Jim Poor
12-23-2008, 01:52 PM
Well, I think I just finished my last photo event of 2008, barring any last minute bookings. I'm taking a breather and trying to re-think my Digital Asset Management in terms of both hardware and file management.
I'll warn you, this is long, so thanks in advance if you read the whole thing. Even more thanks if you point out what you see as weaknesses.
This is what I have on my main workstation which is only important so that you how I'm storing what.
4TB internal - 1TB partitioned into 250GB system and 750GB data. The other 3TB are RAID which only gives a 2TB capacity.
20TB External - Two 3TB Concatenated disk sets and 14 other 1TB drives in a total of three external enclosures.
A few 750GB drives and smaller sitting around doing not much, but soon to be put into my secondary machine.
This is what I'm considering, though I'm open to suggestions.
This is my plan.
Swap out the 1TB internal drive for a smaller (32GB or 64GB) Solid State Drive for system & applications.
Break the internal RAID and make it a concatenated disk set to get the extra 1TB back. I haven't noticed much speed improvement with the RAID set. I may swap out those three disks for 1.5TB disks, but I’m not sure yet.
I had initially reorganized my Lightroom catalogues by year, but I have well over 100,000 RAW files from 2008, so I went to a current and past set up.
I'm not real happy with that either so I'm thinking about this in terms of file structure and breaking out catalogues:
Photos (Top Level on the volume)
YEAR
>Nature
>Pets
-Volunteer
>SPCA
>HART
>ETC
-Paid
>Private
>Event-Fundraiser
>Church Directory Project
>Everything else
The LR Catalogues will be YYYY-Nature; YYYY-Pets-Paid; YYYY-Pets-Volunteer; YYYY-Everything-Else; Church Directory Project
As far as managing actual shoots, I have been using this structure for the files within LR:
Event
>Last Name (RAW with the occasional Tiff composite)
>Last Name Proofs (Watermarked, low-res. JPGs)
>Last Name Prints (Actual ordered prints in full sized JPG, sharpened and ready to send to the lab, named with the image size inserted in front of the file name)
All RAW files are backed up during download in folders by date.
All LR catalogues are backed up in two external locations
All Photos from the "Photos" drive(s) are also backed up in their "organized" file trees in two external locations.
One copy of all RAW files and one copy of the file tree including the accompanying LR catalogues will be backed up off-site.
Thoughts?
I'll warn you, this is long, so thanks in advance if you read the whole thing. Even more thanks if you point out what you see as weaknesses.
This is what I have on my main workstation which is only important so that you how I'm storing what.
4TB internal - 1TB partitioned into 250GB system and 750GB data. The other 3TB are RAID which only gives a 2TB capacity.
20TB External - Two 3TB Concatenated disk sets and 14 other 1TB drives in a total of three external enclosures.
A few 750GB drives and smaller sitting around doing not much, but soon to be put into my secondary machine.
This is what I'm considering, though I'm open to suggestions.
This is my plan.
Swap out the 1TB internal drive for a smaller (32GB or 64GB) Solid State Drive for system & applications.
Break the internal RAID and make it a concatenated disk set to get the extra 1TB back. I haven't noticed much speed improvement with the RAID set. I may swap out those three disks for 1.5TB disks, but I’m not sure yet.
I had initially reorganized my Lightroom catalogues by year, but I have well over 100,000 RAW files from 2008, so I went to a current and past set up.
I'm not real happy with that either so I'm thinking about this in terms of file structure and breaking out catalogues:
Photos (Top Level on the volume)
YEAR
>Nature
>Pets
-Volunteer
>SPCA
>HART
>ETC
-Paid
>Private
>Event-Fundraiser
>Church Directory Project
>Everything else
The LR Catalogues will be YYYY-Nature; YYYY-Pets-Paid; YYYY-Pets-Volunteer; YYYY-Everything-Else; Church Directory Project
As far as managing actual shoots, I have been using this structure for the files within LR:
Event
>Last Name (RAW with the occasional Tiff composite)
>Last Name Proofs (Watermarked, low-res. JPGs)
>Last Name Prints (Actual ordered prints in full sized JPG, sharpened and ready to send to the lab, named with the image size inserted in front of the file name)
All RAW files are backed up during download in folders by date.
All LR catalogues are backed up in two external locations
All Photos from the "Photos" drive(s) are also backed up in their "organized" file trees in two external locations.
One copy of all RAW files and one copy of the file tree including the accompanying LR catalogues will be backed up off-site.
Thoughts?