photo storage advice- Should I upgrade my internal hard drive?

[Emilymarutzky]

I have a quandary related to my storage situation. I currently use a MacBook Pro from early 2015, which has an internal hard drive of 120gb (nowhere near enough). I am trying to figure out a safer way to protect my photo library- which is currently spread bits and pieces across 2 different macbooks (the one from 2015 and an older one from 2009ish), multiple external hard drives, and multiple clouds (iCloud and google photos). It’s a mess. Ideally I’m looking to organize all of these photos in one central location, then back up to another external hard drive and then again to the clouds. I think right now my entire photo collection is nearly 300gb. I’ve looked at replacing the internal hard drive for my current MacBook and for 1tb they run in the 500ish range (was looking at owc ssd aura 1tb). Everyone I talk to keeps asking me why I don’t want to use an external hard drive to store my library on, but for some reason it just seems right to have it on an actual computer somewhere.

Does anyone have advice regarding the benefit of paying extra to upgrade the internal hard drive vs just plugging in external drives to store a photo library?

Also, does anyone have experience with owc aura ssds? I read that they are the only replacement option for this version of MacBook.

Thanks!

 

[Audit13]

An SSD can fail suddenly and without warning.

Mechanical drives can fail suddenly as well but data recovery is much easier from a mechanical drive.

Personally, I would just use mechanical usb drives for backup.

 

[maflynn]

I am trying to figure out a safer way to protect my photo library- which is currently spread bits and pieces across 2 different macbooks (the one from 2015 and an older one from 2009ish), multiple external hard drives, and multiple clouds (iCloud and google photos). It’s a mess. Ideally I’m looking to organize all of these photos in one central location, then back up to another external hard drive and then again to the clouds.

My first recommendation is to definitely organize your images, as you had stated. You cannot develop a solid solution if the data is not managed. I'd then look to use a 3-2-1 backup solution which will reduce the risk of losing your data

3-2-1 backup:
A 3-2-1 strategy means having at least 3 total copies of your data, 2 of which are local but on different mediums (read: devices), and at least 1 copy offsite.

Everyone I talk to keeps asking me why I don’t want to use an external hard drive to store my library on, but for some reason it just seems right to have it on an actual computer somewhere.

Personal preference, but the Samsung T series SSDs are tiny and you'll not be encumbered by the size/weight but it is something you'll have to remember to bring with you.
You'll also have to include the external drive into your backup strategy. That is, you'll need another drive to backup the external drive (and internal)

Does anyone have advice regarding the benefit of paying extra to upgrade the internal hard drive vs just plugging in external drives to store a photo library?

Ideally internal storage is the best, but anyone beyond 2015 is stuck with what they bought (such as me). Failing the ability to upgrade the internal storage, the next best approach is a small travel drive. I'm currently using a Samsung T3, but I'm eyeing a 1 TB T5. I'm hoping a sale will reduce the price a bit below 279

Also, does anyone have experience with owc aura ssds? I read that they are the only replacement option for this version of MacBook.

I can't say that I have, and I guess in some respects, I'd rather go with some known brands, since its holding my data.

 

[deeddawg]

An SSD can fail suddenly and without warning.

Mechanical drives can fail suddenly as well but data recovery is much may be easier from a mechanical drive.

Personally, I would just use mechanical usb drives for backup.

Fixed that for you.

Sort of moot though: With a proper multi-tier backup strategy you're never in a position where you need to recover data from a failed drive.
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A 3-2-1 strategy means having at least 3 total copies of your data, 2 of which are local but on different mediums (read: devices), and at least 1 copy offsite.

Excellent advice.

Two added points:

• Versioning is an important feature to consider. Say you find today that a file was overwritten/corrupted two weeks ago. With a versioning backup system (TimeMachine and others) you can go to a prior version of the file. Cloning/sync type backups may not allow that -- and may not even allow recovery of deleted files if you didn't notice the deletion before the next backup... Know what you're working with when you choose a solution.
• Ideally, the backup mechanism that requires the least user action will tend to be the most faithfully used. In the past I always had great intentions of cycling my offsite backup drives ... but the reality was far different. I was well worth it to me to switch to a cloud solution for offsite backups as they don't require me to remember to do anything. Speed of restore is not very important since it is a "oh crap my house burned down" scenario.

My setup is to use TimeMachine to a Synology NAS on my home network. I've in the past used Carbonite for cloud backups; trying out iDrive right now and may or may not settle on BackBlaze.

Personal preference, but the Samsung T series SSDs are tiny and you'll not be encumbered by the size/weight but it is something you'll have to remember to bring with you.

As noted, externals have an inherent degree of inconvenience for any mobile usage. Kind of cumbersome to use on your lap somewhere, or on an airline tray table. How impactful that is to a person will of course vary.

I can't say that I have, and I guess in some respects, I'd rather go with some known brands, since its holding my data.

I would consider OWC to be a known brand at this point -- they've been around for many many years catering to the Mac market.

 

[maflynn]

As noted, externals have an inherent degree of inconvenience for any mobile usage. Kind of cumbersome to use on your lap somewhere, or on an airline tray table. How impactful that is to a person will of course vary.

No question, but that's why I found the T series to be rather small. It's manageable. Clearly if you can upgrade the internal storage, that's the ideal situation. For me that wasn't feasible, a 1TB SSD upgrade when configuring my MBP was just too expensive.

I would consider OWC to be a known brand at this point -- they've been around for many many years catering to the Mac market.

I know of OWC, and have bought from them many times, but given how SSDs are priced, I'd rather go with a more well known name brand like Samsung. We have no idea where those OWC components are sourced and I'd rather not risk my data a couple of years down the road.

 

[deeddawg]

I know of OWC, and have bought from them many times, but given how SSDs are priced, I'd rather go with a more well known name brand like Samsung. We have no idea where those OWC components are sourced and I'd rather not risk my data a couple of years down the road.

Understandable, though it isn't exactly like OWC is trying to be the price-leader on these things. My thinking on this is that if there should ever be a driver / compatibility issue with macOS I would anticipate OWC to be much more invested in resolving the matter than would Samsung.

I merely offer this for others to consider. I recommend doing research on people's experiences with any/all of the options.

 

[Fishrrman]

My opinion only.

I'd buy TWO external USB3 SSDs.
500gb each ought to do.
These are not expensive.

I'd use the first as my "primary photo storage" drive.
Get everything organized on it.
Keep the primary photo library on it, and "reference it" to my digital photo apps.

Then, I'd use CarbonCopyCloner (or SuperDuper) to clone my "primary storage" drive to a BACKUP drive.
Now I have an exact copy of my primary external drive.
If anything went wrong with the primary drive, I can switch to the backup clone and have nearly 100% "as it was the moment the primary drive died".

I would create a second, smaller library on my INTERNAL drive.
I would keep only "my best" on there, to preserve space.
Also use it for "working files", which would get moved to the primary external storage drive afterwards.

 

[poorcody]

If you are just storing photos, you may want to consider something like this:

https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B07857Y17V/ref=twister_B078VKF48F?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

Cheap and easy. Important to back it up of course as others have said.

Since you are lucky enough to have an SD slot, you could also get a flush MicroSD card and adapter. Not something you'd want to use for constant access, but for a photo library, probably would do the trick.

 

[Howard2k]

I have tiered libraries. I store a relatively small quantity of photos locally on my 256GB drive, and the balance (vast majority) on my NAS. The NAS is slower, obviously, than an external drive, especially since I use wifi, but they have advanced features that may compensate in some circumstances. In my case it works great.

To jump from 512GB to 2TB on the 13" in Canada is $1,500. That buys an absurd amount of NAS space .

 

[Emilymarutzky]

Thanks so much for all the thoughtful replies- that’s all really really helpful!!!

The one reason I was looking at the owc drives is because apparently (at the moment) there aren’t other options compatible with my MacBook. I read that they designed MacBooks 2015 and newer to not have upgradable drives, but that owc did come up with a compatible replacement option. I’d love to know if that’s incorrect! They’re a bit on the pricey side but I would probably just bite the bullet if the warranty is decent.

I definitely will do the external hard drive backups as well, and have 2 different clouds. I’m curious about the NAS as well!

I definitely agree that the more automated the better- I had great intentions of performing manual and time machine backups to my external hard drives, but they seem to rarely occur!

I can’t wait to get a better system figured out- it’s one of my big fears to lose photos of my kids, travels, etc. My parents had a pretty bad fire and lost a lot last year. I would love the peace of mind to know at least photos were safe!

 

[poorcody]

The one reason I was looking at the owc drives is because apparently (at the moment) there aren’t other options compatible with my MacBook. I read that they designed MacBooks 2015 and newer to not have upgradable drives, but that owc did come up with a compatible replacement option. I’d love to know if that’s incorrect!

There seem to be a couple of other options... I would check out this thread:

https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1376301

Specifically, there are a couple of links to internal adapters (cheap -- like $10), that allow you to use off-the-shelf SSDs as well.

Ebay also has some with those adapters attached that are cheaper than OWC:

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=m570.l1313&_nkw=MacBook+pro+2015+ssd&_sacat=0