Long time no post!
Apologies - I've been busy shooting - in fact so busy that I've almost filled up a 2 terabyte internal hard drive and a 1 terabyte external hard drive and badly need advice from you guys please as to the most reliable and cost effective way of expanding my storage and maintaining adequate backups.
OK, you'll need some background info so I'll do my best to explain in a nutshell my current set-up and workflow.
I'm a freelance photographer (occasional social photographer, but bread and butter work is currently cars and real estate).
My main computer is a Mac Pro, which I bought in 2011. It has 4 hard drive bays but currently has only 3 x 2Tb hard drives installed (a boot disc used purely for the OS and software programmes, a master disc for image storage and a backup disc). I also have 1 Tb of old images on a LaCie 2-big triple external hard drive (2 x 1Tb RAID) but I rarely need to access these and they are kept, I guess, mainly for sentimental reasons.
Recently I've had to purchase a Windows laptop because a new client's proprietary software system that I need to upload images to on a regular and frequent basis only works with Internet Explorer. The laptop is useless for photo editing as the screen is only around 75% of RGB. Therefore I don't store any images on the laptop. All image storage and processing is done on the Mac Pro. I then upload the finished images to Dropbox and from there via the laptop to the client's system.
In my mind at least, I need to expand my storage to around 4Tb with adequate backup facilities.
I work from home and we have Virgin Media 100Mb cable internet and a wireless broadband router installed, shared by 3 x Mac and 1 x Windows laptop.
Storage
Instead of buying another internal hard disc for the Mac Pro, I'm thinking that once I have adequate external backup installed I can reuse the 'backup' disc for storage, thus giving me 4 Tb of internal storage which should keep me going for quite a while.
Backup
I've considered buying an Apple Time Capsule for wireless backup but the largest unit available appears to be 3 Tb so I've also looked at various NAS storage and backup solutions but I'm getting confused by so many different options!
Workflow
I'd rather avoid the need to use Dropbox as uploading images to Dropbox is a another time consuming step in the workflow that I'd rather avoid if possible.
Budget
No more than a few hundred GB pounds!
So over to you guys - what in your considered opinion is the best storage and backup solution i.e. the most efficient, reliable and cost effective solution in my circumstances and within my budget?
Apologies - I've been busy shooting - in fact so busy that I've almost filled up a 2 terabyte internal hard drive and a 1 terabyte external hard drive and badly need advice from you guys please as to the most reliable and cost effective way of expanding my storage and maintaining adequate backups.
OK, you'll need some background info so I'll do my best to explain in a nutshell my current set-up and workflow.
I'm a freelance photographer (occasional social photographer, but bread and butter work is currently cars and real estate).
My main computer is a Mac Pro, which I bought in 2011. It has 4 hard drive bays but currently has only 3 x 2Tb hard drives installed (a boot disc used purely for the OS and software programmes, a master disc for image storage and a backup disc). I also have 1 Tb of old images on a LaCie 2-big triple external hard drive (2 x 1Tb RAID) but I rarely need to access these and they are kept, I guess, mainly for sentimental reasons.
Recently I've had to purchase a Windows laptop because a new client's proprietary software system that I need to upload images to on a regular and frequent basis only works with Internet Explorer. The laptop is useless for photo editing as the screen is only around 75% of RGB. Therefore I don't store any images on the laptop. All image storage and processing is done on the Mac Pro. I then upload the finished images to Dropbox and from there via the laptop to the client's system.
In my mind at least, I need to expand my storage to around 4Tb with adequate backup facilities.
I work from home and we have Virgin Media 100Mb cable internet and a wireless broadband router installed, shared by 3 x Mac and 1 x Windows laptop.
Storage
Instead of buying another internal hard disc for the Mac Pro, I'm thinking that once I have adequate external backup installed I can reuse the 'backup' disc for storage, thus giving me 4 Tb of internal storage which should keep me going for quite a while.
Backup
I've considered buying an Apple Time Capsule for wireless backup but the largest unit available appears to be 3 Tb so I've also looked at various NAS storage and backup solutions but I'm getting confused by so many different options!
Workflow
I'd rather avoid the need to use Dropbox as uploading images to Dropbox is a another time consuming step in the workflow that I'd rather avoid if possible.
Budget
No more than a few hundred GB pounds!
So over to you guys - what in your considered opinion is the best storage and backup solution i.e. the most efficient, reliable and cost effective solution in my circumstances and within my budget?