WD my book duo RAID system

vdotmatrixvdotmatrix Registered Users Posts: 343 Major grins

I need a home for all my stuff and i started shooting video with my 5DM4.

Iwant an alternative to filling up my hard drive want to know if anyone works directly of an external HD .

I want to work on images in photoshop and lightroom from and external HD or raid.

Is this how people use a raid or an external HD.

Thanks

Comments

  • kdogkdog Administrators Posts: 11,680 moderator
    edited November 20, 2018

    I use external drives for all my stills and video, 16TB worth. Works great. The external drives are all 7200 RPM magnetic drives in Startech enclosures and connected via USB3 ports. All the external drives are backed up regularly with an incremental backup program. Two backup copies, one kept on-site and one in a safety deposit box (I rotate those copies regularly). I choose NOT to use RAID. I have no performance issues and I'm happy with my backup strategy so nothing to be gained by the extra complication of using RAID.

    If you're going to use external magnetic hard drives, you should use an SSD for your system and applications, LR catalog, and Adobe scratch areas. That's the key to good performance with Adobe s/w.

  • RichardRichard Administrators, Vanilla Admin Posts: 19,893 moderator

    I use two external WD drives, but I haven't bothered with RAID either. I do a nightly incremental backup to one of the drives for all my current stuff. Periodically, I move completed work to an archive on an external drive, then synch the drive to a second one. I also make two archival copies of my LR catalog at the same time. That means that at any given time, I have two copies of everything that matters. All my processing is done on a local SSD, which is far faster than external spinning platters. The external drives are only for storage.

  • ziggy53ziggy53 Super Moderators Posts: 23,764 moderator
    edited November 20, 2018

    I use 2 - external (spinning) hard drives for working storage and final output:

    • 1 - USB
    • 1 - E-SATA

    It's important to me that I use two different external connection/communication technologies (USB and E-SATA) for critical work because a single controller may fail without warning.

    In the machine (local) I have a dual-drive C: (striped array, RAID 0) and a conventional spinning \D: drive. For paying work the \D: drive was also used as a primary drive, so paying work was distributed to Internal SATA \D:, External USB E: and External E-SATA J:. This means that three different technologies, SATA, USB and E-SATA would have to fail before I would lose work. (1- Yes, I know that the internal SATA controller is utilized first for all the other connections to later utilize.) (2- I'm now fully retired, hence the past-tense "paying work was ...".)

    JPG finals are uploaded to SmugMug.

    The striped C: array is the most vulnerable part of the new system, so my older tower computer with the same software is next to the newer computer and I can get back to business within minutes if needed.

    Both of my 'work' computers are also detached from the Internet for security, except for critical updates, and then I use a dedicated hot-spot. A separate laptop is used for most Internet communication and research, but a Linux (Ubuntu, Mint, Cinnamon) desktop is also used for Internet and occasional still image processing. (RAWTherapee and DarkTable)

    ziggy53
    Moderator of the Cameras and Accessories forums
  • kdogkdog Administrators Posts: 11,680 moderator

    @Richard said:
    All my processing is done on a local SSD, which is far faster than external spinning platters. The external drives are only for storage.

    With my OS, apps, LR catalog and Adobe caches all on SSD drives, I've tested and detected no difference in performance with my images on SSD versus rotating disks. Adobe's caching is apparently that good, and it saves me a ton of time in not having to copy my shoots between drives for different purposes.

  • RichardRichard Administrators, Vanilla Admin Posts: 19,893 moderator
    edited November 21, 2018

    @kdog said:

    @Richard said:
    All my processing is done on a local SSD, which is far faster than external spinning platters. The external drives are only for storage.

    With my OS, apps, LR catalog and Adobe caches all on SSD drives, I've tested and detected no difference in performance with my images on SSD versus rotating disks. Adobe's caching is apparently that good, and it saves me a ton of time in not having to copy my shoots between drives for different purposes.

    Hmm...interesting. I don't understand how the initial copy from the card can be as fast to a slower disk. Or a batch export of jpgs. The only thing that occurs to me is that newer versions of LR might work differently from the v6 that I'm still using. On mine, import is done in two sequential phases, first copy from the card source, then create create the previews. Since the latter phase usually takes longer, pipelining them to proceed in parallel might reduce the penalty of disk writes to the external drive. Dunno.

  • kdogkdog Administrators Posts: 11,680 moderator

    @Richard said:
    Hmm...interesting. I don't understand how the initial copy from the card can be as fast to a slower disk. Or a batch export of jpgs.

    Oh, it's probably not as fast for those operations, but still OK for me. What I care about are scanning through the pictures and initial edits for preparing proofs galleries from event shoots that typically have 2,000 to 3,000 photos. That's where I'm not seeing any difference between SSD and HDD's using my scheme (SSD for catalog and raw cache).

  • RichardRichard Administrators, Vanilla Admin Posts: 19,893 moderator
    edited November 21, 2018

    OK, that makes sense. Once the previews are in cache, there would be no difference in culling or LR edits.

  • bryanj87bryanj87 Registered Users Posts: 859 Major grins

    I use a WD 6TB RAID, and I work off of it. It is a bit slow importing with Lightroom, but the peace of mind I get from the RAID makes up for it. At some point, I will put an SSD in my workstation, import to that and then dump it to the WD RAID.

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