I am thinking of buying 2 external hard drives for storing my masters, one for the main and the other for backup. Right now I have one 300g external and one 250g internal. The external has a partition for my scratch disk. Those I use for all photos, raw, converted, and master. With the two new, thinking 300g each, I can store the master photos with layers. This will save space on my current drives. My current disks can be used for raw. The converted files will be temporary. My structure now is that I have folders named "Raw" "Converted" "Master" I have some folders "sized" for ones that I have sized for prints, for web etc. My question is, what are some of your ideas on size of the drives? you storage structure? your recommendations? The brand you use? My external is Western Digital.Thanks in advance.
I suggest you go with the largest you can afford. 500gb drives are at a very good mb/$ ratio now (probably better than smaller ones). 750gb drives are starting to become more common too.
Not sure why you'd want to keep converted files. The converted file should be the background layer for your master file.
I am thinking along the same lines concerning the converted images. From now on I am just going to keep the converted images until I process them into the master image. I am also thinking about the 500gb. Is it best to keep the raw and master files on a separate disks? Thanks.
John
Posted by Les Barstow on November 8, 2006 at 8:21 PM
John,
I keep two copies of all my images. While they're still active, I keep them on two internal hard drives. Eventually, one of the internal copies goes away and I burn a "permanent" DVD copy. But I don't see much of a need to keep your RAW and "master" files on two different drives if you do this. If you're not keeping two complete copies, then yes, keeping RAW and "master" files on two different disks is a Good Idea.
Discussion
4 repliesJohn
Not sure why you'd want to keep converted files. The converted file should be the background layer for your master file.
Guy
I am thinking along the same lines concerning the converted images. From now on I am just going to keep the converted images until I process them into the master image. I am also thinking about the 500gb. Is it best to keep the raw and master files on a separate disks? Thanks.
John
I keep two copies of all my images. While they're still active, I keep them on two internal hard drives. Eventually, one of the internal copies goes away and I burn a "permanent" DVD copy. But I don't see much of a need to keep your RAW and "master" files on two different drives if you do this. If you're not keeping two complete copies, then yes, keeping RAW and "master" files on two different disks is a Good Idea.
Thanks, that makes a lot of sense of keeping having two copies.
John