Wedding Photographer - Is unRAID what I need?


Recommended Posts

Wedding photographer here. I shoot about 2TB of RAW files a year. I currently backup using x2 WD My Books that I purchase every two years (manually mirrored). After 5 years, it's a total mess. 

 

I want to build a 8 bay tower that will allow me to add drives as my budget allows; but also pop in some of my My Book drives and use those, too. Some are 5TB WB Blues. 

 

I'd also like it if my Windows workstation could see this tower as, basically, a large external hard drive. It would would ideal if I could work off of this. 

 

Can unRAID work in my situation? I figure I'd check before looking at hardware.

Link to comment

I think it can be part of the solution. Don't make the mistake of thinking that an unRAID server is the only place the photographs should be stored. In my opinion, EVERYTHING should be stored in two locations at all times. And in a critical situation like wedding photographs, one backup should be at an off-site location (think what would happen if you had a total loss fire at your house/business).

 

One of the case studies I have seen somewhere on the lime-technology site is about a photographer and he used unRAID as part of his overall solution.

 

To answer your question, yes you can setup you unRAID server to basically look like one big external (network mapped) drive.  

Link to comment
33 minutes ago, ZachOly said:

Wedding photographer here. I shoot about 2TB of RAW files a year. I currently backup using x2 WD My Books that I purchase every two years (manually mirrored). After 5 years, it's a total mess. 

 

I want to build a 8 bay tower that will allow me to add drives as my budget allows; but also pop in some of my My Book drives and use those, too. Some are 5TB WB Blues. 

 

I'd also like it if my Windows workstation could see this tower as, basically, a large external hard drive. It would would ideal if I could work off of this. 

 

Can unRAID work in my situation? I figure I'd check before looking at hardware.

Unraid is network storage and more if you want it to be. If your work station has network access, then shares you create in Unraid can be seen on your workstation. 

Link to comment

Yes, it will do the job.  You can 'map' a share on the unRAID server as a windows drive (complete with a drive letter) and use it like it is a local drive.  I will point out that access times will be a bit slower than a local drive.  You could easily set up an unRAID server to try it out using a trail license to see if everything works to your satisfaction.  (I will point out that I am a serious amateur photographer and what I do is copy all of my original photo files to the server as a permanent original.   I then copy back to my PC the ones that I am going to 'photoshop' and work on them from there.  What you would want to do with the finished product would be up to you at that point but I would suspect that you would want to copy them back in separate 'finished' folder to the folder that contains the originals to preserve that portion of your work.)

 

One thing that I want to point out is that your server should NOT be your only backup.  You really need a secondary backup scheme preferably one that is off-site.  I see that this advice has also been recommended by ptmurphy.  I repeat only because it can't emphasized too much!

 

  • Upvote 1
Link to comment

I should have mentioned it in my original post, but I'm also using Amazon's cloud backup for my RAWs

 

When I get home from a wedding, my workflow would be is:

  1. SD/CF card (from camera) to workstation's WB Black HD (working drive for undelivered files) 
  2. RAWs from WD Black to ACD (and forgotten about)
  3. RAWS from WD Black to unRAID (to be added)
  4. Delivered JPEGs to client gallery and a copy to Google Drive 
Edited by ZachOly
  • Upvote 1
Link to comment

Here's my workflow for the occaisonal event/sports photography that I do, just as a simple example.

  • Copy RAWs from SD card to local drive on PC
  • Start Import with Lightroom, first pass keep/delete and obvious cropping
  • Select final files for import
  • Run Import FROM c:\pictures\import TO \\tower\Photos\ShootCategory\ShootName
  • Do further developing on collection
  • Export jpgs for client gallery

So, where tower is your unRAID Server and Photos is a user share that will span across disks and allow you to use the entire server as essentially one big hard drive, my workflow just incorporates the movement from initial temporary working storage to long term storage on the unRAID server.  You'd still incorporate Amazon cloud drive, backups of developed images (if desired), and backup of your Lightroom catalog into the overall workflow, but it really is easy to add unRAID into the "picture" ;).  FYI, you can also simply open a Windows Explorer window to \\tower\Photos and copy back and forth, just like an external hard drive.  Hope that helps give you some ideas.

Link to comment
  • 3 years later...

Hi, Very much New to unraid and DIY nas as a whole. I am a noob and I need some help. With that said, I did manage to set up the server 
So far I have 3 (4TB) drives, 1 (512bg) NVME ssd cache running on an old amd A10 (quad core) CPU. 
at some point, I know I will need 10gb cards and switch and the reason I didnt get them yet is because my internet is foolish. 
 

(ps) I'm not running unraid as a backup. 
I am a photographer and i also use lightroom. I would love some help to accomplish the following.
1: set up is a network drive that I can edit from,

2: still be able to access and edit when I'm outside of my local network. 
3: which cloud client will allow to mount my server as a mapped drive over the internet.? 

so for those curious as to the catalog.
I plan on using syncthing  to since the LR catalog between my desktop and laptop
thus, id love to open my laptop when I travel and edit. 


Any help would be much appreciate it.
thanks in advance

Link to comment

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.