Offline Storage Solutions

[Onyxdragun]

Okay I did a quick search and noticed there are a bunch of threads about offline storage; external harddrives, DVDs etc.

I've read/heard mixed thoughts on backups to DVDs. Their typical archive life is 5yrs? That isn't much, though I haven't had issues with any burnt CDs or DVDs as of yet. Though 4.3GB per disc isn't much in my case.

I have been looking through my file server (primarily for photos) and noticed out of the 350GB drive I have roughly 30GB left. And we're only a bit past half way in the year! lol I'll have to look at the best way to add a 2nd harddrive as I have not done that yet with Linux (running Ubuntu with Samba running). I also use it as a LAMP setup for my web design/development

I'm looking at NAS (network attached storage) solutions mainly because I want redundancy. I want to be able to swap drives in and out when needed or to add more room as needed. I guess it would depend on the RAID I want thought right?

I'd rather not upload ALL my photos to Flickr or some other offsite online storage.

I guess what I am asking is, for my purposes, what would you recommend for offline storage? NAS, Multiple Terabytes, backing up daily to DVDs? If I do my calculations right 350GB into 4.3GB discs is roughly 82 DVDs so far. Blu-Ray would be a way I guess too, but their discs are more expensive as are the burners but I would get 8.5GB per disc I think.

Perhaps I should look at creating my own Google Farm for my photos! haha

[alex66]

It may be a pain but I just use normal usb drives and plug them in to backup then remove them, its cheep and the drives are not pluged in to the mains for very long. I format the drives in fat32 as it can then be read on both my mac and the wife's pc, Im not mega in the know but I think this is the most cross platform formatting. I never store on a machines hard drive.

[hollis_f]

Well, I'm not sure about Linux but, assuming drivers are available and you have a spare port, I'd recommend the following...

An external USB/eSATA docking station. This one (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B001FEONM6/ref=ox_ya_oh_product) even comes with an eSATA bracket if your PC doesn't already have one.

A couple of hard drives. The dock will accept 2.5" or 3.5" drives. 3.5" is a lot cheaper and faster. A pair of 750GB (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136359) drives will cost $140. You can backup to one drive, swap them over and backup to the second, then store the second drive somewhere safe. Then do a daily backup to the one drive and once a week swap the second drive and backup to that. This method will give you disaster recovery to yesterday if the PC drive dies and to, at worst, last week if both the PC and external drive die (i.e. fire or flood).

In a couple of years, when those two are full, you'll be able to buy a couple of 2TB drives for roughly the same price.

[footballdude2k3]

docking station seems to be the cheapest safest way, i like hollis' idea because you would have to have both drives fail to lose everything :) dvds are a pain and too small.

[Asmodeus]

I use pairs of mirrored 1TB USB drives. Cheap and effective.

[Onyxdragun]

Good options to look at.

Since I use Lightroom and the catalogs, is it hard to keep a catalog accessible if I have swapped out drives? If I need to get a certain catalog and I know its on a backup drive, this could still work right?

Curious how this might work if I need to look at photos I took like last year, but I know there are images on that backup/swapped drive.

[L.Morey]

Drbos are fantastic

[hollis_f]

Good options to look at.

Since I use Lightroom and the catalogs, is it hard to keep a catalog accessible if I have swapped out drives? If I need to get a certain catalog and I know its on a backup drive, this could still work right?


I guess there are two options. You can keep the catalog on the internal drive and just swap the correct disk with the pictures in and out. Or you could have a separate catalog for each disk.

[alex66]

I guess there are two options. You can keep the catalog on the internal drive and just swap the correct disk with the pictures in and out. Or you could have a separate catalog for each disk.

Another idea is to have small jpegs of the images on another drive with the location in exif, though you probably would still need another lightroom library to edit the originals.