I have written numerous articles on recommended and the fastest memory cards for DJI and GoPro. This article will be different and put the focus on storage solutions for expanding your desktop/laptop, and local backup. This post will cover from basic expansion up to far more elaborate setups for your digital storage needs.
I actually recently put together my own personal NAS cloud storage and that would be a great option if you feel comfortable going the DIY route which is more advanced compared to the scope of this article or have a lot of extra hard drives lying around.
I decided to include cloud backup providers in their own separate blog post to keep the word count reasonable in this guide.
Computer / Laptop Storage
You don’t want to spend countless precious moments looking over a multitude of hard drives to find your shots. I have found it best to have ample amounts of storage from your primary editing computer or laptop so files aren’t located across many disks. It becomes hard to differentiate if you have a file or not, especially if you have high-quality previews enabled in Lightroom.
NVME or SSD is worth considering for fast responsive storage that you can work from with you photo or video software.
NAS drives are best suited for archival use and 24/7 run-time, but at the drawback of slower transfer speeds compared to regular SSD or super-fast NVME storage. These are worth considering if you want to add additional slow storage to your computer or if you decide to go the NAS route.
How large are drone files?
| Drone | Video Resolution | 1-Hour |
| Mavic Air 2 | 4K/60p, 2.7K/60p, 1080/240p Max Video Bitrate: 120 Mbps | 64GB |
| Autel EVO II | 8K/25p, 6K/30p, 4K/60p Max Video Bitrate: 120 Mbps | 64GB |
| Mavic 2 Pro | 4K/30p, 2.7K/60p, 1080/120p Max Video Bitrate: 100 Mbps | 45GB |
| Mini 2 | 4K/30p Max Video Bitrate: 100 Mbps | 45GB |
| Mavic Mini | 2.7K/30p Max Video Bitrate: 40 Mbps | 18GB |
The Mavic Mini has the lowest max video bitrate of all the above drones.
At 120Mbps you are looking at 64GBs of data hour of 8K/4K video on either of the Mavic Air 2 or Autel EVO II. Whereas, with the Mavic 2 Pro you are looking at 45GB of video files.
| Drone | Photo Resolution |
| Autel EVO II | 48MP (RAW/JPEG) |
| Mavic Air 2 | 48MP, 12MP (RAW/JPEG) |
| Mavic 2 Pro | 20MP (RAW/JPEG) |
| Mini 2 | 12MP (RAW/JPEG) |
| Mavic Mini | 12MP (JPEG) |
With the DJI drones, you have the option to retain the individual RAW files along with the combined merged panorama JPEG. In the case of the Mavic 2 Pro, you end up with 3, 9, or 21, 20MP RAW files which take up the bulk of the storage.
Of course if you opt for JPEG format you will be able to make due with a smaller memory card.
NVMe
One consideration is to upgrade or add superfast NVMe or a fast SSD drive.
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I was in desperate need for additional storage and went the route of adding a NVME so I knew I could count on the performance for my workflow. It however did void the warranty of my laptop but it was near the end anyways.
SSD
HDD / Spinning Disk
A third option would be to install or use an external 3.5″ hard disk drive.
One of the easiest solutions is to expand your storage with a 3-8TB external hard drive, however, it’s also so important to many copies of your most important files, memories, or client files. One could buy a couple of these drives while it is on sale and backup your Lightroom library, videos, and images onto the second drive. This is a great place to start if you are finding yourself without space.
easystore External Hard Drives
These are an exclusive external hard drive sold in Best Buys and may be a good option as they tend to be much cheaper than an equivalent internal hard drive.
| Best Buy | 8TB WD easystore HD | $17.50/per GB |
| Best Buy | 14TB WD easystore HD | $17.86/per GB |
These are turning up to be white label HGST Ultrastar HDDs (WD80EDAZ-11TA3A0) which are enterprise-oriented drives. I bought 5 of these external drives for use in my Network Attached Storage (NAS) server and they all turned out to be WD HGST drives running at 5400 RPM.
The downside to these drives? Supposedly, they can run hotter than other drives but as long as you have good airflow, it should be okay. It’s also speculated that these drives may be firmware limited down to its 5400 RPM rating.
Four of the drives reached over 200MB/s (over USB) while the 5th drive couldn’t quite reach 200MB/s so it is a bit of a gamble on how fast the drives you will receive in the easystore lottery.
Personal Cloud Storage
2 Bay
This is one of the easiest ways to have a second redundant copy of your files while being easy to setup. It includes two 4TB drives (3.9TB of usable space).
Network Attached Storage (NAS)
2 Bay
If your network equipment supports Link Aggregation, both of the included LAN ports can be combined. This is particularly useful if you have multiple users accessing the storage at the same time as most clients are limited to 1Gbe anyway.
HDD Selection
You could go the route of buying external hard drives (listed above) or you could go with drives intended for NAS systems like the following HDDs. Bottom line: You want drives with CMR, not SMR and that is designed for 24/7 operation.
2x8TB
Using the 2 Bay DiskStation above you could put two of these 8 TB drives in RAID 1 (mirror) or SHR (Synology Hybrid RAID)* for approximately 8 TB of storage capacity with up to 2x read speed boost and up to 1-drive failure.
*SHR is best used when combining hard disks of varying sizes otherwise RAID 1 will work just fine.
2x4TB
Using the 2 Bay DiskStation above you could put two of these 4 TB drives in RAID 1 (mirror) or SHR (Synology Hybrid RAID)* for approximately 4 TB of storage capacity with up to 2x read speed boost and up to 1-drive failure.
*SHR is best used when combining hard disks of varying sizes otherwise RAID 1 will work just fine.
4 Bay
HDD Selection
Again, you could go the route of buying external hard drives (listed above) or you could go with drives intended for NAS systems like the following HDDs. Bottom line: You want drives with CMR, not SMR and that is designed for 24/7 operation.
4x8TB
Using the 4 Bay DiskStation above you could put four of these 8 TB drives in RAID 5 (parity) or SHR (Synology Hybrid RAID)* for approximately 24 TB of storage capacity with up to 3x read speed boost and up to 1-drive failure.
*SHR is best used when combining hard disks of varying sizes otherwise RAID 1 will work just fine.
4x4TB
Using the 4 Bay DiskStation above you could put two of these 4 TB drives in RAID 5 (parity) or SHR (Synology Hybrid RAID)* for approximately 12 TB of storage capacity with up to 3x read speed boost and up to 1-drive failure.
*SHR is best used when combining hard disks of varying sizes otherwise RAID 1 will work just fine.
This is a very nice unit with the option to add-on up to two super fast 2280 NVMe SSDs and/or 10Gbe connectivity down the road. This box also supports dual LAN ports for network failover and/or Link Aggregation, which I explained for the 2-bay model.
4 GBs of DDR4 memory is included (expandable up to 8 GB) and is scalable up to 9 drives with the Synology DX517. I would save for a larger 8-bay such as DS1819+ or DS1821+ if you are in need of more immediate storage. This would take up less space on your desk or shelving vs having two units (NAS + Expansion). There are other brands but these two rank high for Amazon ratings.