Backup

[colinm10]

I'm sure most people on here covet all the images you keep. I'm interested to know what forms of reliable backup are used.

I thought I was being very diligent using 2 external 3Tb drives and backing up each retained image twice & it is true that having duplicate backups has just saved me. However these drives fail very frequently and it's a real pain to start over with a new one.

Do you have the same trouble with the external drives lasting a relatively short time like a year? what other backup sstems do you use?

Apologies if this is in the wrong forum

[Manfred M]

I'm sure most people on here covet all the images you keep. I'm interested to know what forms of reliable backup are used.

I thought I was being very diligent using 2 external 3Tb drives and backing up each retained image twice & it is true that having duplicate backups has just saved me. However these drives fail very frequently and it's a real pain to start over with a new one.

Do you have the same trouble with the external drives lasting a relatively short time like a year? what other backup sstems do you use?

Apologies if this is in the wrong forum

Welcome to CiC Colin(?).

I use a specialized external drive that has two (or more) drives using RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks). These are part of my home network and they have a permanent home where I don't go plugging them in everytime I same some images. The main advantage of a RAID setup is that it is resistant to single disk failure. If one disk goes, the others still have the data.

I also back up the "best of the best" on an external cloud based tool; in my case I use Dropbox.

[george013]

I'm sure most people on here covet all the images you keep. I'm interested to know what forms of reliable backup are used.

I thought I was being very diligent using 2 external 3Tb drives and backing up each retained image twice & it is true that having duplicate backups has just saved me. However these drives fail very frequently and it's a real pain to start over with a new one.

Do you have the same trouble with the external drives lasting a relatively short time like a year? what other backup sstems do you use?

Apologies if this is in the wrong forum

What external drives are you using and what OS?

George

[DanK]

To be really safe, one backup should be offsite. That's been a standard in much of the computing world for decades. So, I sync (not back up) to an external hard drive and have a second backup (not a sync) in the cloud, using Crashplan.

I have never had an external drive fail, but mine are only spinning for a short amount of time each year. I upload my photos to my current main hard drive, cull some photos, and then sync to the external drive before re-formatting the card. I then unplug the external drive until the next time. That drive is where my lightroom catalog backups go as well. over the next hour or two, Crashplan silently backs everything up to the cloud.

Synching makes it much easier to recover individual images, if I need them. It's more like RAID--I have a duplicate of whatever state my primary hard drive is in, rather than a bunch of incremental backups. There are lots of simple and effective synch tools for windows. I use the one built into Powerdesk Pro.

My next step may be an external cradle so that I can use standard hard drives rather than ones in their own cases. The only advantage is that they are smaller, so finding a place for them when I start accumulating more will be easier.

[colinm10]

What external drives are you using and what OS?

George

George, I've tried LaCie & Seagate both with similar failure rates. Used on a Chillblast PC with Windows 7

[benm]

George, I've tried LaCie & Seagate both with similar failure rates. Used on a Chillblast PC with Windows 7

All hard drives fail eventually. Possibly Seagate is/wasn't the best with their 3TB drives. See this chart:



My backup philosophy is Multiple Backups Multiple Locations.

[colinm10]

Ben, wish I'd seen that chart earlier and thank you. Does anybody here have experience of the Hitachi drives? Are there any other drawbacks with them?

[Manfred M]

Ben, wish I'd seen that chart earlier and thank you. Does anybody here have experience of the Hitachi drives? Are there any other drawbacks with them?

Hitatchi bought out IBM's hard drive division (including the manufacturing facilities) around 12 years ago and the new entity was called HGST. IBM had some major quality issues at one of the plants (if I remember it was in the Czech Republic, and this was part of the reason they exited the hard drive business). I had a couple of the HGST drives failed within a few months of installation, but fortunately they were in a RAID unit, and covered under warranty, so I did not suffer any data or financial loss.

Western Digital took over controlling interest in HGST around three years ago, but seem to run it as a separate company. I run a couple of their drives in one of my backup units, but I also have WD and Seagate drives and have not noticed any reliability issues. That being said, these drives get powered down and parked when there is no data access, so they are treated quite gently.

[IzzieK]

One of my offsite drive is overseas.

[colinm10]

Very cryptic Izzie, does that indicate a Cloud backup?

Thanks Manfred for the info. Reading between the lines, RAID seems popular - I've considered it but not sure my level of computer expertise would make it feasible. How difficult is it to set up?

[Krawuntzel]

Thanks Manfred for the info. Reading between the lines, RAID seems popular - I've considered it but not sure my level of computer expertise would make it feasible. How difficult is it to set up?

I personally use/have used products of Synology and QNAP for my RAID5-NAS with 4 Harddrives (NAS= network attached storage). Installation is not as easy as plug-in an external harddisk, but I think that todays products are easy to set up. The producers have videos guiding you through the installation. Have a look.
And yes: harddisks will fail, so I recommend to have always at least one "spare" to replace a failing.
Erwin
P.S. and being a bit paranoid I have an external server (not overseas as Izzie ) residing in a house a few blocks away.

[colinm10]

Thanks Erwin, I'm off to YouTube right now

[IzzieK]

Very cryptic Izzie, does that indicate a Cloud backup?.......

No...I do not subscribe to Cloud, hopefully not in my lifetime. I do not trust backup in someone else's computers controlled by someone else. My statement is not cryptic because it is a simple statement....just as you read it...one of my backup is overseas. Period.

[DanK]

No...I do not subscribe to Cloud, hopefully not in my lifetime. I do not trust backup in someone else's computers controlled by someone else. My statement is not cryptic because it is a simple statement....just as you read it...one of my backup is overseas.

Where overseas? It is possible to back up your stuff to someone else's personal computer elsewhere, which I have never done. And some companies run their own remote backup servers, so you can back up remotely without going to the cloud. Pretty much any other remote storage is "in the cloud," which just means 'stored on somebody else's server via the internet.' Whether the owner/operator of that server has access depends on whether and how you encrypt files before they leave your computer.

Personally, I don't worry about it with photos. I do worry about it with lots of other things. I have Crashplan set to back up my photos, my Lightroom catalog, and other photo stuff, but it doesn't touch my work or personal files. I figure that if someone really wants to crack my Crashplan account, they can look at my photos. Everything else is protected, and my only backup of work files uses a system in which files are encrypted before they leave my computer.

[IzzieK]

Where overseas?

???? I do not think I want to tell the world where my backup is, you know...