Portable Storage for your Laptop

A new modern laptop may be faster, but still has one problem, and that is storage.
You rarely have more than 512GB when you buy a budget laptop capable of photography and video editing, then we are talking about laptops in the price range of €750-€1500.
If you go for a graphically better and/or faster laptop, and price range of more than €1500, it will be more likely 1TB. But even then this is not very much.

Of course, a lot depends on what you want to keep.
Jpegs and Raw ? my Workflow script can help you a bit here.
But even if you work almost exclusively with Jpegs, it still adds up.
Your full resolution Jpegs will definitely need to be saved , but what to do with your edits and your scaled down Jpegs for web ?
And what to do with your “edit saves” from your Adobe, Gimp, … – you know those XCF, AI, XD, PSD files …
Do you also use your computer for editing video, saving e-mails, documents, music & downloads ?
Well, let’s be clear, 512GB will be full in no time.

No one has to agree with me of course, many will have their own opinions and solutions. Especially the sellers in the shops, but let me give some advice that comes from years of experience in IT. Below I have seven considerations that can help you make the best assessment/decision :

– When buying storage there are three factors that are related to each other: Speed – Size – Price, the challenge is to find a good balance that fits with what you are looking for.
– Know that SSDs are much faster than mechanical drives, but fail or wear out faster. An SSD will also be much more expensive than a mechanical drive of the same size.
– Mechanical drives are slower but much cheaper, in addition they are very reliable over longer periods.
– SSDs are best for editing photos and videos, wherever speed is important.
– You don’t want to keep all your photos and videos, your documents, music, etc. on one SSD, or to be sure not longer than 3 years or certainly less than 5 years.
– For long-term storage or backup, mechanical drives are best.
– One disk to work on, or one backup, is the same as no backup, if something goes wrong you lose everything.

So what exactly do we need?
Well, to know approximately how much storage we need, just take the properties of your photo and video folder from last year, and count on some reserve.
In my case it was about 300GB last year, this year I estimate at least 350GB for that, since I plan to shoot more video.
If we add our operating system, documents, mails, downloads and some music, the 512GB will be used up quickly.
So, to run a full year I need to at least double that, and it has to be fast storage – so SSD.
But, I also want access to my photos and other data from before 2022, that is long term storage and an ordinary mechanical disk can serve for this.
And then we haven’t talked about backup yet.

So, what did I choose?
First of all, many will think of “docking stations”, a device with multiple connection options and possibly equipped with one or two HDD drives. But these are expensive, and the main drawback is that they are not really portable.
These docking stations are more suitable for companies,
and I wanted to add storage without losing portability.
Well, to have enough and fast work storage, I opted for a 1TB Samsung SSD T7
This drive is very small and so easy to carry, super fast and still reasonably affordable.
For long-term storage and older data, I chose a reliable 4TB Western Digital WD Elements – despite being a mechanical disc, it’s still incredibly fast !
For backup another WD Elements of 4TB.

Workflow :
During the week I just work on my laptop together with the Samsung SSD
I have created folders for photos and videos on the Samsung SSD, I leave other data on the laptop’s internal drive.
Every other month I copy the new data from the laptop and SSD to the external WD Elements of 4TB – this only takes a few minutes – because I have two WD drives I provided it with a sticker “Big Data” to make it easy to recognize.
The drive also contains all my previous data from the last few years.
After copying is done, the 4TB WD Elements “Big Data” will be mirrored to the second WD Elements for backup.
The latter hard disk is provided with a sticker “My Backup”, and is safely put away after mirroring.
The WD Elements drive “Big Data”, is connected to the laptop whenever I want to consult my old data, and every month to copy the latest data.

For copying/synchronizing and backing up I use the Open Source software FreeFileSync, it works flawless on Linux, Windows and MacOS.

FreeFileSync has many options such as comparing and logging, copying, synchronizing and mirroring, but it is still very clear and easy to use.
You can schedule backups in batch or manually, repeating backups such as from folder A to B can be saved, so you can easily record and start different compare or copy jobs when needed.
And FreefileSync is free !

In the example above I just copied my entire 2023 Picture folder to my new Samsung SSD T7 disk, 1464 pictures in 3:30min.
This drive comes with 2 different connection cables,
one from USB-C to USB-A 3.2 and one USB-C to USB-C.

Stickers printed with Canon Zoemini

Samsung T7 1TB Specs : USB 3.2 (Gen2, 10Gb/s), USB 3.2 (Gen2, 10Gb/s) type-c

WD Elements 4TB Specs : USB 3.2 (Gen1, 5Gb/s), USB 3.2 (Gen1, 5Gb/s) usb-a

Of course, it doesn’t have to be a Samsung SSD or Western Digital HDD for your situation.
The most important thing is that you use “reliable” brands, which can also be Seagate or Sandisk, but don’t buy cheap unknown hardware.
I paid for all my hardware myself – i’am therefore not sponsored.

La Gallerie

The photo gallery of Open Source Photography, Olympus micro 4/3 system, Vintage Lens Photograpy, Film Simulation, PictureFX, HDR – Photographer : Marc R.