Lost 10+years of work, Need advice on next back up plan

Now, after much research, it's time for feedback about backup systmes from others with more experience. I have a concept diagram that I created and can be found here of what I currently am thinkin - this is a WIP diagram: http://gallery.me.com …ckupdiagram&bgc​olor=black

After loosing 10+ years of photo, art, and other work from an external hdd crash + a pc hd crash both within 10day period, I now have a new iMac and shopping for the best backup solution PLUS a syncing solution between my travel Macbook Pro, iPhone and home workstation iMac. At the moment, I'm just trying to regather, I have not been able to shoot in over a month. I don't think I'll ever be the same because of this loss.

Any help/advice is appreciated.
Brad (aka nvert)

I personally find online backup not very practical for massive amounts of data. I would just buy a server rack, throw that sucker into RAID5, buy a bunch of hard drives from DIFFERENT manufacturers (since some batches are bad, you don't want too many dieing at once) and call it a day.

Wow. So sorry to hear that.

But, I'm a little confused as to what your specific question is... Using Time Machine to set up back ups, (and you can set up multiple back ups if you wish) is a breeze. Best of all, once it's all set up, all you do is plug in to back up. That's it.

And for me, the best part of it all is that if you ever upgrade your machine, you just use the backup and you have all your documents and files in no time. (Well, it takes about 2 hours or so but then it's like the exact same computer!)

There is a lot of info out there about backup methods people use. I'll share my relatively simple procedure which I consider quite safe:
- Server at home for various things, file-storage included (consider it a NAS)
- A pair of external HDDs which I back it all up to. I keep one at work, when I need to update my backup I do the backup at home with one HDD, bring into work and swap them over. Never are all three devices in the one location, and if the NAS fails during a backup (hence two corrupt copies) I still have one at work.

This can be modified to cycle between more HDDs, and you could even move say every 5th backup to an archive and keep it there.

themadman wrote in post #10048635
I personally find online backup not very practical for massive amounts of data. I would just buy a server rack, throw that sucker into RAID5, buy a bunch of hard drives from DIFFERENT manufacturers (since some batches are bad, you don't want too many dieing at once) and call it a day.

And if your house burns down? Definitely need either a cloud backup solution or at the very least a sneakernet to transport backup drives to an alternate location.

BTW. There are services (albeit pricey) that can do data recovery. Have you gone down that route to see if you can get anything back?

For off site back-up, consider buying a server like an HP mediasmart server, install it at a relatives house and connect it to the net. Perform offsite backups on a nightly basis or weekly basis.

wdwpsu wrote in post #10048658
And if your house burns down? Definitely need either a cloud backup solution or at the very least a sneakernet to transport backup drives to an alternate location.

BTW. There are services (albeit pricey) that can do data recovery. Have you gone down that route to see if you can get anything back?

Then you have bigger problems.

I find the internet in the USA frequently insufficient for cloud storage. I pay more in the USA for 6Mbit internet than people do in Hong Kong for 1Gbit internet.

Sucky US internet gripping aside, if you are REALLY worried about your house burning down, get a fireproof safe and copy data onto hard drives/tapes and store them there in addition to your RAID 5 server.

Laos I keep extra hard drives on hand all the time, something does, I duplicate the backup pretty much immediately.

Brad, I'm terribly sorry to hear about your loss. The pain of losing 10 years worth of photos cannot be put into words.

I do exactly what phreeky described. I have an external back-up at home and I also have an external drive that I store off-site (I keep it at work). It protects me against theft, fire, and most natural disasters. If I was a pro, and my livelihood depended on my work, I would likely back up my work a third maybe even a fourth time and keep those drives in different locations too.

Bryan

Make prints!

In all seriousness, I'm sorry that you lost all that work. Drive failure is all too common and I need to rethink my backup plan as well. I've always just maintained copies on 2+ drives, and every month or so I add to my DVD backups.

Use of a RAID 1 system (directly connected via USB, or network connected over Ethernet) provides two copies, so that if one harddrive dies the other harddrive provides the data so that a new harddrive can be inserted in place of the defective HD and will rebuild the data automatically.

So as to prevent catastrophy due to building fire destroying the RAID, another (third) copy of data should be put on a USB drive which can be stored off site.

themadman wrote in post #10048694
Then you have bigger problems.

And that really is the whole point of this exercise. Stuff happens. It could be natural disaster, it could be theft.. it could be something so unimaginable, you would never have planned for it. Which is why you need to consider how much your data is worth to you. How much "insurance" are you willing to pay for?

If paying for a decent internet connection, or paying for an online/cloud backup service, or shuttling a hard drive to an off-site location weekly isnt worth it to you, then thats a decision you make.

But there's a reason why all enterprise IT departments will keep backups off-site, and in many cases, also co-locate their data/systems if something should happen to their primary location.

My ultimate backup solution would be:

1. Physical backup on hard drives at home (easy and convenient, fastest recovery)
2. Off-site backup at a friends house (like setting up a NAS at a friend's house, backup data over an internet connection during off-peak hours, 2nd fastest recovery, just a quick drive away)
3. Backing up to the "cloud" (slowest recovery)

I had something similar happen to me in the 80's with midi music.

I now use a ESATA dock for backup to image my system drives (RAID1) and backup my data drives (RAID1). I also plug a second drive in the dock, weekly, and do inceremental backups. That drive stays in my car.

Thought of the "cloud" but that wouldn't work for me. I have way too much space requirements and it would probably take a few months just to upload everything.

I think the general "rule" is having minimum THREE backups of data, with one located off-site.

For example... Your photos should be on a internal hard drive, backed up on an external hard drive and then have one more back up on another external which is kept off site.

Man ... that's just harsh news. I'm sorry you've lost all of that.

It's a risk we all take by storing all of our data in one place. Probably the most practical way to mitigate your risk is through the use of a RAID1 mirror. That will at least give you another copy of all your data on another drive. But as you found out (the hard way) - that's not always 100% reliable.

You could pretty much go as far as you want with this. A 2nd raid box used as an asynchronous mirror to the 1st RAID array would give you yet two more copies. Better yet, is bohdank's plan of keeping a set of incremental backups on another drive someplace other than in the same building the RAID array lives. Though ... if you're talking about data that changes a lot, and frequently, I'd use a backup plan of periodic fulls followed by cumulative incrementals to ease the restore process.

Best solution if bucks were no option would be a RAID array for onsite storage, do backups to tape, and store the tapes someplace off site. The car is (far, far) better than nothing, but I'm not sure it would be my favorite choice.

First off, I'm very sorry to hear about your situation...

Second, I'm totally uneducated about some of the methods of backup being discussed here. Can someone please provide a quick definition of RAID that is referenced as well as costs?

Also, a list of backup options - rated in terms of cost - would be helpful I'm sure.