Topic: Current Backup Options (Read 15503 times)

deliberate1 · « **on:** August 16, 2015, 12:21:06 pm »

Friends, after suffering a crash of my office computer system at work, I have become increasingly concerned that my images at home are properly backed up. I have a My Book 3T connected to my photo processing computer which is not connected to the internet. Is there a redundant system that may provide even more protection should both the hard drive and My Book fail.
Obliged
David

graeme · « **Reply #1 on:** August 16, 2015, 12:31:41 pm »

A second My Book ( or other external hard drive ) stored in a separate physical location.

Mark D Segal · « **Reply #2 on:** August 16, 2015, 12:41:30 pm »

A RAID array?

digitaldog · « **Reply #3 on:** August 16, 2015, 12:52:47 pm »

Clone several drives, pop one in a Fire Proof safe.
CrashPlan?
https://www.code42.com/crashplan/

Mark D Segal · « **Reply #4 on:** August 16, 2015, 01:40:34 pm »

You can do that of course, but I think the important issue is how you keep such back-ups current in real time. A back-up is only a useful snapshot at one point of time, so it needs to be an on-going process that isn't cumbersome to maintain. I used to count on Time Machine for this, but stopped doing that after a drive crash and I realized TM back-ups are not bootable - my bad, should have read more carefully. And the TM was running constantly in the background driving my crazy. So I now use Carbon Copy Cloner (Mac) with an off-line external HD, and just do a clone at the end of every day - the program automatically changes only changed files and take about ten minutes, producing a completely up-to-date disc image. For Windows there are a number of them - in my bad old days on Windows I used Acronis for this purpose and it was good.

Iliah · « **Reply #5 on:** August 16, 2015, 05:37:46 pm »

One of the best solutions IMHO is FreeNAS - look at http://web.freenas.org/about/features.html#data-protection and if you do not want to do the assembly and install yourself, you can purchase a ready-to-go system from iX http://www.ixsystems.com/freenas-mini/
I use multiple FreeNAS servers (self-built) for many years, ranging from 1.5 PB to 48 TB (home).

rdonson · « **Reply #6 on:** August 16, 2015, 05:59:16 pm »

As others have already mentioned.

- a redundant array is a good choice (I use Drobo but there are a lot of choices available)
- a clone of the redundant array if you're paranoid enough (I am)
- Carbon Copy Cloner is my choice for cloning from one array to the other and cloning my Mac HD (bootable as Mark says)
- if you want to add another level of protection then cloud storage is a good idea (BackBlaze, CrashPlan, etc)

wattsies · « **Reply #7 on:** August 16, 2015, 11:49:27 pm »

3-2-1

3 copies, 2 different types of media and 1 located/stored offsite.

xocet · « **Reply #8 on:** August 17, 2015, 04:48:12 am »

RAID is not a backup! It will help protect against disk hardware failure, but should not be considered a backup. When you accidentally delete your photos, the change is immediately mirrored to the other disk(s).

If on a Mac, use time machine or a third party program like Carbon Copy Cloner to an external or network attached disk. For Windows systems, I prefer options that don't require the original backup program to recover/restore files. Cobain backup (free) is one such option, or you could go really simple and use something like rsync or Robocopy. Recent versions of Windows have basic backup functionality built in.

For the ultimate protection, look at something that includes an offsite element. Crashplan can do both local and remote site backups.

Most critically, you need to regularly test your solution to make sure you can actually recover files!

deliberate1 · « **Reply #9 on:** August 17, 2015, 06:43:02 am »

Friends, much obliged for all of the suggestions. I have some homework to do.
David

PeterAit · « **Reply #10 on:** August 17, 2015, 08:19:44 am »

I use a USB docking station and 3 bare hard disks which plug into it. I use SyncBackPro to make a backup at least once a week and after major changes to the catalog, rotating thru the disks each time. I also have an addition 2 bare disks that I backup to about once a month and keep in a safe - this is my "offsite" backup in case of fire, tornado, theft, etc. I do noit like the online backups because my upload speeds are pretty slow (cable modem).

Hans Kruse · « **Reply #11 on:** August 17, 2015, 10:38:14 am »

Quote from: Mark D Segal on August 16, 2015, 01:40:34 pm

You can do that of course, but I think the important issue is how you keep such back-ups current in real time. A back-up is only a useful snapshot at one point of time, so it needs to be an on-going process that isn't cumbersome to maintain. I used to count on Time Machine for this, but stopped doing that after a drive crash and I realized TM back-ups are not bootable - my bad, should have read more carefully. And the TM was running constantly in the background driving my crazy. So I now use Carbon Copy Cloner (Mac) with an off-line external HD, and just do a clone at the end of every day - the program automatically changes only changed files and take about ten minutes, producing a completely up-to-date disc image. For Windows there are a number of them - in my bad old days on Windows I used Acronis for this purpose and it was good.

It's a long time since I tried, but I just booted from a TimeMachine backup. But the easy way is to start the machine with a new drive in it and hold down the cmd-r keys. The if there is no boot partition which there would not be on a new drive you will be offered to boot from a download from the Apple servers over the Internet. Then up comes a screen where you can choose disk utility to format the new drive and afterwards restore from a TimeMachine backup. I have done this a number of times when upgrading boot drives on my older MacBooks. For a new MacBook you just put a thunderbolt cable between the machines and restore the old machine onto the new one.

TimeMachine connected with one backup HD only runs once per hour so it is not running constantly. But one can just disconnect the TM drive and reconnect it when a backup is desired. This is easy and works really well for backup the entire machine.

For external drives I use ChronoSync to synchronize changes on a folder level from one drive to the other.

Hans Kruse · « **Reply #12 on:** August 17, 2015, 10:41:28 am »

Quote from: deliberate1 on August 16, 2015, 12:21:06 pm

Friends, after suffering a crash of my office computer system at work, I have become increasingly concerned that my images at home are properly backed up. I have a My Book 3T connected to my photo processing computer which is not connected to the internet. Is there a redundant system that may provide even more protection should both the hard drive and My Book fail.
Obliged
David

I always have a minimum of two backups for my machine and for my external drive. For disaster backup I use https://www.backblaze.com I did in the past use multiple drives that was swapped to a backup location, but that was not very practical for me as a don't have an office away from my home.

the_marshall_101 · « **Reply #13 on:** August 17, 2015, 03:52:44 pm »

Quote from: digitaldog on August 16, 2015, 12:52:47 pm

Clone several drives, pop one in a Fire Proof safe.
CrashPlan?
https://www.code42.com/crashplan/

I second the recommendation on Crashplan. One of your backups has to be physically separate from your others, IMO, otherwise it's all useless in a fire or burglary. Crashplan sits in the background just like time capsule and does the hard work for me invisibly. I use the password protect option for the app as well, to prevent someone getting into my machine and deleting it all via software (unlikely but possible). It has unlimited storage and can be set to never delete anything (even deleted files). So if I change my mind about a deleted RAW five years later I could in theory get it back again.

The only downside is that, depending on your connection speed of course, when you get back from a week away with a few thousand photos, it won't all be backed up to the cloud for a week or more. So in that time period I resort to sleeping with my SD cards

Hans Kruse · « **Reply #14 on:** August 17, 2015, 04:10:21 pm »

Quote from: the_marshall_101 on August 17, 2015, 03:52:44 pm

I second the recommendation on Crashplan. One of your backups has to be physically separate from your others, IMO, otherwise it's all useless in a fire or burglary. Crashplan sits in the background just like time capsule and does the hard work for me invisibly. I use the password protect option for the app as well, to prevent someone getting into my machine and deleting it all via software (unlikely but possible). It has unlimited storage and can be set to never delete anything (even deleted files). So if I change my mind about a deleted RAW five years later I could in theory get it back again.

The only downside is that, depending on your connection speed of course, when you get back from a week away with a few thousand photos, it won't all be backed up to the cloud for a week or more. So in that time period I resort to sleeping with my SD cards

An alternative service is Backblaze.com which worldwide offer a restore service a HD shipped with all data needed for a restore. Crashplan only offers this in the US and up to 3.5TB. Backblaze do not offer the versioning and protection of deleted files as Crashplan does. So if you are outside the US and can live with a restore over the internet then Crashplan has wider offering. Another difference is that external drives can be offline for as long as you wish provided that delete protection is enabled (default). Backblaze require an external drive to be reconnected minimum 1 month after disconnect. I have several times been close to that limit.

Adam L · « **Reply #15 on:** August 17, 2015, 04:18:13 pm »

My plan is based on overkill and experience.

1. Internal backup of C drive that includes only program files.
2. Mirror copy of C drive...
3. Carbonite external backup of C drive...

for file drives:
1. Mirror data drive using retrospective backup - daily backups
2. Mirror data drive on external drive A
3. Mirror data drive on external drive B
4. Mirror data drive on Carbonite
5. Internal backup of datadrive

I 'try' to swap #2 and #3 by bringing these offsite. I often forget.

I went with mostly mirror copies due to my last hard drive crash. I had only used backup by Acronis and had only a single copy on a raid 0 drive. The amount of time it took to restore was glacially slow, something I never want to experience again. I stagger the timing of the mirror backups so that I can look back several days to locate a file if I need an earlier version - a manageable risk for my files.

Carbonite reserves a bunch of RAM and I find that I pause this application when I'm working in the develop module of LR to help performance.

bassman51 · « **Reply #16 on:** August 17, 2015, 08:54:00 pm »

Primary on internal drive.
Two Time Machine external drives - TM automatically alternates between them all day long.
External cloud copy via CrashPlan. CrashPlan used to offer a "seed drive" option - they mailed you a hard drive, you ran CrashPlan to backup to that disk, then mail them the disk which starts your offsite backup much more quickly (months more, in my case).

sniper · « **Reply #17 on:** August 18, 2015, 05:53:52 am »

A mate of mine uses off site storage by simply backing up every day to an external drive and droping it in his neighbours house (across the street) every evening (across the street), he has 2 drives and just swops them over every night. Ok he'll loose todays work but most of the stuff is safe (and it's cheap and he gets a free coffee every night)

joofa · « **Reply #18 on:** August 18, 2015, 12:46:17 pm »

What about Amazon AWS Glacier and/or AWS S3? They seem to be cheap. Do any photographers uses these services for storage?

MattBurt · « **Reply #19 on:** August 18, 2015, 01:12:55 pm »

I'm an old IT guy and I manage our household IT needs.
Since I need to backup multiple PCs (4 of them at home ATM) I set up what was originally called a Windows Home Server. It has now become Windows Server Essentials 2012 R2. It runs on a small low power PC in a closet that has a couple of large capacity drives in an external dock.
Once you install a client application on your PCs it will back them up every night and manage backups for you keeping old ones based on rules you configure. If a drive fails you can create a bootable USB key that lets you boot and connect to the server to restore the drive contents to a new one. Works very well and also alerts me if a firewall is off or a PC is behind on updates.
The server can then back its self up to another external driver which I periodically swap to my office (offsite).

There is some up-front config but once it is set up it's very low maintenance. I understand it can backup Macs as well but haven't tried it.

Author Topic: Current Backup Options (Read 15503 times)

graeme