This as-told-to effort is based connected a speech pinch Allen Cooley, photographer, director, and laminitis of Allen Cooley Photography, a commercial, beauty, and image workplace based successful Atlanta, Georgia. The speech has been edited for magnitude and clarity.
I've been moving professionally arsenic a photographer since astir 2006, and for astir of my career, I hardly had to deliberation astir the value of difficult drives. They were a basal costs of doing business.
Now, I person to beryllium strategical astir each thrust I buy.
I started noticing a spike successful difficult thrust prices toward the extremity of 2025. When I went backmost done my receipts, I recovered that I'd paid $400 for a 4-terabyte thrust successful 2022. Today, a comparable thrust costs astir $1,200.
When I tallied up what I'd paid successful 2025 for drives, it was complete $20,000. That's why I stopped buying them wholly this year.
Luckily, I've accumulated hundreds of difficult drives complete my career. Every caller job, I'd simply bargain a fewer more. So, 20 years and thousands of jobs later, I've go thing of a hard-drive hoarder — and that wont is yet paying off.
How I utilized AI to lick my problem
Commercial photography requires a batch of storage. I usually request 3 aliases 4 portable drives for a job, and sometimes arsenic galore arsenic 5 aliases six. And because a customer mightiness travel backmost 3 years later to renew the assets, I person to support the files agelong aft a sprout is over.
On a caller run that progressive some video and still photography, buying that magnitude of caller drives would person costs maine $4,000 to $5,000.
That was money I didn't want to spend.
So, I used Claude to help maine build a programme that catalogs what's stored crossed my drives. Now, I tin hunt for a file, find each thrust that contains a copy, and fig retired what I tin safely delete to free up space.
Instead of manually organizing hundreds of drives, I tin fundamentally person a speech pinch my archive. It's saved maine days, if not weeks, worthy of work.
The irony isn't mislaid connected me: I judge request from the information centers powering AI is 1 logic storage has gotten truthful expensive, and past I move astir and usage Claude to thief maine debar spending thousands of dollars connected caller drives.
I don't cognize really agelong I tin debar buying much drives
How agelong I tin support avoiding caller difficult drives depends connected really overmuch activity comes in.
If I'm shooting only still photography, I tin astir apt support this going for a while. Video is different. I'm chiefly hired to shoot video and stills together, and those jobs require truthful overmuch retention that yet I'll request much drives.
Also, my business is down astir 30% from its highest successful 2023. Last twelvemonth was peculiarly rough, and this twelvemonth has been astir level compared pinch past year.
I don't blasted each of that connected the advertizing industry. Earlier successful my career, I worked 10- aliases 13-hour days, answered emails astatine midnight and connected weekends, and made myself extraordinarily accessible.
Now I person 2 young daughters, and I'm much apt to walk my clip astatine a shot crippled aliases taking 1 of them somewhere. So erstwhile I look astatine that decline, I cognize immoderate of it reflects a choice I've made to walk little clip working.
Still, I'm watching the manufacture closely.
The costs of doing business has gone up while, successful my experience, companies and agencies are reallocating their budgets aliases spending little connected immoderate accepted photography and advertizing work.
I besides don't expect hard-drive prices simply to return to what I was utilized to paying. My conjecture is that yet different shaper could measurement successful to service consumers who request cheaper storage.
Until then, I'm going to support being resourceful pinch what I have. If activity picks up, I'll astir apt person to commencement buying drives again. If it doesn't, I tin make these hundreds of aged drives past a batch longer.
Read next
Jessica Orwig is simply a elder editor astatine Business Insider, wherever she collaborates pinch reporters, editors, and producers crossed teams to shape, write, edit, and people stories that link pinch a world audience. While her roots are successful subject and exertion journalism, her activity coming spans business, careers, culture, and the large ideas shaping the future.She earned her Master’s successful Science & Technology Journalism from Texas A&M University and holds a Bachelor’s successful Astronomy & Physics from The Ohio State University. Throughout her career, she’s helped lead sum connected everything from abstraction exploration and ambiance alteration to innovation, the early of work, and evolving taste trends.Career HighlightsLed sum connected technological milestones, including:
- Blue Origin's inaugural New Glenn launch
- Intuitive Machine's groundbreaking satellite landing for the US
- SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn historical spaceflight
- NASA’s Parker Solar Probe Historic Flyby
- Japan’s SLIM lunar landing
- The first image of a achromatic hole
- India’s historical Moon landing
- SpaceX’s inaugural Starship-Super Heavy launch
- Discovery of gravitational waves
- NASA’s Pluto flyby
Reported connected breaking news and technological discoveries, including:
- Microplastics successful the quality brain
- Peregrine Mission One’s grounded flight
- The Palisades fires
- SpaceX Starship explosions
- Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument’s 3D representation of the beingness and what it reveals
- A section cosmic void that shouldn’t exist
- The Boeing Starliner mission
- Mexico City’s h2o crisis
- Earth’s mysterious soul halfway behavior
Popular stories she’s edited connected subject and health:
- What it will return to modernize the American grid and usher successful the clean-energy revolution
- I study toxic microplastics. Here's really I protect myself and my kids astatine home.
- A mega-earthquake could onslaught the Pacific Northwest immoderate time — and we're not prepared
- Flying is astir to go moreover much miserable
- Why the US can’t nonstop humans to Mars
- The world's astir celebrated banana faces extinction but scientists' caller creation could thief prevention it
- Scientists yet deliberation they cognize wherever the astir vulnerable portion of this US earthquake area is and it's bad news for Washington
- One of Mt. Everest's deadliest passages is increasing moreover much treacherous
- Jupiter's satellite Europa generates capable oxygen to support a cardinal group live for a day, NASA says
Popular stories she’s written and/or edited connected careers, culture, life, and business:
- He weighed complete 400 pounds arsenic an FBI undercover supplier — and it became his champion disguise
- A erstwhile FBI Special Agent who infiltrated the Italian Mafia, Mexican cartels, and Russian and Asian organized crime groups says he fears 1 group supra the rest
- He was diagnosed pinch colon crab astatine 31 successful prison, and his endurance likelihood weren't great. Now 59, he says spiraling is pointless.
- I stopped bartending full-time to waste ice. My institution now makes astir $3 cardinal a year, catering to Michelin-starred restaurants successful New York City.
- My dada ran a nutrient cart and called it the 'worst business.' I decided to travel successful his footsteps anyway.
- I moved from the US to Rome for a slower gait of life, but aft 7 years I've realized I'll ne'er afloat set to immoderate Italian ways
- After losing excessively galore bidding wars for a location successful LA, I bought a 5-bedroom location successful the suburbs. I quickly realized it was a mistake.
- We bought our dream location successful Colorado, but wildfires and location security trends had america trading 1.5 years later
- A female who retired early astatine 58 thought she was fresh pinch complete $500,000 successful savings. A fewer years later, it was gone.
- I've made complete $40,000 trading plush dolls I scoop from claw machines. Here's really I learned to hit the crippled and move my hobby into a profitable broadside hustle.
- A 17-year-old designed a cheaper, much businesslike drone. The Department of Defense conscionable awarded him $23,000 for it.
- Yukon golden miners are unearthing mummified ancient creatures and truckloads of fossils from the Ice Age. Take a look.
- Archaeologists are uncovering mysterious ancient objects connected Norway's pouring glaciers. Take a look.
- I'm an American mom successful Italy. When I couldn't thief my girl pinch her homework, I realized really isolated I felt.
Nikita Grant
Nikita Grant is simply a shaper for Insider's News and Documentary video team.
English (US) · 
Indonesian (ID) · 
