I'm going divide my time between two places, with about 6-8 months in Austria and 4-6 months in Spain. I'd like to have access to all my digital images (about 250,000 at the moment) in both places and have everything in sync at all times.
Currently, the main setup is a Mac Studio in Austria, with the main LR catalog files internally (and backed up to two external drives and Backblaze) and the actual images on an external drive, backed up to another external drive and to BackBlaze.
In Spain, I would have my MacBook Air with me.
So far, I've just carried portable drives with me and copied all my existing images to another external drive in Spain, but once I'm going to spend more time there, I don't think that's going to work without missing files on one place or another.
Since I have high-speed internet in both places, I'm wondering if a NAS setup could work. I guess I would install the setup in Vienna and then tap into it from Spain and whatever I produce in Spain would be added to the setup in Vienna.
For those who are more technically inclined than I am, is this a doable solution? What setup can you recommend? What are the risks involved in this system?
As said above even with fast internet it will be slow. I think your primary copy with you and an archive copy left behind at each location is your best bet. How much data are we talking about; will 16TB cover it?
Slow. Assuming your files are typical, modern photo JPGs.
You may be better served lessening the number of links and technologies involved... putting all your files into a cloud service would speed up retrieval. And given the number of services that offer a small amount of free storage such as Google, you can easily test performance without purchasing and setting up a NAS.
If you want to test a local storage solution, you can set up one of your home PCs with a drive exposed to the internet and try accessing from another location... I think you will find home-based storage way slower access than cloud storage.
Jack Flesher wrote:
As said above even with fast internet it will be slow. I think your primary copy with you and an archive copy left behind at each location is your best bet. How much data are we talking about; will 16TB cover it?
Thanks for the replies. So, it seems people are saying I should carry my drives.
So, like now, the images on one external drive (with back up at each place) and then another external drive for my LR catalogs. Not really fond of the latter option.
johnvanr wrote:
About half that at the moment, but growing fast.
16 TB spinning drives and USB3 containers are cheap. Three of them will serve you. The working drive with you at both locations and backed up to the reserve left at each location. You now have redundancy everywhere and double redundancy for the archive you leave behind. Next, assuming you want better I/O speed while working than the spinners provide, get a 2 or 4TB NVME in a TB enclosure. You now have triple redundancy for current images and fast I/O while working on them. Anything older you need to rework, pull it into the NVME. Simple, easy to transport and faster than NAS or cloud.
All good ideas - I would keep the files and catalog with me wherever you will be. Use a NAS at the home location for backup from whatever location you will be at. The NAS and network speed is certainly good enough for backup. Having a third backup to a cloud based server is prudent but not always necessary. I use a Synology NAS and Backblaze for cloud storage. The Synology is relatively easy to set up and if you back up to the cloud from the PC than Backblaze is cheaper than almost any other solution.
Isn’t it just this situation that is served by Lightroom Mobile? Adobe has spent years optimizing this and making sure that everything is secure. Wouldn’t it be pretty easy to keep a Thunderbolt SSD local to your Air and a more sophisticated backup system in Austria. I use a large Synology drive with a dual fault drive protection and that backs up to another Synology drive with a single fault drive system. Of course, this assumes that you will have a fast/secure/dependable internet provider in Spain. While in Spain you would be relying on the Cloud to backup your system drive/SSD. I assume that you won’t need to have the remote system always in sync in that this can be done in a short amount of time once you return. Also, you now have Smart Previews in Lightroom. After initially working on files, I’ve started to move my images off of my local SSD and moving them to my Synology. Should I need to do more work on the file, Smart Previews work great.
bwcolor wrote:
Isn’t it just this situation that is served by Lightroom Mobile? Adobe has spent years optimizing this and making sure that everything is secure. Wouldn’t it be pretty easy to keep a Thunderbolt SSD local to your Air and a more sophisticated backup system in Austria. I use a large Synology drive with a dual fault drive protection and that backs up to another Synology drive with a single fault drive system. Of course, this assumes that you will have a fast/secure/dependable internet provider in Spain. While in Spain you would be relying on the Cloud to backup your system drive/SSD. I assume that you won’t need to have the remote system always in sync in that this can be done in a short amount of time once you return. Also, you now have Smart Previews in Lightroom. After initially working on files, I’ve started to move my images off of my local SSD and moving them to my Synology. Should I need to do more work on the file, Smart Previews work great....Show more →
I've never really gotten comfortable with Lightroom Mobile. Plus, the moment you start adding TBs to any cloud system (except for Backblaze), things get crazy expensive.
I don't know if this approach will work for you, but just in case let me tell you what I do.
I use LrC on both my MBP and Mac Studio. I keep all my images on external, portable SSDs. These are currently 4TB SSDs. My most recent images, e.g. from 2020 to current are on one SSD (let's call this SSD A) which has a combined USB C/Thunderbolt 3 interface. That SSD also has my LrC catalog. My older images which I access less regularly all fit on another 4TB SSD (let's call this SSD B).
Whenever I travel with my MBP I just plug in SSD A or SSD A and SSD B if I need older images and do my work. If I'm working at home on the Studio, I just plug in the drive(s) in that machine. Everything is always in sync, and I can easily carry the small bus powered SSDs. I've been using this solution for several years now.
Here's a few more details that might be helpful if you wanted to try this route. My external SSDs are encrypted so if I were to lose one nobody could get the images (not that they would want them). LrC is configured to back up my catalog on the local computer's internal drive. So I have LrC backups on each computer. I use two cloud back up services (Backblaze and iDrive) for backing up my external drives. I also occasionally backup the files from SSD A to another SSD that is always at home. Also, you should know that Backblaze is buggy for external drives in this type of setup which is one of the reasons I use two cloud backup services.
No need for a NAS necessarily for what you say you want to do, unless you are unhappy with your current backup strategy. If your data drives are connected to your Mac in Austria you can just connect to them through your Mac via Tailscale when in Spain. It will be very slow for editing purposes though. Might be doable if you have previews (Capture One terminology, sorry, not sure if it’s the same with LR) cached on your local machine? Then you only need to access the original files when exporting, which can be run over night or whatever. The fastest way would be to have a local copy for sure.
johnvanr wrote:
I'm going divide my time between two places, with about 6-8 months in Austria and 4-6 months in Spain. I'd like to have access to all my digital images (about 250,000 at the moment) in both places and have everything in sync at all times.
Currently, the main setup is a Mac Studio in Austria, with the main LR catalog files internally (and backed up to two external drives and Backblaze) and the actual images on an external drive, backed up to another external drive and to BackBlaze.
In Spain, I would have my MacBook Air with me.
So far, I've just carried portable drives with me and copied all my existing images to another external drive in Spain, but once I'm going to spend more time there, I don't think that's going to work without missing files on one place or another.
Since I have high-speed internet in both places, I'm wondering if a NAS setup could work. I guess I would install the setup in Vienna and then tap into it from Spain and whatever I produce in Spain would be added to the setup in Vienna.
For those who are more technically inclined than I am, is this a doable solution? What setup can you recommend? What are the risks involved in this system?...Show more →
A NAS will work but as mentioned above the speed may be limiting. Have you tested using one computer to remote in and copy some files to see what speeds you can get locally?
The advantage of a NAS is that it is separate device that does not require a computer to be running and connected all the time and can be connected to a very large number of devices. You can shut down and turn on the NAS remotely. The disadvantage of a NAS is that it is another device on the internet so you do need to be careful about security and keep it up to date (that can be automatic).
Being in a similar situation to you at various times the eventual solution was multiple NAS at multiple locations and physically moving data, using synch software to keep them reasonably up to date. I rejected the idea of having all the data hosted due to the high cost and copying data around the internet is just too slow. If it it possible, shipping a small 4-bay NAS with 24TB HDDs in RAID-Z once or twice a year is a relatively cheap option to move ~65TB of data to various locations.
