Best photo backup solution (hardware + software)

What do you use to manage your photo library backup? Do you juggle external hard drives, live exclusively in the cloud, copy file after file manually and individually or just clone the entire hard drive?

As for myself, I currently use an external hard drive and Crash plan software (as well as online backup solution). But I would like to add a 3rd option and/or automated backup to another hard drive.

I import to two external drives at the same time and I back everything up with Crashplan.com

I am actually considering one change, setting up a sheduled backup of one external drive to an other instead of the dual import, since the file structure (especially folder naming) seems to be a bit different and I just want to be able to rename the backup in case main drive dies and be up and running, but first I have to figure out if I can force LR to do things exactly the same on both drives.

I used to have a 3rd copy that I occasionally update and store at my wife's work, though I'm not sure I'll continue doing that since I have the online backup available. It's more to tame the nagging "what if crashplan goes out of business the day your home backup dies" voice in my head.

I have nothing on my internal hard drive.

External drive! two if is possible

I have an external hard drive as well as a portable hard drive. In addition to that I also use CrashPlan.

Lightroom library lives on a Synology NAS running their version of RAID5. That gets backed up to a couple of USB hard drives and Crashplan. Lightroom's catalog also gets backed up in the same manor.

what about google plus?

The library I care little about - the RAWs I care a lot about.

SuSE Linux Server with RAID 6 - samba share which I can synch to my desktop with a click.

Servers come recommended - cheaper and more flexible than dedicated devices and with software raid also hardware independent, i.e. arrays can be rebuilt on different hardware.
The small performance difference is irrelevant for a storage server under home (or small office) use too.

The RAWs and the Lightroom library sit on my laptop, with a daily automated copy to a Synology NAS (currently just a small 1 drive unit, to be changed for a 4 drives, RAID 5 unit) at home, and an external drive at my parents' (I usually go once a month minimum).

My current NAS might become a distant, automated backup in the future. Having a cloud-based solution is currently way too expensive once you reach a few TB, it's cheaper to have my own hardware.

Chef678 wrote in post #17303437
what about google plus?

I don't rely exclusively on it, but I have Google + "auto backup" feature turned on on both my computer and my phone and it has proven quite usefull a couple of times.
I like that you can select to keep the pics at full resolution (in which case your Google storage space is the limiting factor) or you can opt to have your pics resized and in this case, there's no limit.

"Juggle" external drives is pretty accurate, glad to hear I'm not the only one...

Two WD 1T drives and Syncback Pro, I feel that incremental backups and a periodic system image keeps me somewhat protected. I put one of the drives in a fire-resistant safe after backing up.

I also just replaced my Laptop drive after getting SMART errors and was thinking of making the leap to an SSD. Anyone recommend one USB to Sata cable over another? I've not cloned a drive myself before, it seems simple enough?

Being a certified Disaster Recovery Specialist )) I'm doing the following:

- Using my MBP for 99% of my photo editing
- Backing up the photos to my home windows desktop & 4Tb internal HD
- Automatically backing up offsite (CrashPlan)
- Using SmugMug as a backup as well (full rez jpegs, raw, resampled jpegs)

The simple solution works for me. If you have more $$$ to spend, then I'd recommend going for NAS, and obviously offloading it to offsite storage. 1 backup is usually more than enough. However, for those extreme cases, SmugMug has worked for me personally. It now allows you to store raw files as well. One thing to keep in mind: for any offsite backup you will need a fast upload/download speed as well. I've upgraded my home network to 300mbps/20mbps in order to allow for a quick file transfer. Some of the services could also mail you a hard drive for a quicker restore if your internet speed is not as fast.

SSD's are becoming dirt cheap these days. They used to be $1 per Gb, but now I've seen them as low as $0.40. As for the type, I'd go with Samsung EVO 840's - no brainer for me. I've put them into 2 desktops I've built, my old windows laptop, and my current windows desktop. They are workhorses that just work. I wouldn't overspend on the Samsung Pro's though, as I haven't seen a great performance boost out of them.

For amateurs like me, juggling jpg's into ex-disks is the easy solution. I have a 500gb slim ex-disk velcroed to the back of my laptop screen. I use free FolderClone to copy to that ex-disk after each shooting session. I have another ex-disk stored in a firesafe - I copy to that one each month. It's really no hassle.

adding to my above post, I think I'll be using carbon copy cloner to setup automatic backups soon, instead of the double download via LR. I have 4 external drives right now, two 1TB (my older ones, full) and two 3TB, the new ones where all photos now go. I'll set up a schedule for CCC to backup the 1TB drive maybe once a month since I really don't add anything to it, but if I delete photos I'd like them to be gone from both drives, the 3TB I'll set to backup every day at night and won't reformat a card until that is done, CrashPlan runs on it's own schedule and will update the external drives as well as my internal HD to their server. And once a month or so I'll make a bootable backup of my drive also with Carbon Copy Cloner instead of SuperDuper, which I've been using so far. Just to keep it all in one app. Oh, and then there's TimeMachine always running, but also only on my internal HD.

With all that I should be pretty safe. All this on a Mac, similar apps exist for the PC of course.