Using Hard Drives for data back up...

[shimmishim]

So I was thinking that getting a 500GB hard drive for pictures only would be a viable option.

After 1 year or when it's full, taking the hard drive and placing it into a fireproof safe or some other safe locale.

Would this be a viable option rather than backing up everything onto DVD's?

I guess my fear would be having a hard drive die from sitting idle for so long... Is that even possible?

I was thinking about getting a 1.0TB drive but I think a smaller one for every year would make more sense... or wait until the cost of blu-ray disks or SSD becomes cheaper and using them instead.

Crazy or a good idea?

[bunyarra]

I have started to do just this. With the cost of 1Tb drives so low, keeping my photos on 2+ separate drives is economical.

The best way I have found is to use an external drive caddy that allows you to swap drives in and out without worrying about recabling or unscrewing enclosures.

I don't know where you are based but I have one of these Sharkoon units and it works a treat. The drives sit safe in the packaging they came in until I need to update them again. If you have an eSATA connector (or get a carD), the disk writes are as fast as internal drives.

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Sharkoon-SATA-QuickPort-Pro-Duo-USB-eSata-Desktop-Docking-station-for-2-SATA-HDDs-(25-35)

[rdenney]

Storing the hard drive won't do you any good if you don't also do what it takes to maintain the computer it connects to. Computer/hard disk interfaces are just as apt to disappear as a functioning hard disk.

I use a D-Link DNS-323 RAID enclosure with two matched well-regarded Samsung 1-TB drives in it. I use the ShadowProtect software to make daily image backups of my drive on the computer to this network-attached-storage device. That way, I have it on my computer hard disk, plus on the network storage. And I have the RAID configured to mirror the drives, so each Samsung drive has its own copy.

That's going to have to do until Blu-Ray writers come down in price a bit. Even DVD's are too small to make regular backups convenient, and DVD isn't a reliable data-storage medium in any case. But at 50 GB, a Blu-Ray disk will hold a large chunk of my photo archive.

It all got put to the test when I contracted a virus last week. I was able to clean my computer drive, and then was able to mount the backup as a virtual drive, using ShadowProtect, and scan it, too (no infection on the backup). I have also had failures of the drives in the computers, and been able to recover, both on my computer and on my wife's.

Granted, if the house burns down, I'm lost. But then my negatives will all be gone, too. I'll just have to start over.

Don't forget to back up your ability to read your raw files.

Rick "who takes backups seriously" Denney

[Naito]

Hard drive backups are probably the most economical way to back up for a home user right now. It certainly has the lowest cost per gigabyte. That said, they are far from being the most reliable long-term storage medium.

My current data storage system consists of a Linux server and a set of five 1TB Western Digital Green hard drives. The Green drives are extremely cheap (lowest I've seen is $99 for a slightly older 1TB version) and while they are slower, it actually translate into being an advantage in that they run cooler and use less power.

Three of the drives are connected in a RAID 5 setup, giving me 2TB of storage space. RAID is a redudancy system, NOT a backup solution as often believed, so in addition to that, I have backup script that copies the contents of the RAID to a removable drive.

Currently, as I am using less than 1TB total of my RAID drive, I use a program called StoreBackup to make daily copies of my data to the removable drive. At the end of the week, I swap it with another 1TB removable disk, and let it make copies to the new drive for that week.

When I start to use more than 1TB, I plan to switch over to a program called dar that will allow me to use the removable drives as if they were removable tape cartridges, and span my backups amongst multiple hard disks.

Thus, this setup gives me a high-availability data storage system, an online automatic daily backup allowing me to roll-back any accidental deletes, and an offline backup that I can keep at the office or at a friend's house, protecting against major disasters like fires or malicious attacks that might erase everything connected to the server.

As I said, hard drives are not the most reliable, and will tend to fail in numerous ways, so keeping multiple copies on multiple drives is very good practice.

Total cost of the backup system was about $1500, but I think it's worth it. It can certainly be done much cheaper than this to get a similar system; this system cost a little bit more because I built it with a lot of future expansion in mind (I should be able to install another 4 drives in this system before I need to purchase a new controller card, and another 4 on top of that before I run out of room in the case!) If you've ever priced out the cost of professional data recovery services, you will find $1500 is a bargain.

I can go into more detail if anyone is interested, but bottom line is that I really like using hard drives for backups compared to optical media or tape. Tape is great for enterprises, but hardly cost-effective for home or even small-business use I think.

On another note, I would stay away from using SSDs for backups. They are primarily for performance, and while they are certainly more robust, they will almost certainly cost much more per amount of storage compared to any other medium out there. On the plus side, when an SSD fails, in theory it is supposed to fail writing new data, and preserve the ability to read it. In practice, that isn't always the case.

[bunyarra]

I use a D-Link DNS-323 RAID enclosure with two matched well-regarded Samsung 1-TB drives in it.

Just lost my second Samsung Spinpoint 1TB drive - both in under 4 months. Sadly, never again. Western Digital Green Caviar now.

Can recommend the Acronis disk backup s/w - saved me twice now.

[doctorgonzo]

I back up my files onto an external hard drive that I keep off-site (at my office at work).

Yes, hard drives can fail, but remember that when it comes to backups, what you are worried about isn't a hard drive failing: what you are worried about is ALL of your hard drives failing simultaneously.

If the drive in my computer breaks, I still have my backup; ditto for the reverse. I would only be SOL if both of my hard drives were to fail at the exact same time. This is why it is important to keep your backups off-site: if I kept my backup at home, a fire, flood, theft, or similar incident would render both my main drive and my backup unusable.

I mean, sure, theoretically my office could flood the same day that my apartment catches fire, or both hard drives could fail simultaneously, but it's unlikely. Also, I do have a rudimentary third backup in the form of the photos on my website; of course, those are JPGs and not RAW files, so if I did have to rely on them I would lose some data.

[Wilt]

I echo rdenny in concerns about future connectivity. The USB connector is likely to go away some day, for example. That is why my current data backup is connected via ethernet networking. And it is shut down until I am writing to the network-connected drive.

And while RAID seems to avert the issue of lost data, due to data redundancy, there is someone on POTN who lost ALL of the RAID drives because the RAID enclosure had a failure of its cooling fan and all the drives in the enclosure had failures as a result!

[rdenney]

RAID is indeed not a backup, but it is designed to improve overall reliability through redundancy. As with all redundant systems, you end up with more stuff to maintain, but the RAID concept makes maintenance fairly easy.

But please read my post again: My RAID system is a backup. I do not use my network-attached storage for any other purpose than storing routine backups. The main storage is the disk in the computer. (I actually have another NAS that I use for sharing files between the computers on my network to avoid having to maintain a zillion shared directories.)

I design real-time control systems that require much higher reliability than anything we can afford in our homes. What I have at home is not intended to prevent all possible catastrophes, but to prevent the loss of data as a result of normal failure. That gives the data the same general protection as my old negatives and transparencies. If the house burns down, I'll still lose it all. But there will be many other things I own whose loss I will mourn as deeply. I can always make new pictures, and in some cases, wouldn't mind a good excuse to revisit some old subjects.

It was only 15 years ago when we were backing up agency computers using a tape drive that plugged into the computer via a parallel port, or was installed internally using the ISA bus. All that is now obsolete, and it would take some significant effort and good luck to be able to read any of those archives. Then, would we have the software needed to read those files? I had a need to revisit a spreadsheet I'd created in 1996. I used Quattro to build that spreadsheet, and I wanted to bring it into Excel 2007. Fat chance. The best I could do was run Quattro in a DOS window and view the formulas, transcribing them to a new spreadsheet in Excel by hand.

I have some hard drives from computers I used in those days. One has a SCSI interface. Nope, my SCSI interface card won't fit in a current motherboard without great effort. Plus, I'm not even sure that interface card even works, and if it didn't, I have no spare. That disk hasn't spun in a dozen years. Does it still work? I haven't tested it, so I don't know. There are services that maintain the ability to recover data from obsolete hardware, but bring your checkbook.

I have boxes of negatives and slides that I haven't even seen in 15 years or more, but I'm sure they look the same now as they did then. Unless insects or fungus have gotten to them.

This is, of course, the main challenge of digital photography. In the end, we should make reference prints of our work--it's likely the only medium that will make it to our heirs in usable condition.

Rick "not so good at making prints" Denney

[Wilt]

RAID is indeed not a backup, but it is designed to improve overall reliability through redundancy. As with all redundant systems, you end up with more stuff to maintain, but the RAID concept makes maintenance fairly easy.

But please read my post again: My RAID system is a backup. I do not use my network-attached storage for any other purpose than storing routine backups. The main storage is the disk in the computer. (I actually have another NAS that I use for sharing files between the computers on my network to avoid having to maintain a zillion shared directories.)

I design real-time control systems that require much higher reliability than anything we can afford in our homes. What I have at home is not intended to prevent all possible catastrophes, but to prevent the loss of data as a result of normal failure. That gives the data the same general protection as my old negatives and transparencies. If the house burns down, I'll still lose it all. But there will be many other things I own whose loss I will mourn as deeply. I can always make new pictures, and in some cases, wouldn't mind a good excuse to revisit some old subjects.

It was only 15 years ago when we were backing up agency computers using a tape drive that plugged into the computer via a parallel port, or was installed internally using the ISA bus. All that is now obsolete, and it would take some significant effort and good luck to be able to read any of those archives. Then, would we have the software needed to read those files? I had a need to revisit a spreadsheet I'd created in 1996. I used Quattro to build that spreadsheet, and I wanted to bring it into Excel 2007. Fat chance. The best I could do was run Quattro in a DOS window and view the formulas, transcribing them to a new spreadsheet in Excel by hand.

I have some hard drives from computers I used in those days. One has a SCSI interface. Nope, my SCSI interface card won't fit in a current motherboard without great effort. Plus, I'm not even sure that interface card even works, and if it didn't, I have no spare. That disk hasn't spun in a dozen years. Does it still work? I haven't tested it, so I don't know. There are services that maintain the ability to recover data from obsolete hardware, but bring your checkbook.

I have boxes of negatives and slides that I haven't even seen in 15 years or more, but I'm sure they look the same now as they did then. Unless insects or fungus have gotten to them.

This is, of course, the main challenge of digital photography. In the end, we should make reference prints of our work--it's likely the only medium that will make it to our heirs in usable condition.

Rick "not so good at making prints" Denney

Rick,
Your post is filled with real world examples of the pitfalls that are to be encountered. While I, also, have posted on all these same problem areas in the past (interface electronics' mechanical compatability, available applications able to read the files, proprietary file format continuity, even whether or not a future O/S even would be able to handle that old device!) it always seems that many times people pooh-pooh the concerns with "I have that solved..." attitudes that minimize the problem, or with the 'no one will care for my old photos' transient value to photos we take.
I have my boxes of negatives, too. I pulled out some negatives taken 40 years ago, with Janis Joplin, and printed up a fresh print for a Janis Joplin fanatic about 10 years ago. I have my concerns about viability of digital photos (vs. film) and until the industry recognizes the problem, it will remain a challenge poorly addressed.