If you shoot regularly — especially concerts, festivals, or tours — storage isn't just a technical detail. It's survival.
Photographers often talk about lenses, cameras, presets, and color grading… but not enough about where all that data goes. And trust me, when your drive crashes mid-tour or you lose a month of RAWs because your only backup was in the same bag — it suddenly becomes the most important gear you own.
SSD vs HDD — What’s the Difference?
Before we go further, let’s clear something up: SSDs (solid-state drives) and HDDs (hard disk drives) are not the same thing.
SSDs are faster, lighter, and have no moving parts. That means quicker imports/exports, faster edits, and way less risk of physical failure — which is huge when you’re tossing gear into a van every night.
HDDs are cheaper per terabyte, but slower and more fragile. They’re okay for long-term storage at home, but risky for daily use on tour or travel.
What I use right now?
At home: I keep several 2TB HDD external hard drives for backups. It stores my full-resolution exports, old RAWs, Lightroom catalogs, etc. I don’t plug it in every day — it’s my “safe copy” vault, not my workspace.
On tour: I carry two 1TB SSD drives.
One is for daily work — importing RAWs, editing, and exporting.
The second is for backups
That way, if one drive fails, gets stolen, or vanishes into the venue void, I still have a copy.
1TB fills up fast when you shoot RAW every night. But two 1TBs let me stay light, fast, and organized on the go.
Do you shoot video? Go 2TB minimum.
Only doing small JPEG sessions or Insta reels? 1TB could last a while.
Touring full-time, shooting RAW daily? You’ll want both — and even more soon.
Also: never trust a single hard drive to carry everything. That’s a horror story waiting to happen.
My Go-To Drive Brands.
I've used a mix of trusted brands over the years, depending on the job and travel needs:
LaCie Rugged HDD: My favorite for durability. These drives are built for travel — shock-resistant, rubber casing, and generally reliable in bumpy tour conditions.
SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD: Super fast and compact. Great for editing on the go and backing up quickly between sets. Small enough to fit in the pocket.
Samsung T7: Quiet, fast SSD with strong performance. They’re not as rugged.
Any of these will do the job if you treat them well. Just remember: no drive lasts forever. Backup redundancy is key.
Your photos are your work. Your memory. Your proof. If you lose them, that’s not just annoying — it can mean losing client trust, deadlines, and sometimes irreplaceable moments. Keep your backup in a separate location or bag.
Cloud vs Physical Drives
If you’re traveling, internet sucks. Relying on cloud backup while touring is risky. Uploading 60GB in a hotel lobby on sketchy Wi-Fi? Not fun.
But for at-home solutions, I’m personally looking into NAS system — something that lets me access files remotely, from anywhere. Haven’t settled on one yet, but it’s in the works.
Treat your files like they matter. Because they do.
If you're a touring creative, your gear works hard — but your storage should work harder. Keep it backed up, keep it simple, and save your future self a massive headache :)