Where should I store photos? File system or the database? [duplicate]

Answer 1

The only reason I would put photos as BLOBs in a database would be if I had a cluster of servers, and I was using database replication to automatically copy the photos to every machine in the cluster.

Life is much simpler if you just store the photos as files, and store the filenames of the photos in the database. If you need to create unique filenames for the photos, you can use a primary key integer from the database as part of the filename. But you could also just use a hash of the photo itself, as suggested by John Milliken. That's simple, and simple is better.

Answer 2

If you're building a website around photos then forget the database. If it will become popular your database is going to be hit hard and the majority of its time will be spent delivering photos. Also databases don't scale very well. There are so much more advantages in keeping them on the file system. And you can scale very well, having static content servers, using services for content delivery.

Also, Amazon S3 or other cloud providers do have their advantages. For instance S3 + Amazon CloudFront will provide good performance. CloudFront caches your files on servers around the world so they'll be very easily/fast accessible from anywhere. BUT if we're talking pictures and the site becomes popular your bills might be quite high.

For S3 Amazon charges per storage and per transfer in/out of the cloud. For CloudFront per transfer.

Answer 3

Some people point out that it's easier to manage if everything's in the database: including making backups, and preserving referential integrity.

Answer 4

If you store it in db, the db will grow quickly and will be much, much larger. It is just a touch more complicated to get an image out of db for display then to it is to get it from a file system. On the other hand, you better make sure that the file names and paths do not get out of sync with what is stored in db. In the past i have chosen to store on disk instead of db. It made it easier for me do move the database to different boxes. Worked out well.