December 23, 20223 yr Hi, So I have a question about what the best strategy is to have access to large photo archives with Photos for the Mac using Unraid. I am using sparsebundle images to keep the file system managed properly. This means that I keep the working images on the array and then can mount them over the network and it looks like another drive. Positives is that it has better protection than a random hard drive and super scalable. Downsides is that it is slow. So I am rethinking the process. I was thinking I have a two options: 1. Add SSD drives to cache, create a cache pool and just use it for photo editing -- having files mirrored to the array as backup (And offsite or cloud in the long run too). Bonus here is that its easy to add more storage, I can throw some SSD drives in and mount it over the network and use it. Downsides is that my network is limited to gigabit and it isn't feasible to upgrade it, so I am not really sure if this will actually make much of a speed difference at all if the rate limiting step is the network. 2. Buy an external drive for my mac of sufficient size, use sparesbundle images on it for different archives and then backup the drive back to the array as a backup. Pros is that it is going to be faster if I have a USB 3 external drive and pretty easy to manage backups over the network. Cons are just setting up the backup and then figuring out what is the best external drive to to do the job (see my sub question). I am leaning to #2 as it seems to make more sense and will be faster. Question is type of drive. I am guessing USB 3 is going to be faster than any SSD or HD externally, so it likely won't matter what I get? I can probably just pickup a cheap 4 TB external with USB 3 and go with that? Any thoughts or experience that others have with managing their family photo archives and best practices thereof? Thanks. -Adam
January 25, 20233 yr Author Has anyone got experience doing #2? It seems like creating multiple sparsebundles on an external drive that synch back to unraid is the best way... but would love to hear how others are managing their mac photos collections with unraid - or if they gave up and are doing something different... -Adam
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