Drive tracking for photographers
Fifteen years of shooting is a shelf of drives with names like "BACKUP 4" and no memory of what went on which.
The four-year-old shoot problem
A client asks for images from a job you barely remember. Without a catalogue, answering means plugging in drives until you find it, and some of those drives are old enough that you would rather not spin them up at all.
Snapshot each drive once and the archive becomes searchable. Type the client name or the shoot folder and you learn which drive to reach for. The drives stay powered down until you have a reason to wake one.
Know what a drive holds without spinning it up
A snapshot includes the full folder structure and a breakdown of what is taking up space, by folder and by file type. You can browse a drive that is sitting in a drawer, which is useful when deciding what to consolidate and what to retire.
Drives that leave your studio
- A retoucher takes a drive of raws for a month.
- A client asks for the full-resolution archive on physical media.
- A drive goes to a lab, a printer, or a stock agency.
- You hand a backup to a family member for off-site storage.
Each of those is a loan with a due date. Overdue drives surface on their own, which is the only reason the drive at your brother’s house ever comes back.
Labels that get a lost drive home
A QR label on each drive means anyone who finds one can scan it and see how to reach you, without seeing a single filename.