350D Network Storage / Workflow - What do you use?

robertmccartney

Hi everyone,

I only recently joined this board and have already learned loads - so thanks to everyone for all they've posted. I've only started digital photography recently and I've had some issues around storage of photos. To cut a long story short I was wondering what are the most successful workflows people use to allow easy working on photos? Is there a best practice out there somewhere?

For example, I'm lucky enough to own a network storage drive hooked up to a fairly basic wireless netwerk at home. I was hoping to download directly into the network drive (maybe into a directory for imports) where I could then examine/select/delete as appropriate photos for later work and eventually (maybe) creating a collection of the 'best'. One of the advantage of the network drive is that I should be able to access it from the web so I can access photos from anywhere with my laptop without having to carry all the photos actually on the laptop - which can degrade performance - never mind the security/loss considerations.

Problem is that Canon's (I have a 350D) native image downloader can't see the network drive and the photoshop elements 4.0 software won't automatically create directories that use the image creation date (rather than the import date) - which I really like'd from the Canan software.

I was just wondering what other people use to download and manage their images / backups etc...

Calina

I download onto the local drive and back up to an external hard drive. However, you've given me an idea with a wireless network drive...I may hop over to tech and see about how you start setting one up.

rymus

using a nas over the internet or even over a wireless connection isn't going to be a joyful experience. Best thing to do is do all your editing with the photos on the pc's hard drive and then transfer them to the nas. Can't see why Canon's software wouldnt see the drive if it's mapped to a windows drive letter.

I currently have a 1tb usb drive shared from an airport extreme (runs at around 300mbit/sec) and that's fairly sluggish for working with raw files. Standard wireless at 54mbps would be unusable for any large transfers. It'll work, it'll just take a hell of a long time to transfer data.

I'm in the process of replacing wireless (for image editing anyway) with a gigabit lan and replacing the 1tb usb drive with a readynas nv+, into which I'll stick a few 500gb drives.

elven

Aaand for the normal people amongst us who aren't integrating a T1 connection into their household cabling...

I have a buffalo NAS thingy. It's allowed me to map a drive to it that's seen from all applications. I can download directly to that, but it takes a fair while over the bog standard wireless home network and processing straight off it is cumbersome. Better to do as mentioned above - download to your local drive, do your sorting/deleting/filinf/processing there then back it up to the network storage.

If you want to read a bit more about the whole sorting/filing thing, there are a few posts over the last week or two:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055216747
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055218325
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055218325

(Sorry I'm feeling too lazy to do pretty, tidy links...)

rymus

Or alternatively.. I can come round anyones house and install a gigabit lan for a nominal fee

T1 is old news.. I'm all about the symmetric wireless.

robertmccartney

Thanks for that. Will have a look at those posts Elven. Was toying with the idea of creating a wired LAN Rymus, but thought the wireless would save me the hassle! no such luck eh? I'ts not quite the place that tomorrow's world was promising just yet... where's the robots when you need em?

rymus

wireless saves hassle, but you'll never get the same performance as you would with a wired network. Normally that isnt a problem for 80% of applications, but for things like network drive access and transferring huge amounts of data, it's a pain in the ass. If you gotta go wireless, look into a draft n router and wireless adapter for your pc. That'll give you the maximum speed possible over conventional wireless at the moment.

robertmccartney

I actually had an n type router for a while but it kept dropping the link (every 30 seconds) so that was a complete no-go. Had to drop back to g+ to get it to work. I think I'll have to go with the wired option... now to see where I can get 20m of cat cable.

stcstc

I use a 2 Tb lacie nas in Raid 5 to store my images

The drive is mapped to each of my machines


I have a folder structure on the drive to store the images

I then download the images from either my laptop or one of the desktops

i can then broswe the images etc from any of the machines


I use a Gb lan, which costs noting really. I bought a Gb switch from SVP for like 40Stg. then just hang the machines off it and wire it to my broadband router and they all then have internet access too.


it might be worth looking at the new DROBO box, its a 4 bay sata enclosure with usb interface, it can supposidly have a card reader installed on it too so you can dump from the card straight to the hard drive too

rymus

was looking at those drobo boxes today. Nice bit of kit for a standalone direct attached storage. Becomes less than financially viable when you factor in the cost of the droboshare though, brings it above the price of a similar x-raid machine like the readynas nv+

Drobo is a fantastic option for direct attached storage though. Lovely little bit of kit.

minikin

i keep all my pictures in a bolands biscuit tin, all are backed up into two off site shoeboxes.