Need to get more serious about my backups

So, I'm getting twitchy that my existing backup solution isn't enough - I need to do something more.

This is what I'm doing today:

iMac with 1tb onboard. This is where my 2011 Aperture library lives. That is Time Machine'd off to a 1tb Time Capsule that is almost full.

A 2tb USB2.0 drive with all my archive libraries and photos on it. They are archived to a 1tb USB2.0 drive, with monthly updates.

Also on the 2tb drive is a bunch of recent video stuff (nothing critical) that isn't backed up anywhere due to lack of space.

So, thats today.

I've got a budget of about $300 to $400, and my current thought process is to:

pickup a 4tb WD MyBook II or a Drobo with about 4tb of drive space in RAID1.0 (so, 2tb usable) and have that as my main drive, with it archived to the USB2.0 2tb drive. Use the 1tb USB drive as a time capsule for my local, onboard disk.


Thoughts? I like the historical archives of Time Machine, which is different to RAID1.0, but I don't know how important that would be ...

Do you do anything offsite? That would be critical

Historial backups aren't important to me. I just mirror my working drives to two external disks using RoboCopy (Mac will have something similar), and keep those disks in different offsite locations. One is only updated every six months, one is updated after every significant event (weekly during wedding season).

Get USB 3.0 or eSata, they're much faster.

I too have a MyBook, which I keep on the network and up to date all of the time.

I also have 2 USB drives, the most recent one in a safety deposit box, and the older one at home.
About every month I make a manual backup to one of the USB drives followed by a trip to the safety deposit box to swap the drives.

I use my safety deposit box for offsite, but really, as long as they are a supplement to what you have at home, just about any reasonably secure off site location will do.

One of my USBs is 3.0, the other one is 2.0. Speed is not too much of a concern for me; i let the backup run overnight (typically Friday) followed by a trip to the bank the next day.

tim wrote in post #13109397
Historial backups aren't important to me. I just mirror my working drives to two external disks using RoboCopy (Mac will have something similar), and keep those disks in different offsite locations. One is only updated every six months, one is updated after every significant event (weekly during wedding season).

Get USB 3.0 or eSata, they're much faster.

I've had occassions when historical backups have been life savers (accidentally deleting a file or similar) - thats the only real reason I'm nervous about going for a RAID system instead ... sure, the drive is safe, but human stupidity always rules

I'd be going firewire 800, my iMac has neither USB or eSata

highergr0und wrote in post #13109026
Do you do anything offsite? That would be critical

Yes, make sure you've got something offsite. Local backups are great for equipment failure but do nothing to protect you from theft, fire, etc.

Working on it I'm running out of local backups space too - hence the need to upgrade. I'd likely recycle some of these now redundant (hopefully) drives once I have something extra locally.

I guess what I'm trying to figure out - if I go with a large capacity RAID1 drive, how do people back that up, or is having it be RAID1 enough?

pcj wrote in post #13109716
I've had occassions when historical backups have been life savers (accidentally deleting a file or similar) - thats the only real reason I'm nervous about going for a RAID system instead ... sure, the drive is safe, but human stupidity always rules

I'd be going firewire 800, my iMac has neither USB or eSata

I don't let my backup system delete files, just add new ones and update existing files. Yes it's a risk not to do versioning, but I like the simplicity of a mirrored file system I can read from directly. That way a single bit error doesn't take out all my backups, just one file.

Im not to fussy about the mybook II. I had one for about a week. It kept loosing network connection and was failing on backups because of this. It would never go into power saving mode. and it was so slow when i did get it to work it was painful. My fist backup took 2 days to transfer about 20-30 gig. Took it back and got a seagate did the same backup in about 6 hours

zrock wrote in post #13112781
Im not to fussy about the mybook II. I had one for about a week. It kept loosing network connection and was failing on backups because of this. It would never go into power saving mode. and it was so slow when i did get it to work it was painful. My fist backup took 2 days to transfer about 20-30 gig. Took it back and got a seagate did the same backup in about 6 hours

which seagate did you get?

I got the goflex home network storage. It also has a usb plug on it so you can expand i with a usb drive or hook up a printer. It do not review at the highest but this thing has worked beautiful for me. Most of the reviews you read are complaining about how slow it is. But in order to get the most out of it yo need a router and network card in your computer to support the speed and have your securety set up properly