File management Questions

[shotswithmike]

Hey Y'all!

Hope everyone is doing well. I'm curious to find a better file management system to organize, move and back up my files than what I currently do.

To sum up:

-I am an avid outdoor shooter, who also does weddings and branding on the side.

- I have a 500gb macbook pro retina (2013) and multiple external hard drives ( a couple 1 tb, and one each of for 2,3, and 4 TB hard drives)

- I hate working off externals, and prefer to work off of my laptop for as long as possible before I need to move images over to an external. Carrying an external just gives me anxiety, and they tend to be slow (my mac doesn't function that fast either despite being 2.6 ghz i5 with 8gb ram). I also like to edit in bed a lot, and I've had issues where those stupid hard drive cords will become dislodged and an entire hard drive will stop functioning properly and need to be erased/formatted  (Lacie porsche design a couple years ago, only have seagate now)

- For weddings and paid gigs, I always just work off an external because once I edit, I send them off and usually never touch them again,  but keep the files on multiple drives so those files aren't really a management issue for me as I don't work with them all the time

For my outdoor travel, I edit everyday trying to better myself, and constantly export small numbers of images to my phone as I post on Instagram everyday for growth. Typically, what I have been doing up until this point is I will create a catalog for a certain period of time, like "2016_fall", or "2017_part_1" for example. I usually import the image originals into subfolders within the corresponding master folder for "2016_Fall" or 2017_Part_1". So I keep working on these files until my laptop hard drive is almost full, and then just remove an entire catalog (the oldest one) worth of shots off of the laptop to make room for my future shots. the old catalogs I just work off a hard drive for, but generally don't touch them much once they are moved off of the laptop.

The issue that I'm running into is keep all files and folders and catalogs up to date on all drives. I feel like its a mess and requires a lot of manual copying and pasting from drive to drive, which discourages me from actually backing up for a month or more at a time. I don't use time machine really, just because I'm not sure how I would benefit from it in my case as it would only backup what I currently have on the laptop. I will admit though time machine confuses me and I don't even know how to just delete old backups to keep external hard drive space from getting overloaded with unnecessary backups. I never need to access old versions of my computer, just old images. I generally will just delete an entire folder of images and catalog off the externals and replace it with all of the up to date info (copy and paste) from my laptop. This is obviously annoying when you have to transfer 100gb+ at a time just to backup a weekend camping trip for example.

What I am looking for is simply just a better and more efficient way of backing up to multiple locations, keeping everything up to date, and doing so in a better system than I currently do. Open to any and all suggestions! I definitely have the space for everything, its just the management is what confuses me.

-Mike

[Laura Shoe · Accepted solution]

I would suggest sticking with just one catalog, or possibly one for your personal work and one for your pro work if you want to keep them separate. While you're editing, keep the photos on your internal drive, then use the Folders panel to drag them to your external when you're done. If your outdoor photos take up too much space on your internal and you want to always be able to edit them, then build smart previews for them and move them to the external - this way you can edit without the external.

Regarding backups, I'd recommend getting away from manually copying - use a backup program. Time Machine can be set to back up both your internal and external drives. You can also set up multiple TM backup jobs so that you regularly are backing up to two drives for greater redundancy. Carbon Copy Cloner is another backup program option.  Then look at an online backup service, such as Backblaze or Crashplan, so that you are protected from fire, theft, etc. - it takes a long time for the first backup to upload, but from then on you have more peace of mind.

[dj_paige]

For your outdoor photography, use ONE CATALOG. Do not break the catalog into pieces, this is just extra work for no benefit.

For file management, import them into the desired folder straight out of the camera, and then never move them again! Make your life simple. Put the photos on an external HD straight out of the camera, never move them again, and use Smart Previews so you won't need to have your external HDs connected.

Time Machine can be set up to make backups from any drive or any combination of drives. Learn how to use it (it will make your life simple) or get another backup piece of software, and either way set it up so backups are made AUTOMATICALLY, at some given time period like weekly or daily, it's up to you.

[shotswithmike]

Thanks for the reply!

I've never used smart previews... are you able to export from them? If so, that is exactly what I am looking for and can just export the catalogs as needed.

Any good places to read up on time machine, maybe from a photographers perspective?

[Laura Shoe]

You can export up to 2560 pixels. Watch the video tutorial that I linked to in my last comment for details on creating and managing smart previews. I don't know of Time Machine tutorials, but to add your external drive(s),  click on the clock in the task bar, then Open Time Machine Preferences, then click on Options.

[dj_paige]

Time Machine tutorials -- Google, YouTube, Apple