Crashed external HDD with all my photos

[Citysnaps]

Is the new computer also going to be a Mac as well? If so you could just use Time Machine, otherwise if it's between a Mac and PC you can always just save off all your files and then reinstall whatever programs needed.

Another option here, if you were to get a NAS, would be to put in place beforehand and then put all your files on it, then when you setup the new computer just hook up to it and have them all available to you. This is safe and secure solution.

It's a new Mac. And my first thought was to do what I've been doing for years - two TM drives and two or more clones. So yeah, I've got a lot of drives stored here and there. Some going back to FireWire days for computers I managed to get rid of in the past - but I'm not going to deal with those (maybe sometime down the road).

 

[sgtaylor5]

@Eric, you were VERY lucky! I've seen so many backup drives where the MicroUSB 3b connector was the only connector on the drive; the hard drive was specially made for this purpose. You would have had to get another port soldered onto the hard drive's circuit board.

I hate MicroUSB 3b ports!

 

[Cmaier]

@Eric, you were VERY lucky! I've seen so many backup drives where the MicroUSB 3b connector was the only connector on the drive; the hard drive was specially made for this purpose. You would have had to get another port soldered onto the hard drive's circuit board.

I hate MicroUSB 3b ports!

I haven’t seen an external drive which used any special drive in a long time. Only incompatibility that people seem to run into is the one voltage pin which may need to be masked depending on where you intend to re-use the drive. There’s an entire ecosystem of people like me who buy whatever external drive is the cheapest and “shuck” the drive out of the enclosure to use it in a computer or NAS while saving 25 or 50% vs. buying an “internal” drive.

 

[Eric]

@Eric, you were VERY lucky! I've seen so many backup drives where the MicroUSB 3b connector was the only connector on the drive; the hard drive was specially made for this purpose. You would have had to get another port soldered onto the hard drive's circuit board.

I hate MicroUSB 3b ports!

This ^. My WD Passport is exactly like this, feeling lucky it happened to this drive instead. I'll not be using any of these in the future.

 

[Citysnaps]

Is the new computer also going to be a Mac as well? If so you could just use Time Machine, otherwise if it's between a Mac and PC you can always just save off all your files and then reinstall whatever programs needed.

Another option here, if you were to get a NAS, would be to put in place beforehand and then put all your files on it, then when you setup the new computer just hook up to it and have them all available to you. This is safe and secure solution.

There's something I don't quite have my head around yet. Perhaps you or Cmaier can weigh in.

On my desktop computer there's a wide variety of files; MacOS, a folder of my User files (let's name it Citypix), a bunch of Apps and related preference/library files, etc.

My question is, what's normally stored on a home user's NAS?

Probably my User folder (except the LR catalog), and my image files that I have in a Year-Month-Day set of folders that I keep on an external disk. I assume with a NAS I no longer need a separate external drive for my photos - right?

My User folder has all my other files I generated over the years (drawings, etc)

Anything else that should go on the NAS? How are email files referenced and stored on NAS drives? Ditto with Messages?

And in consideration of the above, everything else such as MacOS (Applications, Library, System) I assume stays on my computer's SSD. Or does some of that go on the NAS? If not, and I want a backup, I then use TM or make a clone?

Also... if you keep your LR Catalog local on your computer's disk/SSD, how do you sync it when you access the NAS from a different computer (a laptop in your living room). Or is you should be on the road and want to edit photos? Just drag the latest LR catalog to your computer?

Sorry for all the questions. Any help would be appreciated!

 

[Eric]

There's something I don't quite have my head around yet. Perhaps you or Cmaier can weigh in.

On my desktop computer there's a wide variety of files; MacOS, a folder of my User files (let's name it Citypix), a bunch of Apps and related preference/library files, etc.

My question is, what's normally stored on a home user's NAS?

It's really up to you, I personally host all of my images and important files on the NAS, anything I can't live without. This way your computer can crash and all you have to do is replace it, reinstall the OS and constituent programs, then map back to the files and it's all safe and secure.

Probably my User folder (except the LR catalog), and my image files that I have in a Year-Month-Day set of folders that I keep on an external disk. I assume with a NAS I no longer need a separate external drive for my photos - right?

My User folder has all my other files I generated over the years (drawings, etc)

Anything else that should go on the NAS? How are email files referenced and stored on NAS drives? Ditto with Messages?

And in consideration of the above, everything else such as MacOS (Applications, Library, System) I assume stays on my computer's SSD. Or does some of that go on the NAS? If not, and I want a backup, I then use TM or make a clone?

Also... if you keep your LR Catalog local on your computer's disk/SSD, how do you sync it when you access the NAS from a different computer (a laptop in your living room). Or is you should be on the road and want to edit photos? Just drag the latest LR catalog to your computer?

Sorry for all the questions. Any help would be appreciated!

I would think of the NAS as your new external drive. So once you have the NAS setup go into your normal catalog (assuming it's on your local drive which is recommended anyway) and then when you see your NAS on the left pane along with all your other drives, drag and move your images from the existing external drive to your NAS.

There are other ways to do this by remapping, etc. but anything you do outside of LRC trips it up next time you open it so this was the cleanest way I could find. This way your catalog is updated automatically and all is good inside the world of LRC. Then, as Cmaier recommended earlier on, back up your catalog upon exiting LRC and just change that path to the NAS when you do it. So the catalog will live on your local system, but will backup to the NAS.

Hope that all makes sense, this is what worked best for me.

 

[mollyc]

@citypix I keep all my current calendar year photos on my local laptop hard drive. This way if I am traveling, they get imported right to the correct folder. My NAS hold all my photos from the previous year back (so anything including and older than 2021). I can still see previews of most of those images if I am traveling because they have smart previews built. I can even make websized exports even while I am not connected to the NAS (the caveat is that my catalog goes back to 2006ish....I think I have a lot of older photos that never had smart previews built because it wasn't in existence yet; but I can do the last 5 or so years of smart previews).

I keep documents like photo classes I have bought, downloadable graphics (I used to do digital scrapbooking, so have a lot of digital kits and fonts), old files that I don't want to lose but don't need everyday access to, all that kind of stuff lives on my NAS. I can access it while away through the web portal as cloud data also. Last summer I had to schlep my iMac to my parents class while I was finishing writing a photo course, and I would find an image I wanted in my LR catalog, figure out the file name, then download it from my NAS to my hard drive temporarily for a full res version to include in my document.

You cannot put a LR catalog on a network device like a NAS (although some people manage to do it in Dropbox, I do not recommend this). But if you only keep a recent time frame of images locally, as long as you have smart previews built, you can still see those images in LR; you'll just have the ?? mark saying the drive isn't found, but it reconnects as soon as you reconnect to the network.

 

[Citysnaps]

It's really up to you, I personally host all of my images and important files on the NAS, anything I can't live without. This way your computer can crash and all you have to do is replace it, reinstall the OS and constituent programs, then map back to the files and it's all safe and secure.

Thanks!

Any reason to not just host my User folder on the NAS as I have many different types of files I generate beyond image files? And would separate out my LR catalog.

How do you backup your email and messages files to the NAS? Or do you rely on a TM backup for that?

 

[Cmaier]

Thanks!

Any reason to not just host my User folder on the NAS as I have many different types of files I generate beyond image files? And would separate out my LR catalog.

How do you backup your email and messages files to the NAS? Or do you rely on a TM backup for that?

The NAS takes much longer to access than a directly-attached drive or an internal drive. I generally would not host my user file even on an external drive, let alone a NAS. I would use the NAS for backup (either something like carbon copy cloner or time machine), and store things like music libraries, video libraries, photo libraries, etc. there. Even putting your /Documents directory there might make sense (or at least having an analog to your /Documents directory there would. You could always copy over to your machine files or directories when you need to work with them, if need be. Or opening a word .doc or whatever would be fine directly from the NAS>

But your user folder is accessed so frequently by the OS that it wouldn’t make sense to put it on the NAS.

 

[Eric]

Thanks!

Any reason to not just host my User folder on the NAS as I have many different types of files I generate beyond image files? And would separate out my LR catalog.

I have not tried that directly with the user folder yet but once you establish a "save as" path it's remembered, so in MS Word (for example), saving files as, etc, or from any application, you could just save to a folder mapped to your NAS drive going forward. This is what I do for anything I want to save to the NAS.

How do you backup your email and messages files to the NAS? Or do you rely on a TM backup for that?

I personally use Gmail but TM should cover all of that, in fact if you just set it to backup automatically and then you'll never have to worry about it, just need to watch your size if you have limited space on the NAS.

 

[Citysnaps]

I have not tried that directly with the user folder yet but once you establish a "save as" path it's remembered, so in MS Word (for example), saving files as, etc, or from any application, you could just save to a folder mapped to your NAS drive going forward. This is what I do for anything I want to save to the NAS.


I personally use Gmail but TM should cover all of that, in fact if you just set it to backup automatically and then you'll never have to worry about it, just need to watch your sized if you have limited space on the NAS.

Thanks again...

From reading in the past, I understand Synology has their own version of TM. Any reason to use that over Apple's TM, assuming I can point to the NAS in the TM's list of drives?

 

[Cmaier]

Thanks again...

From reading in the past, I understand Synology has their own version of TM. Any reason to use that over Apple's TM, assuming I can point to the NAS in the TM's list of drives?

No, it’s just apple’s Time Machine. All Synology does is make their box look like a Time Capsule so that your Mac sees the synology box as a target drive for Time Machine (assuming you turn that on in Synology’s interface).

 

[Citysnaps]

No, it’s just apple’s Time Machine. All Synology does is make their box look like a Time Capsule so that your Mac sees the synology box as a target drive for Time Machine (assuming you turn that on in Synology’s interface).

Any idea if can drag my current TM structure on an external disk, going back to 2002, over to the NAS and continue to build on that?

 

[Cmaier]

Any idea if can drag my current TM structure on an external disk, going back to 2002, over to the NAS and continue to build on that?

I don’t think that will work.

 

[Eric]

Any idea if can drag my current TM structure on an external disk, going back to 2002, over to the NAS and continue to build on that?

I would just rebuild it, you can let it go behind the scenes and it's pretty easy to ignore.

 

[Citysnaps]

I would just rebuild it, you can let it go behind the scenes and it's pretty easy to ignore.

Makes the most sense. I asked out of curiosity wondering if I could preserve incremental changes from backup to backup, going back in time. But that isn't necessary for the main TM purpose I have in mind - needing to archive email and messages.

 

[Roller]

@Eric, you were VERY lucky! I've seen so many backup drives where the MicroUSB 3b connector was the only connector on the drive; the hard drive was specially made for this purpose. You would have had to get another port soldered onto the hard drive's circuit board.

I hate MicroUSB 3b ports!

I also hate Micro B plugs/ports — they're harder to insert, often don't feel solid, and have failed on one or two of my drives. It's remarkable how many variations of USB plugs and ports there are. It belies the rationale for having a standard.

 

[Citysnaps]

I also hate Micro B plugs/ports — they're harder to insert, often don't feel solid, and have failed on one or two of my drives. It's remarkable how many variations of USB plugs and ports there are. It belies the rationale for having a standard.

I don't like them either. They look like they could snap off just under their own weight. I'm sure they'd be fine on the Moon.

 

[sgtaylor5]

I don't like them either. They look like they could snap off just under their own weight. I'm sure they'd be fine on the Moon.

Amazon.com: SABRENT 2.5-Inch SATA to USB 3.0 Tool-Free External Hard Drive Enclosure [Optimized for SSD, Support UASP SATA III] Black (EC-UASP) : Electronics

...has a USB A port, which is about 3 times as deep as a microUSB 3B port has. rock steady and cheap.

 

[Eric]

For some reason this is so slow that it's turned unusable for any real usage. Not sure what's happened as I've made no real changes, rebooted router and NAS with no change at all, what used to take 10 minutes to unload a card on my older external drive now takes several hours, any other wireless network transfers seem normal. I'll have to see if plugging directly in will make a difference but for now it's pretty much off limits.