowledge of digital photography and is an Adobe Certified Expert in Photoshop and in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. David is a talented instructor and his entertaining teaching style works for students of all skill levels. He has been teaching digital photography and image enhancement with Adobe Photoshop since 2002. In addition, David’s sports and landscape images are often featured on the web and in outdoor sports publications.
In 2009, David Marx led digital photography programs for the 
Dear Denise,
You are right that Lightroom edits are nondestructive regardless of your file format. Lightroom edits are stored in the file’s metadata block versus Photoshop type edits that are stored at the pixel level. This is a dorky way of saying “you have nothing to worry about no matter what file format you use in Lightroom.” Now that said, raw files are the most flexible are usually the most advantageous format for your initial capture.
You are right too that you can sort your files by file format. This is easily done either using the “file format” sort order option on the tool bar or through the metadata filter drop down.
–
David
David,
I want to replace my primary external hard drive (contains all of my photos “my lightroom photos” with a new one. After copying the photo folder from one external HD to the new one, how do I ensure Lightroom recognizes the new source (HD)where the photos are stored? Also, somehow the folder “my lightroom photos” was copied as a subfolder where the photos are duplicated. Can I delete the subfolder “my lightoom photos” without any consequences to the main folder “my lightroom photos”? I am working with Windows XP and LR2. Thanks.
Joel
Dear Joel,
Your first question is easier to answer then the second one. After copying your photo folder from one external hard drive to another do the following:
1. Quit (Exit) Lightroom.
2. Safely eject the old external hard drive.
3. Restart Lightroom.
4. In the Folders panel right-click on your top level folder (I believe yours is called “my lightroom folders”) and then click on the “Locate Missing Folder” button. Guide the dialog over to this folder on the new drive and then you are all done. Easy!
I am afraid to give you advice though on deleting the duplicate “my lightroom photos” sub-folder. Without seeing your screen I am afraid that I might do you great harm if some of these files differ from the other copy or if they are in lots of collections. Before you delete them I want to be sure that they are not the most up-to-date version, or the version with the best metadata, or tied into lots of collections. Check all these things and if they are truly useless then delete them. (Personally, I would be sure to back up the whole drive first and my Lightroom Catalog too before this kind of massive change.)
Best of luck,
David
Interesting…
Do you find that this technique has a significant impact on performance?
Best,
Djuna
Dear Djuna,
Performance depends upon the drive’s rotational speed and its connector. With a fast rotational speed (7200 rpm) and a fast connector (eSATA or Firewire 800), an external hard drive can perform as well or better than an internal drive. If you are looking for a top performer consider using a RAID disk like this one: LaCie 301350U 1TB 2big Quadra 2-Disk RAID Hard Drive.
–
David
–
[...] can read all about how essential external hard drives are to my Lightroom workflow here but that’s not the purpose of this post. This post is all about which specific external [...]
[...] My Photo Storage System: Two External Hard Drives [...]
[...] can read all about how external hard drives fit into my workflow here but that’s not the purpose of this post. This post is all about which external drives are [...]
Great info! I’ve been doing the archaic thing of storing all my files on my laptop with a 250GB backing up using ‘Time machine’ but with lots of photos and editing, the space is quickly running out. Next week I get my 2 (both 1tb) back up drives and will be following your system… with my 250 still for the laptop generic backup. Thanks for the links as well!
Pete
Dear Pete,
You are most welcome. Just one tiny semantics detail though. In my system one hard drive is the working disk and the other is its mirror image ie. its backup. I am pointing this out only because you wrote “next week I get my 2 backup drives.” I think you meant to say 2 external hard drives and maybe I am splitting hairs but there is a big difference to me between the primary external storage disk and its backup.
David
Software for backing up to an external hard drive.
I use SyncToy from Microsoft, it is free and easy to use.
See this site for info http://www.pchell.com/support/synctoy.shtml
Thsi site to download http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx
Hi David,
Sorry if I missed this one bit of crucial info. Now that I have 2 drives, one being set up as the ‘home’ for all things photography, the other being it’s back up… How to make the switch so when i open Aperture from my computer (i know, this is a lightroom blog but…) I can have ‘it’ recognize the photos new home in the hard drive.
This set up is obviously quite new to me so thanks for any info and all your patience. much appreciated.
Pete
[...] I use external hard drives to store all of my photos and for my backups. External hard drives are great, but they must be formated properly for before you start filling them up with important information. Here’s a link to an article that I recently wrote on my storage and backup system. [...]
[...] this program. If you need the additional background information then please click here for more on why Lightroom is best used with external drives and then click here for more information on my favorite external [...]
[...] the table from the moment that you first start up this program. They assume that you already know what proper photo storage is and how to backup all of your precious digital [...]
Hi David,
A big thanks for all these articles. They are fantastic. This might be a silly question, but Ill ask anyhow. I understand you two hard-drives. One is your working drive and the other is a back-up of it. When youre on the road. Do you take both of these drives with you? I have two new Western Digital 1TB drives looking to follow your system. But they are both big and bulky and each require a powered wall connection.
So do you take both drives with you? How do you provide redundancy if you had both drives in your hotel for example and they were stolen, or some other type of disaster.
Just curious is all.
Scott
Dear Scott,
This is an excellent question and there is no absolute answer. If I am traveling say by car where space is not and issue, and if I need access to all my files, then I will pack my primary drive in a Pelican Case and take it along. The backup system never leaves the house though. It is too bulky and too risky to have both drives with me.
Since the backup drive is staying home I think its doubly important to burn a copy of each memory card to a CD / DVD. In my routine, I copy the new files into Lightroom then add the most basic metadata– where I shot the pictures and who specifically was photographed. After just a few minutes of data entry I burn all the new files to a disk using Lightroom’s integrated CD / DVD burning software. See Archives and Backup Copies for more details.
If, on the other hand, I need to travel lighter then I take the laptop, some DVDs, and a LaCie Rugged Hard Disk pocket sized external hard drive. When I am traveling light I don’t worry about bringing all of my old work along so I create a new (temporary) catalog on the computer and back it up to the LaCie.
When I get home I import this temporary catalog and all of the new photos into the main photo storage drive and then wipe it off the laptop. Martin Evening has a good tutorial on this technique here.
I hope this helps,
David
[...] their index (the Lightroom Catalog files) and all of their photographs on an external drive. See My Photo Storage System: Two External Hard Drives for more details on my file storage [...]
I have already imported my photos into lightroom3 , but they are on my c-drive.I would like to move to my external drive how should I do this?
Dear David,
Two methods:
1. See our article and video tutorial on Moving Folders from within Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. This method is a little cumbersome and tedious but not very difficult.
2. If all of your photos and folders full of images live inside a single top-level parent folder you could add this folder to Lightroom using the right click “Add Parent Folder” button in the Folders Panel. Once added you could quit Lightroom move this folder over to the other drive and then remove it from your internal hard drive. When you restart Lightroom it will tell you that all your files are missing but all you need to do is right-click again on the parent folder’s name in the Folder Panel and reconnect it using the Locate Missing Folder button.
–
David
Hi David,
I’m just returning to photography as a hobby and have never used Lightroom before. I am really glad I found this site. The information has been very educational!
I’m curious about using an external drive as your primary photo drive. Wouldn’t an internal drive always be faster than an external? My laptop (Windows 7) has the internal drive partitioned, one for the OS and the other I store my music files on. I was going to store my photos on this drive. I have two external drives, both USB 2.0. It just seems that read/write time would be faster on the internal and best to use the external drives as backup along with a copy to optical disk.
Your thoughts appreciated.
Kent,
Since your internal drive is partitioned, it is stilly, functionally, a single drive. If that drive fails, all data will be lost (on both partitions). When reading from or writing to one partition, read/write speeds to the other partition will be invariably affected.
I’ve not found a good reason to partition drives, though I’m certain there are many who are smarter than I who do have good reason to do so.
Take a moment to read this comment I left on the article Recommended External Hard Drives. In that comment, I acknowledge that there are some speed gains to be had by using internal drives and “hacking” drive setups to get faster read/write speeds. My conclusion, however, is that few photographers will notice the difference.
My final advice is to use external drives to store your photos (particularly on a laptop which typically only has room for one physical internal drive). Those external drives should be fast (7200 RPM) and connected via a fast connection (FireWire 800 for those using Mac, FireWire 400 for those on Windows…eSATA if you have the capability).
Best of luck,
Scott
Scott,
Thank you for the reply. I read your other comment and that helped explain things. I’ll have to look for an eSATA drive. I do have a FireWire port, but it is one of the small ones.
Kent,
You’ll get decent performance with the FireWire 400 connection (the small one on your laptop). An eSATA drive would require an eSATA connection…something that is not built into most laptops yet.
-Scott
bad advice!
just tried this with LR 3 and completely didn’t work!
Lux,
Sorry to hear you had trouble. I assure you that “it” works. Perhaps you could be more specific with your issues and we could help out.
-Scott
Hi, David. This is a great resource — thank you. Quick question, do you prefer CCC to Time Machine? If so, why.
So what happens if you are on the road and in the hotel room at night the external drive goes south? You don’t have anything on your laptop, but your client in NY is screaming for those shots you took on Monday before you got on the plane. You don’t have time to wait for your assistant to fedex the backup DVD’s, anyway you have a big shoot in Chicago tomorrow and couldn’t deal with it anyway….If you are a pro, you know this scenario is not implausible.
Am I missing something here? Seems like you would be SOL, not only for the tight ad schedule of your NY client, but also for all the photos of the swimsuit models you shot today in Aruba.
hi david, excellent article!
i have been using lightroom since 1.0 and have about 20000 pics in the folder (one single folder that lightroom created in my mac HD). i have been backing up all the pics into an external HD for several years. but, as you said, my HD is now filling up and almost full.
since i am really not very computer literate, can you give me some details on the following?
1. how to “correctly” move the pics and catalog from the HD to a brand new external HD?
2. what do i need to verify before i delete the files from the mac HD? specifically, what files do i delete to reclaim the files?
3. since all my pics are in the mac HD, i could only use my desktop to access lightroom. but with the external HD route, i would be able to use my macbook pro to edit some of the pics as well. how can i set up lightroom on my imac and macbook pro so that i can use both to edit my pics (esp while i am away)? are there anything i need to watch out for? does lightroom need to “reconfigure” every time i plug in the external HD?
any information on the above
sorry, i accidentally pressed the submit button before i finished typing the last word… THANKS!!!!
Dear Bryan,
1. There are lots of ways to move both your catalog and your images from drive to drive. We have video tutorials on how to move files from your internal drive to a new Lightroom catalog on your external here. We also have a video on how to move your catalog from an internal disk to external disk here. If your files were already on an external disk then I would suggest using Carbon Copy Cloner to copy everything from the little drive to the bigger one.
2. I would verify that all of your photos are on the new external and then I would make a complete backup of this disk to another external before I delete anything. I like the idea that you always have two copies of any file on two separate hard drives. See http://thelightroomlab.com/2010/03/backing-up-a-mac-with-carbon-copy-cloner/ for more on how i backup one external drive to another.
3. Once your catalog and your images are on the external you can start to work with the same catalog on both computers. The catch though is that you can only work with one machine at a time since the drive must be connected to that computer. Lightroom is not a network ready program and it does not allow multiple machines to access the same database at the same time. I think this may wreck your plans to “edit your pics while you are away” but it makes it really simple to pick up where you left off when moving from machine to machine. The only thing you need to configure is the preference switch that tells Lightroom what catalog to load on startup. You will want to tell Lightroom to always load the catalog on the external drive as its default. See http://thelightroomlab.com/2010/06/getting-started-right-adobe-photoshop-lightroom-3-critical-preference-menus/ for more details on this switch and on the automatically write to xmp option.
Thanks to you for the good questions.
–
David
Dear Chris Jones,
All sorts of disaster scenarios are possible. A clever professional might set themselves up with an online backup system like Amazon s3, MobileMe (iDisk), or even a VPN or remote desktop connection to their home computer. Assuming that the files your client wants exist somewhere and that you can access this machine via the web then there is hope. Another option would be to upload the raw files to a site like Photoshelter which allows for password protected client access. Now your client could download the files themselves even while you are on the plane to Aruba.
All things are possible and their are no guarantees. The only guaranteed outcome is that your hard drive will someday fail. If, as the ASMP, recommends you maintain three copies of every file on two different types of media with one copy off-site you increase your odds but even then there are no guarantees. In your scenario I think a third copy that we can access online is the best possible option.
–
David
david, thanks for the quick reply. as a follow up question… i am not trying to connect the external HD simultaneously (so not via a network?) but what i am trying to do is to say, i have both the external HDs connected to my imac at home but occasionally, when i travel, i take my macbook pro with me, and if i take one of the external HD with me, connect it my macbook pro, and download some of the new pics into the external HD, when i return home and connect the external HD back to the imac, would it cause any prob? the LR3 in imac should be pointing to the same catelog BUT some new pics has been added using another computer with its installed LR3 also points to the same catalog. is it possible to do that?
also, thanks for the tips on CCC. when you say daisy-chain, do you mean i can use firewire to connect like this: ext-ext-imac, instead of the obvious ext-imac-ext? i would assume imac has to be on for CCC to run, right? would the process slow down the computer a lot (if say, i am editing word documents at the same time)?
i hope i am making sense out of the first question. many thanks for your expert advice!
Scott,
If you are looking for an eSATA in a laptop the Dell 1558 laptop [Although it is not a MAC :< )] I recently purchased does have an eSATA connection.
Jack
Hi David,
I have taken your advice and set up Lighroom 3 with the use of 2 external hard drives (2.0 Lacie USB)
I had already set up LR…and then I saw your video and I now have a LR catalogue on my internal drive and my first external (storage drive)but have instructed LR to always use the first external drive.
So far so good I hope….but I have two main questions for you please.
1.) I ticked the back up LR pictures on import box and I intend to store these on external drive no 2. (in addition to the pictures being put in a ‘my lightroom pictures’ folder on hard drive no 1). However, with my first catalogue ‘Bulgaria’ it just scattered them in there individually. Shoud I have manually set up a separate folder called ‘Bulgaria’ on the second external hard drive. And would I need to do this each time I import new pictures into lightroom – ie create a file for them in hard drive no 2. (I thought by ticking the back up pics on import box this would be done automatically – but I think I may have been mistaken.Please advise.
2.) Could you please tell me how to back up my catalogue (as opposed to my pictures) as I find this part of housekeeping a bit confusing.
Thanks,
Phil