Backups - What do you use?

the_tractor

I need to change my backup strategy.

I have a 300G drive in the PC, and a 350G external drive for backups of photos/music/videos etc.

I manually perform backups, have yet to get a automatic one that does what I want.

But I need to upgrage, as I'm running out of space.

I was thinking of getting a NAS drive, maybe a D-Link ShareCentre or similar with 2x1TB drives.

Just interested in outer poeples setups and recommendations.

kippy

There are a number of service providers that do this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_backup
This seems to be getting a lot of airtime lately:
http://mozy.ie/pro/?ref=160afc10&gclid=CLuro-HNu6wCFRRc4QodPy_Inw

NAS drives raided are also decent but they can be stolen/destroyed pretty easily, especially when there may be a better option out there at the moment to protect you business.

Ballyman

kippy wrote: »

This seems to be getting a lot of airtime lately:
http://mozy.ie/pro/?ref=160afc10&gclid=CLuro-HNu6wCFRRc4QodPy_Inw

Their basic package of 50GB isn't very practical for a photographer and they also seem very expensive. There is another one called Zovo who do "unlimited" webspace for about €50 pa - http://www.zovo.co/packages.php

kippy

Ballyman wrote: »

Their basic package of 50GB isn't very practical for a photographer and they also seem very expensive. There is another one called Zovo who do "unlimited" webspace for about €50 pa - http://www.zovo.co/packages.php

Yeah,
There are obviously lots of providers out there, each with different offerings that may or may not suit any one individual. I was just pointing the OP in the general direction of online storage/backup.

the_tractor

Thanks for the tips guys, but I was looking for more on local physical storage, i.e. NAS drives etc.

kippy

Ah well,
Something like this with 2 drives would probably come in less that 200 euro. 1 TB of storage raided.
http://www.dabs.ie/products/netgear-readynas-duo--2-bay----no-drives-included-5063.html?q=nas&src=3

Ballyman

Even better again is Backify! - https://www.backify.com/pricingplans

magicbastarder

i use an external drive (mainly stored offsite) which i sync with my photos folder using ice mirror.

Gregor Samsa

I use Apple Aperture on an MacBook Pro at home to manage/edit/store my images. The laptop has a 1TB hard drive.

Aperture has a "Vault" feature, where you can backup your library incrementally to another location. So, after each import, I quickly back-up my library to an external 1TB USB drive. Then, every now and then, I back that USB drive up onto another identical 1TB USB drive that I keep in my desk in work.

I should probably do this backup more often - if someone was to beak into the house and steal the laptop, chances are they'll grab the HD attached to it too. Or if the house is gutted by fire, both would be lost. So an off-site backup is a good idea.

I have too many photos (and too slow an internet connection) to backup online. I do use Apple's Photo Stream, but it's more for sharing between devices than backup - it only stores 1000 photos, and only for 30 days, and doesn't handle video files.

I had a laptop stolen in Berlin a few years ago with all my photos (and music and everything else) on it. Luckily, I had backed up just before I left for the holiday, so I didn't lose any data. But it was a close call, and a sobering reminder of how close you could be to losing irreplaceable stuff so easily if you don't have a proper backup strategy in place.

Rew

Keep in mind what your guarding against. If you have your primary and backup in the same physical building the likely hood would be that that your aren't well protected from the likes of fire and theft. If its computer/drive failure then your ok. My brother and my dad swap backup devices to each others homes.

Also a huge mistake that catches a lot of people out is never verifying/checking their backups to see is their stuff actually backed up.

I setup 2 NAS devices to sync over the internet between 2 physical locations which works well but you have to be careful in this case as they are mirrored if there was an accidental deletion that could be mirrored over.

If you getting a fireproof safe check how heat proof it is and potentially waterproof as the fire brigade are going to be putting out the fire.

dirtyghettokid

phutyle wrote: »

I use Apple Aperture on an MacBook Pro at home to manage/edit/store my images. The laptop has a 1TB hard drive.

Aperture has a "Vault" feature, where you can backup your library incrementally to another location. So, after each import, I quickly back-up my library to an external 1TB USB drive. Then, every now and then, I back that USB drive up onto another identical 1TB USB drive that I keep in my desk in work.

i do this as well an can definitely vouch for it!
i backup my backups too. i have copies on two different external discs. full card copy backups and then the vault backups from aperture.
i also backup my machine with all the aperture contents on another external disc via time machine on the mac.

Personally, I have a few hard drives (4 1TB drives, 1 500GB) and i use my laptop as a backup too (as i never use it). Because I already have so many hard drives, i made space on them all so they've all got copies of my photos.

That said, they're all in the same place, so whilst you'd need to be massively unlucky for all four to fail at once (and the laptop and internal HDD in the desktop) a fire, as has been mentioned above, could wipe every thing on me.

So I leave the 500GB in a friend's house and get it off him every month or two to back up to it. I've only got about 300GB of photographs, so the 500gb drive will do me fine for a while.

Personally, I'd rather buy two 500GB drives than one 1TB drive. And I'd also highly recommend buying a backup for your backup (Regardless of whether you plan to leave it in another location or not).

Two hard drives failing at the same time isn't hugely unlikely, truth be told. I know (of) a guy who had two hard drives and his computer destroyed when he got a fairly serious power surge through the house. Not sure how common that is (only time I ever heard of it) but because they were both plugged into the same connection or something, it destroyed both of them. Had he had another HDD sitting in a drawer somewhere not plugged in, he wouldn't have lost much (depending how often it's backed up). Instead, unluckily for him, he lost everything.


Now I don't know the guy personally that that happened to, and it could be one of those stories that just does the rounds where everyone knows someone that happened to, or it could be a myth started by a memory company ('BUY MOAR DRIVEZ!!!!') but it doesn't sound completely unrealistic to me, personally. Unlikely, yes, but plausible all the same.


So yeah. Just buy more drives. No point spending hundreds or thousands of euro on camera gear and then cheaping out and buying only one external as a backup. Also, in my experience, anything over 1TB is usually unreliable (so if you go over 1TB of photos, use two 1TB's rather than one 2TB drive).


It truly is 'the more you spend, the more you save'. :pac:

magicbastarder

Deleted User wrote: »

I've only got about 300GB of photographs, so the 500gb drive will do me fine for a while.

i've 'only' got 150GB, and i must do a prune.