How many terabytes of data?
My collection pushed past 2 TB and I am now using 4 TB SSDs. Around here, 2 TB SSDs are cheaper than magnetic disk even before you count electricity. 4 TB magnetic disks have a lower retail price but 4 TB SSDs are on sale more often and I scored a good 4 TB SSD at a better price. 8 TB SSDs are still an insane price when compared to magnetic disks.
Assuming you can fit everything in 4 TB or less, you could use a Pi 4 with the SSD in a USB enclosure or a Pi 5 with an NVMe SSD in an adaptor board. If you choose a Pi 5 and the official PCIe adaptor HAT, you can fit a 1 TB SSD. So what size do you need?
You can set up the Pi as a file server over a wired or wireless network. The built in Pi WiFI works over a small house. You can plug in bigger WiFi adaptors for a large house.
A file server or NAS works well when you can identify images by file name or directory name. "Africa 2025" and similar. I install Nemo as the file manager as Nemo has better search than the standard file manager in the Pi OS.
You can access the files using the standard Linux network sharing if all your computers are Linux. For Windows and whatever Apple are selling this week, there are options like Samba. We can provide better guidance with a complete list of what devices will access the images.
If you choose a Pi with extra memory, say 8 GB instead of 4 GB, you can do anything including screen sharing. Then you can run image viewers, editors, and everything else on the file server machine. Search, rename, edit on the file server Pi from any other computer.
For backup, you could make your file server using a Pi 5 then have a backup server on a cheaper Pi 4. Run overnight backups from the Pi 5 to the Pi 4 using something like Backintime. In my system, the Pi 5 4 TB SSD will be backed up to a cheap 4 TB or 8 TB magnetic disk plugged into my old Pi 4 with 2 GB of RAM. The backup will be in a different building in case of fire.
Some more info from you will help us map your project onto actual hardware.
My collection pushed past 2 TB and I am now using 4 TB SSDs. Around here, 2 TB SSDs are cheaper than magnetic disk even before you count electricity. 4 TB magnetic disks have a lower retail price but 4 TB SSDs are on sale more often and I scored a good 4 TB SSD at a better price. 8 TB SSDs are still an insane price when compared to magnetic disks.
Assuming you can fit everything in 4 TB or less, you could use a Pi 4 with the SSD in a USB enclosure or a Pi 5 with an NVMe SSD in an adaptor board. If you choose a Pi 5 and the official PCIe adaptor HAT, you can fit a 1 TB SSD. So what size do you need?
You can set up the Pi as a file server over a wired or wireless network. The built in Pi WiFI works over a small house. You can plug in bigger WiFi adaptors for a large house.
A file server or NAS works well when you can identify images by file name or directory name. "Africa 2025" and similar. I install Nemo as the file manager as Nemo has better search than the standard file manager in the Pi OS.
You can access the files using the standard Linux network sharing if all your computers are Linux. For Windows and whatever Apple are selling this week, there are options like Samba. We can provide better guidance with a complete list of what devices will access the images.
If you choose a Pi with extra memory, say 8 GB instead of 4 GB, you can do anything including screen sharing. Then you can run image viewers, editors, and everything else on the file server machine. Search, rename, edit on the file server Pi from any other computer.
For backup, you could make your file server using a Pi 5 then have a backup server on a cheaper Pi 4. Run overnight backups from the Pi 5 to the Pi 4 using something like Backintime. In my system, the Pi 5 4 TB SSD will be backed up to a cheap 4 TB or 8 TB magnetic disk plugged into my old Pi 4 with 2 GB of RAM. The backup will be in a different building in case of fire.
Some more info from you will help us map your project onto actual hardware.
Statistics: Posted by peterlite — Thu Jul 31, 2025 9:51 am