Storage, backup and OneDrive

[jane.kerr]

Lightroom Version

Lightroom Classic 12.1

Operating System

1. Windows 10

My desktop machine has a 500GB hard disk which is mostly full of my Pictures folder (350GB and counting). My computer is grinding to a halt because it has so little spare space on the disk (it's been in the red for ages).
I've got a load of cloud storage along with my Microsoft Office subscription, so until recently, I've been putting my photos in the Pictures folder on my hard disk and allowing OneDrive to back them up to the cloud (although I read recently that OneDrive isn't really a backup - so if I accidentally delete a file on my computer, the mistake will also be synced to OneDrive).
I have just bought two mahoosive WD portable hard drives intending to use one of them as a working drive for my photos and the other as backup (to be kept somewhere different to where my computer is, in case of disastrous house fire etc.).
Obviously I'm paranoid about my photographs and I was wondering if it's still worth keeping them in the cloud as well as on the two hard drives, and if so, if it's possible to use OneDrive for this without also having the files cluttering up the computer's hard disk, ie. just have them uploaded to the cloud as well as to the external hard drive when I import them from my camera but without them staying in the Pictures folder on the hard drive on my computer.

 

[GregJ]

Your problem is easily solved because 350 TB of images is very small. That means you should have zero spinning rust drives right now. You didn't mention your computer, but you need to be booting off of an SSD and your main data drive can be a 1 or 2 TB (I say 2) SSD. With only 350 GB of image files you can back up to two external 1 TB SSDs, which are getting cheap.
Forget Hard disk drives. Think SSD. That goes for all of us, but I have 6 TB of image files and 8 TB SSDs cost 700 bucks for SATA and 1200 bucks for M.2 PCIe 4.
But for you? Easy. You can operate off of an internal M.2 1 or 2 TB main data drive and back up to cheap 1 or 2 TB SSDs (even SATA which are 90 bucks now).
Forget backing up top One Drive for now. You don't need to do it and it can get messy.
Think fast, small and reliable SSDs.
Look at GoodSync and just sync those external SSDs top your main data drive and you will have exact copies.
You could do that to One Drive too because you only have 350 GB of files, but I would not mess with One Drive yet if I were you.
I use it for all my files other than my 6 TB of image files. But with 2 or 3 SSD backups, why mess with it....

 

[Jan Roelof]

But for you? Easy. You can operate off of an internal M.2 1 or 2 TB main data drive and back up to cheap 1 or 2 TB SSDs (even SATA which are 90 bucks now).

The OP 's PC has a 500GB hard drive and she just bought two WD portable hard drives. The question is merely about using OneDrive as an additional backup. My answer to that would be what she already knows: OneDrive is *not* a backup solution. Use something like Backblaze or iDrive if you want a cloud backup.

 

[jane.kerr]

Your problem is easily solved because 350 TB of images is very small. That means you should have zero spinning rust drives right now. You didn't mention your computer, but you need to be booting off of an SSD and your main data drive can be a 1 or 2 TB (I say 2) SSD. With only 350 GB of image files you can back up to two external 1 TB SSDs, which are getting cheap.
Forget Hard disk drives. Think SSD. That goes for all of us, but I have 6 TB of image files and 8 TB SSDs cost 700 bucks for SATA and 1200 bucks for M.2 PCIe 4.
But for you? Easy. You can operate off of an internal M.2 1 or 2 TB main data drive and back up to cheap 1 or 2 TB SSDs (even SATA which are 90 bucks now).
Forget backing up top One Drive for now. You don't need to do it and it can get messy.
Think fast, small and reliable SSDs.
Look at GoodSync and just sync those external SSDs top your main data drive and you will have exact copies.
You could do that to One Drive too because you only have 350 GB of files, but I would not mess with One Drive yet if I were you.
I use it for all my files other than my 6 TB of image files. But with 2 or 3 SSD backups, why mess with it....

Thanks for reply. The computer's drive is only 500GB and is practically full - even though 350GB of photos is not huge. Only ~10GB free. I get the message about the scratch disks being full when I use Photoshop. That's why I bought portable drives.

 

[ChrisLF]

Jane, are the 350GB of photos on the PC all needed for editing in LR? I keep all the photos taken from my cameras on my external drives and just keep those for LR on the PC drive which is far less than 350GB.

I take a lot of bird photographs and so have a lot of very similar or reject images, out of focus etc. and so I'm also going through those on my external drives currently and culling all the unwanted ones.

 

[jane.kerr]

Jane, are the 350GB of photos on the PC all needed for editing in LR? I keep all the photos taken from my cameras on my external drives and just keep those for LR on the PC drive which is far less than 350GB.

I take a lot of bird photographs and so have a lot of very similar or reject images, out of focus etc. and so I'm also going through those on my external drives currently and culling all the unwanted ones.

I have a folder structure that works for me: I have folders for each year, with subfolders for each month then for each day. I can't say every photo will be edited in Lightroom, but I have several ongoing projects that involve photographs taken over a period of time. I do have sporadic fits of keywording, which helps me find all the photos taken in specific locations or with an eye on specific projects. Sometimes I cull the duds or very similar images but I do like to keep most of them as a way of seeing the progress I've made (I've only been seriously into photography since late 2019).

 

[ChrisLF]

Okey dokey. Just realised when reading back through your original post that you intend using one of your external drives as a working drive for your photos so you should have plenty of space.

My PC was a good few years old and even with plenty of space on the C and D drives it was running slower and slower and locking up now and again. I upgraded from LR6 to Classic at the end of last year (bought a new camera not supported by LR6) and the performance in Classic was pretty dire and I daren't try the masks!

Intention is to buy a photography spec. PC at some point but in the meantime bought a cheap interim one (as not only used for photography) with a SSD OS drive and the performance is night and day. Haven't tried masks though yet!

Thought I'd mention this as just freeing up space on your drive might not provide a solution.

 

[GregJ]

Jane, are the 350GB of photos on the PC all needed for editing in LR? I keep all the photos taken from my cameras on my external drives and just keep those for LR on the PC drive which is far less than 350GB.

I take a lot of bird photographs and so have a lot of very similar or reject images, out of focus etc. and so I'm also going through those on my external drives currently and culling all the unwanted ones.

Chris, I don't understand what you said here in terms of what you do. Photos taken on your camera on external drives vs photos "for LR" on an internal drive? I would love to talk to you and give you some advice, but I need to understand what you are saying here. If you are in the US, call me.

And as far as understanding what the OP (Jane) is asking, I would probably have to talk to her on the phone for a few minutes to figure out what she has and what she is doing vs what she says she wants to do vs what I think she should do.

She has a PC with only a 500 MB rust drive? I'm guessing the PC has to be over 10 or 12 years old right? That drive ain't lasting too much longer so I would get off it and by the way, how is LR running on that PC?

Everything Jane does and has is on that old 500 GB internal spinning rust drive. Her OS, programs and all her data files are crammed on there and the spinner is getting full. Classic problem. Not good. It sounds like she has purchased a couple of small external spinning rust drives. OK. Move all the image filles to one of those drives and operate off of that as the main data disk. Then back up that data to the other small spinning ruster plus one more. Two ain't enough and Jane said she is paranoid about losing her pictures. Me too....

And I would also advise Jane that it might be time to consider what you all know I'm thinking. I'm really sort of amazed that LR is running on that rig.

Oh and quit messing around with One Drive for your images. Or at least I wouldn't. One Drive is complicated. I use it all the time - for everything except my image files. LOL. Jane, if you are reading this and are in the US, call me if you want to talk. It's hard to articulate on this forum because your problem here is not LR. Although, I'm amazed that you aren't complaining about LR running slow on your rig because it probably should be.

 

[jane.kerr]

Okey dokey. Just realised when reading back through your original post that you intend using one of your external drives as a working drive for your photos so you should have plenty of space.

My PC was a good few years old and even with plenty of space on the C and D drives it was running slower and slower and locking up now and again. I upgraded from LR6 to Classic at the end of last year (bought a new camera not supported by LR6) and the performance in Classic was pretty dire and I daren't try the masks!

Intention is to buy a photography spec. PC at some point but in the meantime bought a cheap interim one (as not only used for photography) with a SSD OS drive and the performance is night and day. Haven't tried masks though yet!

Thought I'd mention this as just freeing up space on your drive might not provide a solution.

My computer is not that old and used to be fast enough before my Pictures folder took up so much space. Hopefully it'll run the way it used to once I've switched to the external drive.

 

[jane.kerr]

Chris, I don't understand what you said here in terms of what you do. Photos taken on your camera on external drives vs photos "for LR" on an internal drive? I would love to talk to you and give you some advice, but I need to understand what you are saying here. If you are in the US, call me.

And as far as understanding what the OP (Jane) is asking, I would probably have to talk to her on the phone for a few minutes to figure out what she has and what she is doing vs what she says she wants to do vs what I think she should do.

She has a PC with only a 500 MB rust drive? I'm guessing the PC has to be over 10 or 12 years old right? That drive ain't lasting too much longer so I would get off it and by the way, how is LR running on that PC?

Everything Jane does and has is on that old 500 GB internal spinning rust drive. Her OS, programs and all her data files are crammed on there and the spinner is getting full. Classic problem. Not good. It sounds like she has purchased a couple of small external spinning rust drives. OK. Move all the image filles to one of those drives and operate off of that as the main data disk. Then back up that data to the other small spinning ruster plus one more. Two ain't enough and Jane said she is paranoid about losing her pictures. Me too....

And I would also advise Jane that it might be time to consider what you all know I'm thinking. I'm really sort of amazed that LR is running on that rig.

Oh and quit messing around with One Drive for your images. Or at least I wouldn't. One Drive is complicated. I use it all the time - for everything except my image files. LOL. Jane, if you are reading this and are in the US, call me if you want to talk. It's hard to articulate on this forum because your problem here is not LR. Although, I'm amazed that you aren't complaining about LR running slow on your rig because it probably should be.

LOL, my computer is less than 3 years old and LR was running just fine on it until my Pictures folder got to the point where it's filling up the C drive.

 

[ChrisLF]

Fingers crossed it does the trick. As I said I only mentioned it because freeing up space didn't really help me but my PC was way older than yours!

Sorry to have gone off at at tangent to your original question.

 

[GregJ]

LOL, my computer is less than 3 years old and LR was running just fine on it until my Pictures folder got to the point where it's filling up the C drive.

Jane, you have a PC that is three years old and the only drive on it is a 500 GB spinning hard drive? That's OK, but unusual and sort of surprises me. You can remedy that full disk drive by getting your image files off that boot drive and onto the external HDD you bought. Once that boot drive gets near full you are going to have all kinds of issues.

 

[jane.kerr]

Jane, you have a PC that is three years old and the only drive on it is a 500 GB spinning hard drive? That's OK, but unusual and sort of surprises me. You can remedy that full disk drive by getting your image files off that boot drive and onto the external HDD you bought. Once that boot drive gets near full you are going to have all kinds of issues.

Yes, I know - that was the point of my OP. That was the reason I bought the new HDD.

 

[jane.kerr]

Fingers crossed it does the trick. As I said I only mentioned it because freeing up space didn't really help me but my PC was way older than yours!

Sorry to have gone off at at tangent to your original question.

That's all right - it's all learning! Everything is working fine now - I've got the new drive hooked up and deleted the contents of my old Pictures folder on my C drive. Lightroom knows where everything is and it all seems to be working. The real test will come when I need to do loads of masking or something - the last time I tried that, my computer ground to a halt.

 

[ChrisLF]

That's good news. Yes, the use of masks does seem to be "hungry" which is why I haven't tried yet!

 

[Replytoken]

Can I ask that we please stick to the OP's original question, which was reasonably answered by @Jan Roelof above? There are a of reasons that a computer can run slow, but the OP asked about moving files off to a new external drive and would OneDrive suffice as a backup. Making OT assumptions (i.e. drives being rusty or computers being old) does not help to answer the question at hand. Everybody has different needs and budgets, so suggesting they spend money without knowing their situation is not helpful. If the OP wants to discuss additional performance issues then fine, but that is their prerogative.

Thank you,

--Ken

 

[GregJ]

Sorry Ken ... My Bad. I think there is a lot going on here that is way beyond just LR, but I didn't mean to overstep the boundaries of what Jane was after. Sometimes when general desktop or laptop issues creep into the picture along with arguments about storage strategies, backup routines, photography workflow, underpowered PCs and other potential glitches it is hard not to steer out into that territory.

By the way - "rust drive" is well-known computer slang. It's not derogatory. I have four rust drives on my desk and two of them are internal to my PC.

I didn't tell her to spend money. I said backup to a 1TB SSD that is about the same cost as the drives she bought. Maybe slightly more. And then I told her the external rust drives are fine and that is what I do.

I didn't tell her to buy a new PC, although she will figure that out soon enough is she is booting off a 500 GB rust drive and already said her PC grinds to a halt if she touches the masking tool.

You Gurus get mad at me every time I tell an OP the truth about their system and where their problem is. I didn't do that with Jane.

 

[jane.kerr]

Sorry Ken ... My Bad. I think there is a lot going on here that is way beyond just LR, but I didn't mean to overstep the boundaries of what Jane was after. Sometimes when general desktop or laptop issues creep into the picture along with arguments about storage strategies, backup routines, photography workflow, underpowered PCs and other potential glitches it is hard not to steer out into that territory.

By the way - "rust drive" is well-known computer slang. It's not derogatory. I have four rust drives on my desk and two of them are internal to my PC.

I didn't tell her to spend money. I said backup to a 1TB SSD that is about the same cost as the drives she bought. Maybe slightly more. And then I told her the external rust drives are fine and that is what I do.

I didn't tell her to buy a new PC, although she will figure that out soon enough is she is booting off a 500 GB rust drive and already said her PC grinds to a halt if she touches the masking tool.

You Gurus get mad at me every time I tell an OP the truth about their system and where their problem is. I didn't do that with Jane.

You didn't know anything about my computer other than the size of the hard drive, and there is nothing else going on other than the problem of running out of storage space. It's perfectly adequate for what I use it for and didn't run slow at all until recently, when space on the hard drive got very low. And in fact it is only slow if I'm doing something intensive in LR or PS. For all other purposes, it's fast enough.

 

[GregJ]

OK Jane.
I hope you are able to keep on going with that PC and LR. Getting your image files off that boot drive and freeing it up will help a lot and you did the right thing. You started photography in 2019 and I hope you keep going your photography with passion, shoot a lot and fill up that new external drive fast.
One thing that has been a constant for the past 25 years with me (since the dawn of the digital photography age) is the need to constantly get bigger drives to store my work. Luckily for me and all of us, storage is getting cheaper and much faster, so it won't hold you back like it just did.

 

[PhilBurton]

Sorry Ken ... My Bad. I think there is a lot going on here that is way beyond just LR, but I didn't mean to overstep the boundaries of what Jane was after. Sometimes when general desktop or laptop issues creep into the picture along with arguments about storage strategies, backup routines, photography workflow, underpowered PCs and other potential glitches it is hard not to steer out into that territory.

Maybe Victoria should set up a separate forum for "general computer problems and issues."

By the way - "rust drive" is well-known computer slang. It's not derogatory. I have four rust drives on my desk and two of them are internal to my PC.

This is NOT a forum for computer aficionados. It's for photo enthusiasts, and for most "normal" people their computer is just a tool to accomplish their goals, same as with their phones or cars or televisions or internet service. "Normal" people also don't care about the compression ratios of their cars' engines, for example.

By the way, when I read the term "spinning rust" it is sometimes a bit derogatory or else apologetic,

 

[Replytoken]

Sorry Ken ... My Bad. I think there is a lot going on here that is way beyond just LR, but I didn't mean to overstep the boundaries of what Jane was after. Sometimes when general desktop or laptop issues creep into the picture along with arguments about storage strategies, backup routines, photography workflow, underpowered PCs and other potential glitches it is hard not to steer out into that territory.

By the way - "rust drive" is well-known computer slang. It's not derogatory. I have four rust drives on my desk and two of them are internal to my PC.

I didn't tell her to spend money. I said backup to a 1TB SSD that is about the same cost as the drives she bought. Maybe slightly more. And then I told her the external rust drives are fine and that is what I do.

I didn't tell her to buy a new PC, although she will figure that out soon enough is she is booting off a 500 GB rust drive and already said her PC grinds to a halt if she touches the masking tool.

You Gurus get mad at me every time I tell an OP the truth about their system and where their problem is. I didn't do that with Jane.

Hi Greg,

I am not mad, but a I am a bit frustrated. I know you have a strong passion for PC hardware and advances in storage technology. And I know that equipment upgrades often make software run faster, but they are not always a solution to a forum member's problems, and first and foremost, that is what we are trying to address. The OP had solved half her problem by buying an external drive to store her images and wanted to know about OneDrive. If she had not already purchased her external drives, I could see a recommendation for a type of SSD could be helpful, but since she already had the drives, advice after the fact can come across to some folks as being second guessed or told that they made a bad decision.

Communicating on forums is a lot more challenging than shooting the breeze over a beer or coffee with somebody you just met. All of the subtleties are gone and what one can visually see as unbridled enthusiasm in person doesn't always translate to a written post. I was unfamiliar with the term "spinning rust" despite having a number of close friends who are IT administrators, and I can see how that term could possibly be seen as a putdown by somebody still using platter hard drives. I know that was not necessarily what you meant as you admitted to using them yourself, but a new member who does not know you might not understand the slang. We are very fortunate to have a number of long time loyal members who post, but we also have a very large number of new members and we want to make sure they feel welcome regardless of what hardware they use. You are a great photographer and have a lot to share, but in a friendly forum, how you share can be just as important as what you share.

--Ken

 

[GregJ]

Thanks Ken.

 

[prbimages]

although I read recently that OneDrive isn't really a backup - so if I accidentally delete a file on my computer, the mistake will also be synced to OneDrive

A bit of a side-note:

While it's true that OneDrive is NOT a complete backup solution, it does have some backup-like features that can be extremely helpful in situations such as the one in your example. If you delete a file from OneDrive on your computer, it will also be deleted from the OneDrive "cloud" storage. However, OneDrive maintains its own "Recycle bin" in the cloud. If you discover that you have deleted a file by accident, and even if you have emptied the Recycle bin on your computer, the file will still be available in OneDrive's online Recycle bin, and can be restored from there. Files are kept in the online Recycle bin for 30 days.

Another useful OneDrive feature is "versioning". OneDrive keeps track of different versions of your files over time. If you make a drastic error in a file and somehow overwrite the original, you can often restore a previous version of the file from OneDrive's version history. I believe it keeps up to 25 versions of each file (and indefinitely, as far as I know).

 

[jane.kerr]

A bit of a side-note:

While it's true that OneDrive is NOT a complete backup solution, it does have some backup-like features that can be extremely helpful in situations such as the one in your example. If you delete a file from OneDrive on your computer, it will also be deleted from the OneDrive "cloud" storage. However, OneDrive maintains its own "Recycle bin" in the cloud. If you discover that you have deleted a file by accident, and even if you have emptied the Recycle bin on your computer, the file will still be available in OneDrive's online Recycle bin, and can be restored from there. Files are kept in the online Recycle bin for 30 days.

Another useful OneDrive feature is "versioning". OneDrive keeps track of different versions of your files over time. If you make a drastic error in a file and somehow overwrite the original, you can often restore a previous version of the file from OneDrive's version history. I believe it keeps up to 25 versions of each file (and indefinitely, as far as I know).

Thanks.
My OneDrive has gone wonky now. Before I got my external drive, my Pictures folder was in OneDrive and was synching. When I got the external drive, I kept getting an error message when I tried to copy Pictures to the external drive, saying there wasn't enough space on Windows. I found a solution online, which was to turn off "on demand files" in OneDrive's settings. Since then, OneDrive is sulking - it says it's not connected and sits there with "signing in" spinning forever. When I try choosing the "View online" option, I get an error message saying the URL isn't correct. I think my photos are still there because it's still reporting about 350GB of the 1TB I have is in use.

 

[Gnits]

I got into such a mess with One Drive ... I now only use it for keeping my One Notes. One Note is useful for travel documentation, such as flights, hotels, etc, places of interest, etc..

The issues for me.... Overlap / Confusion between One Drive retail, One Drive as part of Office 365, One Drive on my main PC, One Drive on my Win laptop, One Drive on my MacAir and horror of horrors .... Microsoft decided to dump my Pictures Folder from my Mac onto One Drive and started a cascade of images travelling through all of these entities.

If you have just a single machine (laptop/desktop) then easier to manage.