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Storage for Photographers

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Today’s photographer has a myriad of digital tools at their disposal to create content more easily and with better results than ever before. 

Whether you’re an experienced photographer, or recently new to photography, this article will cover the tools to make your job easier and achieve the best results. We’ll assume you’ve already chosen the best digital camera(s) for your needs and will instead focus on digital storage, how to manage your library of work, edit and optimize images, and how to archive and share with others. Let’s explore and answer some common questions many photographers have such as:

Understanding Photo Storage

Photo Storage Space
If you ask most photographers, they’ll say you can never have enough storage. That’s because photographers want to keep most of their work, and not throw any usable images away. They’ll also want to have 2–3 backups of their work, making certain that their images are protected in the case of any unforeseen catastrophes, like drive failure or accidental damage.

HDDs are the most cost-effective way to store lots of files, since they are available in massive capacities (up to 26TB1 in a single drive). Hard disk drives are also great for archiving because they are designed to store data reliably for extended periods of time.

As you fill up drives with your work, they become archives in themselves and you can organize and store them as you see fit. When you need more storage, you can simply buy more or erase existing storage to fit new work, or just keep your existing data as a physical backup of your work. Also, consider compiling all your “little” drives into one big drive for easy organization.

Offloading and Backing Up Your Work

The removable memory cards in your camera starts to fill up as you take photos. The number of photos you can store depends on the photo resolution you set. Using the highest resolution settings on you camera will take up much more space as the file sizes will me much larger.

Many photographers prefer to shoot in RAW format, at their cameras highest resolution. This method can fill up their storage quickly. At some point your memory card will reach maximum capacity and require offloading or erasure of files to make room for new photos.

Most photographers will want to review their work on a laptop, tablet, or smartphone and decide which photos to keep, and which to delete. Once you have all the photos you want to keep, you will want to store them on digital media that will preserve them reliably, while enabling you to edit and share them with colleagues. There are several ways to do this:

  • Keep the photos you want on the memory card creating an archive (kind of like keeping the ‘negatives’), and then insert a new, empty memory card into your camera to start shooting again.
  • Choose a portable drive that will give you the flexibility to transport your work between devices - like from a laptop to your studio or home workstation.
  • External desktop drives have comparable storage to a portable drive, but reside at home or office and have extended capacity.
  • Use internal drives for faster editing than with external drives. Choose a laptop or PC with a fast internal drive or upgrade your current device with a fast internal drive.
  • Multiple-Drive RAID devices that are transportable for remote jobs, and fast when you’re dealing with massive amounts of data like super high-resolution photos or RAW format photos.
  • Cloud storage lets you upload to a remote server and allows you to access your files from wherever internet is available.

Storage Drives for Photographers

Today’s photographers can choose from a variety of storage form factors, capacities and speeds. Let’s take a look at some of the best photo storage devices:

Portable Hard Disk Drive

Portable Hard Disk Drives are a popular choice because they’re versatile and are available in a variety of capacities. Most are HDD-based and equipped with a USB interface - make sure to check which USB version is right for your computer.

  • The most common is USB 3.0.
  • Newer computers have USB-C or Thunderbolt connections which deliver speeds much faster than USB 3.0.
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External Hard Disk Drives

Desktop Hard Disk Drives are essential for photographers, providing high-capacity storage to back up and manage large RAW image files and 4K videos. High-performance desktop HDDs ensure seamless file transfers, efficient editing workflows, and long-term data protection.

  • Pro-grade speeds up to 1690MB/s2
  • Consumer speeds up to 260MB/s3
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RAID Devices

RAID devices group two or more HDDs to work together in a specially-designed enclosure to deliver massive capacities and increased speeds depending on which RAID configuration you choose.

  • Usually equipped with specially-tuned HDDs designed to work in an always-on RAID environment.
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Online Photo Storage Solutions for Photographers

Online solutions are great options in terms of capacity and flexibility. Here are some elements to consider:

Online Storage Solutions

Online storage solutions, cloud services, like Apple® iCloud®, Google Drive™, or Microsoft OneDrive typically require a monthly charge for storage space, once a user has exceeded the initial amount of free capacity provided. Photos are uploaded to a remote server and can be accessed from anywhere, provided you have internet access. 

NAS

Encourage collaboration with your team by setting up a Network Attached Server (NAS) – a single or multi-drive device that is attached to your home or office network and allows remote access to anyone with permission and an internet connection. 

Photos and other media can be uploaded, edited and shared remotely, while all files remain in a single, accessible-from-anywhere online repository. The advantage here is that there are no monthly fees since the initial setup establishes a connection using your own internet services.

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The Photographer’s Photo Storage Workflow

1.     Setting up the Camera and Capturing Images

The photographer’s workflow process begins with a quality digital camera. You have your choice between formats:

  • Most photographers prefer to shoot in the RAW format. RAW images can be compressed or uncompressed and use all of the data captured by the camera’s sensor, so photos have a much higher file size than jpeg photos. RAW images must be edited and processed before they are ready for export, giving the photographer full control over exposure, color balance, resolution and more.
  • The JPEG format is a compressed format that may not require any post-production work and is more common among casual photographers. Depending on your camera, you can determine in advance what color profile, compression, image resolution and white balance settings to use for the optimal results without post-production editing.

 

2.     Transfer Images to Your Smart Device or Laptop

There are several ways to transfer images to your smartphone, laptop or tablet:

  • Connect the memory card to your computer via a built-in card reader or a USB-enabled card reader connected to an available USB port or, connect your camera directly to your computer via an available USB port.
  • Wi-Fi enabled cameras first write the image to an internal memory card, then can offload photos directly to a cloud server or Wi-Fi enabled storage device. Note: Digital cameras cannot take a photo without a memory card inserted.
  • There are programs like Apple Photos, Google Photos™, Microsoft Photos, or Adobe® Lightroom® (among others) that can automate the process and help keep your files organized and tagged properly. These applications move data safely and provide logs that verify each file was successfully copied and not corrupted. They also (conveniently) resume if a transfer is interrupted. 
  • Use an external portable drive, external desktop drive or NAS array to backup and archive the photos you want to keep. Performing a backup of your work to a separate device is the best way to prevent loss or accidental deletion.
  • Use your computer’s interface to move or copy desired files onto a connected storage device while deleting unwanted photos, this frees up space on the card to accommodate new photos. 

3.     Edit and Process Images

Once you have offloaded your images on to a device, it’s time for a quality review. Go through each photo and edit as necessary. Make color corrections, retouching, exposure fixes, and more in your favorite photo editing tool like Apple Photos, Google Photos™, Microsoft Photos, Adobe Photoshop®, or Adobe Lightroom®.

Photo editing can be a time consuming process depending on what you want to correct in any given image. This step is crucial for separating good images from ones that you want to discard. If you don’t want to throw any images away, you can offload ‘rejects’ onto a portable drive for consideration later on.

 

4.     Organize, Backup and Archive

Once you have reviewed and edited your photos, you’ll want to sort through them, arranging them in folders, and giving them thoughtful filenames for easy retrieval later on. If you want to forego the tedious process of doing this manually, you have the option of using applications like Apple Photos, Google Photos™, Microsoft Photos, Adobe Photoshop®, or Adobe Lightroom® which can automate a lot of the work.

Of course, you don’t want hundreds of photos taking up space on your computer and possibly slowing it down in the process, so creating an organized backup of your work is key to easily finding what you need later on.

Our backup rule is simple: 3-2-1. Three copies, two locations, and one copy to work from. Since your photography is your livelihood, having 2-3 backups in different locations will help make sure your images are preserved. Consider using several devices to hold different collections for easy access:

Memory cards or thumb drives for limited amounts of data

Portable HDD drives for higher capacities

Desktop, cloud or NAS storage devices for massive amounts of storage

5.     Exporting Images

Whether you’re preparing images for the web or print, you’ll need a way to export them. There are several ways to do this:

  • For print purposes, you can copy your final images to a thumb drive or memory card for easy delivery to a remote print studio. Also, some vendors provide an FTP upload service for instant transfer delivery.
  • Share your images on the cloud and invite others to share, or if you have a lot of images, you can copy them to a portable drive for easy transport to a remote location.
  • Web images are usually lighter in file size and can be emailed or uploaded electronically to a remote server. Whichever way you choose, be sure to make a backup of your work in case something goes wrong with the transfer, or the file is accidentally lost or erased.

 

Learn More About HDDs, RAID, and NAS for Photography

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Disclosures
1. 1TB = one trillion bytes. Actual user capacity may be less depending on operating environment. 
2. Applies only to SanDisk Professional G-RAID SHUTTLE 8 in default RAID 5. 1 MB/s = 1 million bytes per second. Based on internal testing; performance may vary depending upon host device, usage conditions, drive capacity, RAID configuration and other factors.
3. Applies only to SanDisk Professional G-DRIVE PROJECT and G-DRIVE PRO Desktop Drive. 1 MB/s = 1 million bytes per second. Based on internal testing; performance may vary depending upon host device, usage conditions, drive capacity, and other factors.

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