The Ulitimate Backup Thread

Hi all,

I've been searching through the Forum and reading bits and pieces looking for the best way to back up my images.

Having just purchased a 128GB SSD for my OPSYS and two 3TB drives for mirroring to replace my old clunky setup I anticipate using a Disk Mirror (Win7 Ultimate) as my Mother Board does not support RAID. I also have a 1TB internal drive ready for downloads and other stuff.

Once set up, I anticipate purchasing another HD to store at work, should something catastrophic occur to my PC at home.

Can Forum Members and experts please add their learned input so that myself and others can learn about backing up in this way specifically for photographers?

It would be really good if the Mods were able to make this a Sticky or for me/others to summarise the information supplied into a sticky for all to access.

I am not sure about "specifically for photographers". Sure we want our LR/Aperture/PS catalogs and libraries backed up. But most of us equally need our calendars, contacts, email boxes also backed up. Pros will definitely to safely backup all their client and supplier lists.

If you do RAID 1 locally that can help with availability (the data should be available if an individual drive dies). But RAID 1 does not protect against the impacts of malware or user commands (virus, deletes, formats..etc.). So RAID 1 is a very good first step. Then you want complete backups of the complete machine (OS/apps/data) in case you have to a complete restore. You should automatically/routinel​y do the backups to an external drive(s). Time Machine for the Mac world is a good tool for this. That drive can be local such as inside a 2TB or 3TB Time Capsule.

But the local drive is subject to the risk of thief, fire, ..etc. So even with a local backup, you should consider a remote backup. That can be do via a cloud service or by swapping the backup drive for a spare and moving the latest backup offsite...ideally to a bank vault.

Much has to do how important your data is (are you amateur or pro), how much time and effort you are willing to invest to keep it available...and safe.

I have a RAID solution from OWC. Great little unit. I have 4 3 TB Enterprise level hard drives in it. I also have 2 complete sets of backup disks to ensure I do not lose anything. I keep one set of backup disks at work and the other set here. Then I switch once per week.

Everyone has different needs. We all don't necessarily need things like raid, NAS, etc. The only thing I can say is that everyone needs multiple backups, with one stored off site.