The best solution for storage and back up?

I wanted to ask people with experience, what do you use for back up and storage?
I have RAW files since 2008 in my lightroom and now I am close to one Tb.
I am a bit affraid that one day something will happen with the harddryve and I can lose everything, so I want to back up.
What do you suggest I do?
Purchase 1-2 more harddrives 2 Tb each and just make a copy?
Thanks for suggestions.

For my main library, that sees frequent backups, I use a RAID drive. I also do periodic backups to another set of hard drives which I keep in a fireproof safe. For my most important stuff I'll back up onto DVDs which I keep at my in-law's house. I'm considering starting to use some cloud space as well. The more variety and redundancy you can build in, the safer you are from anything catastrophic.

Man, this^ sounds super paranoid. But just think if you had something like a fire at your house. Having two copies of everything doesn't do much good if they're in the same place.

I keep everything on a Synology NAS running their version of RAID5 which can tolerate one drive failure. I back that up to a USB 3.0 drive and to Crashplan on the Internet. So I have three copies in two geographically distant locations.

Any feedback on Amazon Glacier?

I've also tried Crashplan and while it's great to backup on external drives, but I wonder what you people backup in the cloud? I have over 2tb of RAW files, uploading these would be crazy. I've considered outputting all my files to smaller JPGs and then upload that, but that's a lot of work since all my pictures are organized in seperate folders by year/month/date.

Ideally I would love to back up the entire Lightroom Catalogue, a mirror copy. How to do it?

light_pilgrim wrote in post #15581989
Ideally I would love to back up the entire Lightroom Catalogue, a mirror copy. How to do it?

That's easy. Just copy your files to another drive. For local copies, I use a program called Second Copy that can be configured to copy any folder to any location on an schedule. For backing up the lrcat file (your LR database) just configure the automatic backup in LR to back it up to your external drive.

light_pilgrim wrote in post #15580043
I wanted to ask people with experience, what do you use for back up and storage?
I have RAW files since 2008 in my lightroom and now I am close to one Tb.
I am a bit affraid that one day something will happen with the harddryve and I can lose everything, so I want to back up.
What do you suggest I do?
Purchase 1-2 more harddrives 2 Tb each and just make a copy?
Thanks for suggestions.

You are living on borrowed time. All hard drives will fail. It is a matter of "when", not "if".

If you have not backed anything up for 4+ years, you are indeed living on the edge.

Without pausing to develop your final backup strategy, go to your local Target/WalMart and pick up an external drive large enough to hold everything, and then make a copy.

Now. Quickly. Before the stores close.

light_pilgrim wrote in post #15581989
Ideally I would love to back up the entire Lightroom Catalogue, a mirror copy. How to do it?

OK... are you back with everything now safely copied to a second drive?

RAIDs and other mirroring programs are not backup archives. They are meant to reduce downtime in the event your working data drive fails.

They both share a common drawback when used as a backup system: they do not protect you against data loss caused by user error, virus or other malwear or software/hardware failure that corrupts the data. IOW, they will instantly propagate such failures/losses to your "backup".

A "proper" backup creates an archive, allowing you to go back in time to restore earlier versions, etc., of files.

There are many programs that do this, including CrashPlan.

A good backup system will cover you for
1. Fast recovery (on-site backup or RAID system)
2. Archival / versioning storage to allow you to go back in time
3. Protection against hardware failure (not just hard drive failure)
4. Protection against malware or other software failure
5. Protection against physical loss due to theft, fire, natural disaster, etc.
6. Be automatic, so there are not large time gaps in your backup system.

I don't use RAID, since minimizing downtime to less than it will take me to copy files from a local backup is not needed (for me), so I am not interested in the increased cost and complexity of trying to maintain a RAID system over time. YMMV.

I have my primary work computer with ~7TB of working drive space. Not all of this needs backing up, of course.

I have everything backed up to local drives (attached to a server computer on the network). This is handled automatically by CrashPlan. This will allow fast restore in the event I need it.

I have everything also backed up to the cloud, using CrashPlan. This provides an off-site backup in the event of physical loss (theft, fire, yadda, yadda).

The initial backup to the cloud took several weeks. I could have paid for a "seed" drive for CrashPlan to reduce that time, but I didn't. Incremental backups to the cloud are hardly noticeable, but then I have fairly fast internet service.

This system works for me. Again, YMMV in the specifics, but you do need to at least think about the 6 things I listed above.

Nightdiver13 wrote in post #15580361
For my main library, that sees frequent backups, I use a RAID drive. I also do periodic backups to another set of hard drives which I keep in a fireproof safe. For my most important stuff I'll back up onto DVDs which I keep at my in-law's house. I'm considering starting to use some cloud space as well. The more variety and redundancy you can build in, the safer you are from anything catastrophic.

Man, this^ sounds super paranoid. But just think if you had something like a fire at your house. Having two copies of everything doesn't do much good if they're in the same place.

How do you deal with the moisture that builds up inside a fireproof safe? I have one and left papers in there and they ended up being a little moist and my passport started getting mold build up on it. Now I keep all papers in zip lock plastic bags to keep out moisture and I also have some of those rechargeable tins with the moisture observing beads in them.

If I had to do it again I would probably not the buy a fireproof safe because of the moisture issue.

Raistlin wrote in post #15585212
How do you deal with the moisture that builds up inside a fireproof safe? I have one and left papers in there and they ended up being a little moist and my passport started getting mold build up on it. Now I keep all papers in zip lock plastic bags to keep out moisture and I also have some of those rechargeable tins with the moisture observing beads in them.

If I had to do it again I would probably not the buy a fireproof safe because of the moisture issue.

Luckily, I've never noticed a moisture issue. This might be because I live in a VERY dry environment, and the safe is kept within climate controlled space so it never goes through condensation cycles. I also keep a couple of THESE in there just in case.

Raistlin wrote in post #15585212
How do you deal with the moisture that builds up inside a fireproof safe? I have one and left papers in there and they ended up being a little moist and my passport started getting mold build up on it. Now I keep all papers in zip lock plastic bags to keep out moisture and I also have some of those rechargeable tins with the moisture observing beads in them.

If I had to do it again I would probably not the buy a fireproof safe because of the moisture issue.

You need one of these: Golden Rod

How is Crash Plan different from Amazon Glacier?

These work very well and can be easily recharged. I opted for this because I didn't want to bore a hole in my safe to accommodate the Golden Rod.
http://www.amazon.com …ef=oh_details_o​00_s00_i00

light_pilgrim wrote in post #15585984
How is Crash Plan different from Amazon Glacier?

I don't know anything about Amazon Glacier (except that it seems geographically implausible... unless the remote headwaters originate at an Andean glacier?). You can check out CrashPlan here.