Good ideas for storing digital image files?

Hardware
21

I use an external RAID enclosure set up on RAID10, with 4x 3TB drives, giving me 6TB of redundant storage. In addition to this I backup everything in the cloud periodically, giving me protection in case anything happens to my RAID enclosure (fire, theft, etc).

The RAID enclosure is always connected to my computer, and is part of my library in darktable, so I always have access to my full archive of images. Sometimes I will take photos from my most recent trip/outing/session and store them on my internal SSD to edit. They remain there, un-backed-up, for a week or so while doing initial culling and editing, before transferring to the RAID setup and backing up in the cloud. Admittedly, this subjects me to some risk should anything happen to my SSD during that week or so, but that’s a risk I personally am OK with (if I were a professional and had images for clients than I most definitely would send them straight to a redundant setup and backup in the cloud at first possible opportunity).

Here is a great article further explaining the different possible RAID setups

Additionally, it is worth noting that certain RAID types (5 and 6) essentially have a limitation on how much capacity they can protect. This is due to the capacity of the individual drives used, and the URE rate of the modern HDDs. See here for further reading:

22

I am 100% sure: the fog is better than the cloud …

Sursum corda!

23

I process on a laptop with limited HDD space. When done, the finished JPEG files go to flicker and/or Google photos for the purpose of sharing and last resort cloud backup. When a full month has been processed everything goes to a desktop PC with lots of HDD space. Both PCs are backed up constantly by a third one. All of these drives are thus in constant use and not really an archive but its ok for me.

24

I ended up buying a 6TB from them!

25

I like to run GitHub - ambv/bitrot: Detects bit rotten files on the hard drive to save your precious photo and music collection from slow decay. once in a while, it let’s me very easily verify that the files are actually all readable.

26

I will check that out today!