Backup and Storage Best Practices?

I currently have zero backups of over 3 years of data and images. Stupid, I know. I have some money and some time to fix the situation, just not sure where to begin. My first thought was to copy everything to an external hard drive. Then copy it all to another external hard drive. I would then need to delete everything off of my internal hard drive as it is 98% full. I would have two identical external drives with my data on them. I would also then have a clean hard drive to work off of on the computer. My thought moving forward would be to get a third external, and backup the information on the internal drive onto it every time I add new photos or data, etc. Then, when it gets full again, duplicate it to two externals, clean the internal, and begin it all over again. I would always have 2 copies of everything, in addition to all the copies on my website, Facebook, and Flickr.

That being said, what do you guys think? Where is my logic faulty? Any issues with Seagate Backup Plus 2 TB hard drives?

Thanks in advance.

Here's my current setup.

http://photographywisd​om.com …acking-up-photos-868.html

What software will you use to make your backup or will you do it manual? On my Mac I use TimeMachine to backup the actual laptop. I use SuperDuper to clone my external drive to another external drive.

Good sale on WD external 2TB drives;
https://photography-on-the.net …/showthread.php​?t=1308486

My set up is simple, I try to keep it easy so I always do it. I lost a crap load of family photos a while back due to not backing up

I have my internal and 2 externals now. New work goes onto the internal and a copy onto the external that I have in a docking bay. I do a backup of my picture folder every couple days, or after a seriouse round of editing. My 3rd HD is in a fire safe in another building, I do a backup onto that every other week, or after a major event that I want to make sure is backed up.

I plan to get 1 more drive and keep it at work and do a monthly backup to it. Or move my 3rd to my work location.

copies of all my pictures are kept on my external hard drive. I also back them up to mega.co.nz account and to my google drive as well

Basic idea....

Use "allwaysynch" to make a backup.....

http://allwaysync.com/

Get 2 external 2 TB drives.... Copy all your data over to the first one. Then use allwaysynch to copy it over to the second external drive....

Delete all your data off your internal drive. Use the #1 external drive for data.... Then copy the data to the #2 external drive for backups... #2 drive should be removed and stored in a safe place with its power supply (cord with a brick in it or whatever, drive is worthless without power)....

WHY? For all the viruses and stuff that happens to computers NEVER keep data on your "C" drive. Use that for operating system and programs. I have an internal "D" drive which has "scratch work" on it. If I lose it, nothing is really lost.. Plus everytime I've lost a computer to a "broken" operating system (virused up or whatever), NOTHING on the D drive was ever touched. One step better, if your data is on the external drive, you can simply plug it into another machine.... No problems...

BTW, think about this too. If you can afford to lose your data, don't worry about backing it up...

A few $70 2 TB drives are well worth it......

Good luck

Mark H

P51Mstg wrote in post #16039360
Basic idea....

Use "allwaysynch" to make a backup.....

http://allwaysync.com/

Get 2 external 2 TB drives.... Copy all your data over to the first one. Then use allwaysynch to copy it over to the second external drive....

Delete all your data off your internal drive. Use the #1 external drive for data.... Then copy the data to the #2 external drive for backups... #2 drive should be removed and stored in a safe place with its power supply (cord with a brick in it or whatever, drive is worthless without power)....

WHY? For all the viruses and stuff that happens to computers NEVER keep data on your "C" drive. Use that for operating system and programs. I have an internal "D" drive which has "scratch work" on it. If I lose it, nothing is really lost.. Plus everytime I've lost a computer to a "broken" operating system (virused up or whatever), NOTHING on the D drive was ever touched. One step better, if your data is on the external drive, you can simply plug it into another machine.... No problems...

BTW, think about this too. If you can afford to lose your data, don't worry about backing it up...

A few $70 2 TB drives are well worth it......

Good luck

Mark H

This is pretty much what I am thinking. All the work on the internal is in a separate partition than the operating system. I actually have 4 partitions, OS/Data/Backup/Archive​. So I work off of the Data, backup to the Backup, and 2nd backup to the Archive. So in effect I do have copies. But if that entire PC is lost in a fire, I am done. So I think I will take your advice on the 2 TB hard drives.

How frequently should one rotate in new hard drives, to allow for failure and or technology changes?

bmaxphoto wrote in post #16039394
This is pretty much what I am thinking. All the work on the internal is in a separate partition than the operating system. I actually have 4 partitions, OS/Data/Backup/Archive​. So I work off of the Data, backup to the Backup, and 2nd backup to the Archive. So in effect I do have copies. But if that entire PC is lost in a fire, I am done. So I think I will take your advice on the 2 TB hard drives.

How frequently should one rotate in new hard drives, to allow for failure and or technology changes?

Your biggest issue is if that HD fails, then everything is gone, so you dont have a backup, you just have 3 copies of everything.

Rotate new HD in when the old one fails, or is to small. A new HD can fail just as easy as a 5 year old drive (well maybe not just as easy but close).

P51 has it pretty much covered.

I have an extra couple of steps, though, 'cause I'm paranoid - and I still don't think my solution is perfect.

I have two internal drives. One is a RAID-5 array (2.7 TB) and the second is a single 3TB drive. Both are soft-mirrored, meaning that I keep track of what's on them. Every time I download a card I copy the new images over before doing any post. In-process stuff I won't back up but once it's final it's represented on both drives.

I have two external drives that mirror the RAID. Those are both stored off-site and are usually updated every couple of weeks, alternately. In a worst case scenario one of those drives will be a couple of weeks out of date and the other a month out.

The internal backups will protect against drive issues but not computer (virus, blown MoBo) or household ones (fire, earthquake, theft etc.)

The externals cover issues with my machine or home and, hopefully, with me doing something silly.

My RAID is nearly full, though, so I'm looking for alternatives. My current thought is a NAS machine of sorts with cloud backup. I'll build a server to host a large RAID (6+TB) and I'll subscribe to an unlimited cloud backup service. One that, hopefully, takes a physical drive for the initial upload.

I'll still make off-site backups...

What is the time horizon for your data? 5 years? 20 years? Longer? That's a key determinant to your archiving strategy. If you are just backing up and intend to keep copying things from drive to drive you can get away with that until something happens and it doesn't get done - you're too busy, forget, etc. Then the drives get forgotten and the data gets lost. Or the technology changes and you no longer have something to read the drive. Really, if you want a long term solution and are really interested in a best practice, look into an LTO tape backup solution.

IMO cloud storage is insanity. First issue is throughput, although some vendors now let you send a drive to get things started, you still have an ever-expanding data throughput requirement as image density and video resolution increases (3 min raw 4k footage on 32 GB? yikes). Then there is a risk your data is held hostage via a price increase and/or file retrieval charges. Then there is the stability of your vendor.

Drive replacement? Very good question. I keep drives a couple years at most... When they hit the 5000 hour mark, its time to let someone else have them. By that time they are slow, small and old...

Also 5000 is NO real time in the life of a drive thats rated in the million of hour neighborhood

This was shamelessly stolen from a Seagate manual.... (750,000 hours MTBF or 3/10s of a Percent of this type of drive annually)


2.11.1 Annualized Failure Rate (AFR) and Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF)
The product shall achieve an Annualized Failure Rate (AFR) of 0.32% (MTBF of 0.75 million hours) when operated in an environment of ambient air temperatures of 25°C. Operation at temperatures outside the specifications in Section 2.8 may increase the product AFR (decrease MTBF). AFR and MTBF are population statistics
that are not relevant to individual units.
AFR and MTBF specifications are based on the following assumptions for desktop personal computer environments:
• 2400 power-on-hours per year.
• 10,000 average motor start/stop cycles per year.
• Operations at nominal voltages.
• Temperatures outside the specifications in Section 2.8 may reduce the product reliability.
• Normal I/O duty cycle for desktop personal computers. Operation at excessive I/O duty cycle may degrade
product reliability.
The desktop personal computer environment of power-on-hours, temperature, and I/O duty cycle affect the
product AFR and MTBF. The AFR and MTBF will be degraded if used in an enterprise application

So they last a lot longer than I'm going to keep them. At that point I fill them up with things and send them to friends......

Mark H

Primary storage is a RAID 6 array, so I can tolerate two drive failures and still not lose data and still keep working.

Secondary backup is offsite to a friend's house, also RAID array.

Tertiary backup is online to Crashplan, really cheap for unlimited storage, just a little slow.

This setup will cover for most "oops I didn't mean to delete that folder" accidents, physical failures, thefts, and even hopefully fires/total loss situations. The primary and secondary storages are built from old computers that I just put extra hard drives and controllers into, hard drives added over a fairly long period of time, so not too much expense all at once. Crashplan is cheap, something like $8/month or less, the most expensive bit is my internet connection. All those syncs and uploads require a plan with a large upload quota, which hovers about $60-70/month.

Worth it though. I'm in IT and know exactly how much data recovery can cost. An ounce of prevention and all that.

Here is my current backup plan, integrating 2 external hard drives and Crashplan.

https://www.youtube.co​m/watch?v=dVEZu2Yyg18

Besides having multiple external copies of files (making sure that a bad file write just automatically overwrites all external copies), I would replace that full internal drive with a larger disk that can keep all your current files with place to spare for 3 more years of photography to accumulate.

You definitely want a solution where you have good coverage outside your house. So store maybe an USB disk at a friends house or at parents/children. Then regularly switch disks so they get a disk with newer data while you get the other disk home and fill it up with everything new since last time.

P51Mstg wrote in post #16040184
Drive replacement? Very good question. I keep drives a couple years at most... When they hit the 5000 hour mark, its time to let someone else have them. By that time they are slow, small and old...

That would mean disk replacements about every 200 days for me - I don't see them as slow, small and old after 200 days

Remember that a large percent of disks will not fail ofter tens of thousands hours of operation, but will fail after maybe as low as 10 or 100 hours of operation. It is brand new disks that have the largest probability of failure - before you have weeded out production failures. So never trust that brand new disk to be safe to use without backup for the first months just because it is brand new.