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Laptop scrappers -- how do you store your stuff?

dawnmarch

dawnmarch

Pollywog
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Jan 10, 2015
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I am a desktop scrapper but have been considering getting a laptop to have more options for where I can scrap. I don't love being tied to my desk which is also where I work for my job so I end up spending a lot of time sitting here. BUT, I have a LOT of scrapbooking supplies and photos -- I think my backup is about 3 TB for everything. So, I have a big, chunky WD hard drive where I keep most of my files and I'd be worried carrying that thing around with me that it could be damaged, and it's kind of awkward. I've wondered for a while if I could do some sort of house network so that I could access my desktop files from my laptop but that seems complicated and I feel like Microsoft keeps changing how it does home networks (if they even do it anymore).

So, I'm curious what you laptop scrappers do for photo and scrapbook product storage?
 
When I went to lots of retreats and scrapped using my laptop (2008 - 2012), I just kept all my supplies on a portable EHD. When at home it was connected to the desktop and I pulled my supplies from it. I also saved all my photos and layouts on it as well (definitely didn't have as much as I do now though!). Then when I went away to scrap, I took it and had everything I needed.

Even though I no longer scrap using a laptop, I have a portable EHD (much more space these days), that I keep updated so that it mirrors my digi stash on my desktop. So if I were to go away, I could take it and have everything I need. Worked well for me. Lots of retreats and it even went on a 2 week vacation to see my father and then a cousin in 2013.

I like having the EHD because you don't know if you will always have internet access wherever you are. Some of the retreats, internet was spotty if too many of us were on it at the same time.

And, I have 2 other EHD's with the same things on them so if one fails, I have a backup.
 
When I didn't have a huge hard drive (and a much smaller stash) I used a 250gb external hard drive for my stash and worked off that. Part of it was I had a very flaky laptop in general and I hadn't discovered the wonders of online back up services so I was being extra cautious of any data
 
I have a 2TB EHD - that houses all my stash and layouts and my Mac Photos library. I've optimized storage on that though so the full files are in the cloud, they don't take up that much space on it (considering there's 30,000 photos in it).
 
Digital kits:
I keep the items I use the most frequently on my MacBook Pro. The items I use less often but am not ready to delete are kept on a 1T EHD.

Photos:
I keep about a year's worth of photos on my laptop. All the other digital photos are stored on a NAS that has a double-back-up system. I don't know how many T it is. I just know that even if one back-up crashes, we have a second back-up and offsite / cloud storage.

Layouts:
I have an inexpensive photo bucket account where I store all of my layouts, so I can share them, print them, find them, post them easily. I also have free storage on Shutterfly for the phonebooks that I've made. I have about a dozen books stored on their servers.
 
I've read about hard drives that you can plug into your internet router and then that becomes a home network that you can then access from any device that is connected to that router either by Ethernet or Wi-Fi. I'm toyed with digging into that type of a system, but I wonder how fast it would be. I've meant to ask that question here several times to see if anyone is doing that and how it works. I'm on a desktop at home and I actually have my OLD desktop in my craftroom, so I just keep everything on an EHD that I can move from computer to computer, but then if I ever had a laptop, I'd hate to have something extra plugged into flopping about.
 
I have a crap load of thumb drives.. I also have am plug in hard drive thingy.. and online back ups..
My old plug in hard drive fried a few years back and I lost years and years of kits ... and I was crushed.. like crushed ... it was the worst thing in the world.
 
I'm on a Mac with a 2TB HD (I only use 1 of my 2 TBs - all of my photos and a pretty decent amount of scrap supplies). I just keep the things I most frequently use there. If I need to dig into other stuff, I plug into my EHD, but it's rare. Most of my pages are made with new (to me) products for CT requirements, so I'm rarely going deep into my stash unless it's for a challenge where I need something specific.
 
Karen said:
I've read about hard drives that you can plug into your internet router and then that becomes a home network that you can then access from any device that is connected to that router either by Ethernet or Wi-Fi. I'm toyed with digging into that type of a system, but I wonder how fast it would be. I've meant to ask that question here several times to see if anyone is doing that and how it works. I'm on a desktop at home and I actually have my OLD desktop in my craftroom, so I just keep everything on an EHD that I can move from computer to computer, but then if I ever had a laptop, I'd hate to have something extra plugged into flopping about.
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Yes, this exactly. I’ve also heard of having a drive connected to the router but the speed seems iffy. And an EHD with a laptop feels like it would be too floppy! But it sounds like people do go with EHDs and I know they are getting much smaller so maybe it would be fine.
 
SeattleSheri said:
I'm on a Mac with a 2TB HD (I only use 1 of my 2 TBs - all of my photos and a pretty decent amount of scrap supplies). I just keep the things I most frequently use there. If I need to dig into other stuff, I plug into my EHD, but it's rare. Most of my pages are made with new (to me) products for CT requirements, so I'm rarely going deep into my stash unless it's for a challenge where I need something specific.
Click to expand...
That’s a huge drive for a Mac. One thing I don’t love about Apple is that they are usually really stingy with storage space.
 
I've got a 2TB hard drive. I routinely go through and get rid of old products I don't use. I have plenty of space at the moment. (I just got my computer back so it's like starting from scratch).

I back up all photos to Smugmug. I need to figure out the best way to organize them though. I may do monthly uploads just to be safe.
 
I keep some of my digi stash on my laptop, it has 2 hard drives. The rest is on an EHD. I also keep my digi-scrap zip files on flash drives in monthly folders.
 
After losing a few external drives, I now store my stuff online. I use MEGA for my kits and supplies. I store all of my photos in my Amazon Prime photos.
 
I also use portable EHDs. You can get 4TB for not too horrible of a price and they are small enough to fit more than one in your computer bag.
 
My supplies and stored pages only come to about 234 GB, so I have everything on my 1 TB internal solid state drive. Photos only come to 48 GB, so I still have room to grow. I used an EHD for a long time but it had a finicky connection. Hated it and was always afraid I would lose my stuff. I know it's time for me to start gleaning out things I will never use from yesteryear (I started digscrapping in late 2004). There's always new and exciting stuff coming out. I need to get over my nostalgia! LOL
 
I just bought myself a MacBook Pro to use when away from home and my computer engineering son recommended this drive...

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/prod...ssde61_2t00_g25_2tb_extreme_portable_ssd.html

It is SUPER fast... no lag and is TINY (relatively speaking). Oh... and has a rubber coating on the outside to protect it if bumped or dropped. I have BackBlaze so this was added to my backup (when plugged into my main computer) and is part of my Time Machine back up as well. I would like to utilize our iCloud storage more, but I haven't gotten that organized yet.
 
tkradtke said:
I just bought myself a MacBook Pro to use when away from home and my computer engineering son recommended this drive...

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/prod...ssde61_2t00_g25_2tb_extreme_portable_ssd.html

It is SUPER fast... no lag and is TINY (relatively speaking). Oh... and has a rubber coating on the outside to protect it if bumped or dropped. I have BackBlaze so this was added to my backup (when plugged into my main computer) and is part of my Time Machine back up as well. I would like to utilize our iCloud storage more, but I haven't gotten that organized yet.
Click to expand...
I love that solid state drives are enabling smaller and smaller EHDs! That looks like a good one - thanks for the recommendation!
 
I scrap on a laptop, but most of the time I do it connected to a bigger 2nd monitor and my EHD at a desk. Since most of my work is CT work, I keep a monthly folder with subfolders by designer on my laptop with all the current stuff I'm working on, then at the end of the month I move it all to an EHD. That way if I need to work on the laptop away from my desk, I at least have all the most current things handy. I have a lot of my photos (back to like 2016, I think) on my laptop, but I have a lot more backed up to Google Photos, so I can just download what I need from there quickly and temporarily if I need to. And I love that I can search Google Photos by people, event, or place to find just the right one. Otherwise, they are all stored on a couple of different EHDs.
 
IntenseMagic said:
Since most of my work is CT work, I keep a monthly folder with subfolders by designer on my laptop with all the current stuff I'm working on, then at the end of the month I move it all to an EHD.
Click to expand...

thats actually such a good idea, I've been struggling to figure out a decent way to manage those downloads
 
I use a laptop with a 4TB hard drive and a large second monitor that's my primary one for working on. Most of the photo storage is on my husband's desktop computer with mega-storage that I access through a shared drive. My husband also regularly backs up all the computers to both cloud and external storage.
 
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