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

Brad,

What happened to the internal PC HDD that crashed? Are you saying they couldn't recover anything from either the external or internal drives? The odds of that are pretty unlikely. You may want to try another recovery company.

My backup setup is as follows:

- Important non-media data such as documents etc. are stored in my Dropbox folder and synched to dropbox.com, my work machine, my RAID-6 on my server at home and another tower at home.

- All photos are stored on my RAID-6 on my home server, all uploaded to SmugMug as Jpegs, synched across a VPN to my work machine using a nightly backup.

- All camcorder files are stored on my RAID-6 then synched via the VPN to work.

- Last line of defense is that my work machine is backed up to tape nightly

I realize most people don't have the luxury or backing up to their work across a 35Mbit connection

Depending on how much data we are talking about I definitely recommend some sort of online backup. Not sure what your data requirements are or how fast your upload connection is but there are several decent services with varying price ranges.

In your diagram you mention online backup with remote access to files.
I recommend backing up all full res Jpegs to SmugMug as one line of defense.

Also recommend something like Dropbox.com with the packrat option (for versioning) for important documents etc. Then sync it to more than one machine.

Jungledisk is also a good pay as you go solution that can either perform backups, simply act as a mounted drive on your machine or both.

Dropbox and Jungledisk both use Amazon S3 which is very reliable. You can configure Jungledisk to use a compatible storage format that you could recover from S3 in the event that Jungledisk ever completely went under for some reason and your desktop app stopped working for it as well.

Then you have Carbonite, Mozy, Backblaze, and services like them to backup all your data. They all offer unlimited plans for approximately $50-$60 per year. These particular services all disappointed me in that they couldn't even come close to taking advantage of my 35Mbit pipe hence why I backup to work but they are still good options.

As for local backup I recommend something like a Drobo.

I burn the files directly to a dvd from the card and put them in storage. The files then get stored on an external hard drive that is also backed up with Carbonite which offers remote access as well. Kinda simple but it works. The finished images get the same treatment.

Files stored on separate internal 1.5TB hard drive.

Daily backup to closet-stored NAS

Automatic backup to Carbonite. I am really impressed with this service. Unlimited internal drive backup for $55/year. Application that runs in the background, uploads (encrypted) while your computer is idle. Takes a few days to upload everything (depending on your bandwidth), then updates your chosen folders on the fly. It really is pretty impressive.

http://www.carbonite.c​om/

Brad, did they take your external hard drive out of the housing and try to recover the files with it hooked up to a PC? I am sure they did, but I just had to ask. I have had an external drive quit working, but it turned out to be the electronic board in the housing. Nothing was wrong with the drive. I put it in a generic housing bought locally and it works just fine. Your situation may be different.

I also use one of those docking stations (NexStar hard drive dock, Model Net-D100). It is eSATA to eSATA. Luckily I have an eSATA port on my PC so all was well. Works just like an internal. I have removed the drive from last year and have it in storage. All of my sports photos from 2009 are on it. A new one has taken it's place for 2010. The docking station is limited to 1TB capacity, so I should be good for the year.

Here's my current backup plan for all data on my PC including pictures, outlook, excel, etc... It's probably overkill, but it did save me a few months ago when my main 1.5TB drive failed. I ultimately want to get an HP Mediasmart server, but can't justify spending $400+ right now.

- Weekly - Backup Main Drive to Backup Drive # 1 (or more often when downloading pictures) via Synctoy
- Monthly - Backup Main Drive to Backup Drive # 2
- Monthly - Backup Drive # 2 is sent to Safe Deposit Box at Bank and Drive # 3 in Safe Deposit Box is replaced with Drive # 2 in PC. Drive # 2 and # 3 are rotated monthly.
- Smugmug - Many (not all) images are uploaded to Smugmug.

I physically copy ALL pictures to 3 machines: iMac, Linux Ubuntu, and a Windows XP. All post processing and "ratings" are done on the Mac. All favorite pictures are uploaded to flickr in original high resolution. Once a year (Christmas), I burn ALL pictures taken in the prior year to DVDs and is stored in a safe deposit box.

The biggest problem I had was that my Mac HD went south last year, time machine backed up corrupt images as they happened as the drive was slowly dying. So when I restored from time machine, roughly 20% of my photos were corrupt.. I still have the originals in the other locations, but the post processing, ratings and tagging is lost..

Been there. I didn't lose as much as you but I lost a fairly good bit. I have thought about using RAID 5 the next time I replace my computer but hope that won't be anytime soon (mine is only 15 months old). For backup I use an external drive and also burn DVDs from time to time.

Windows Home Server. HP mediasmart uses it. Very simple solution and it rocks. I have used it for a couple of years now. When my wife's computer HD went down, we found out just how nice WHS was. Went to the store, got a new drive, booted with the WHS recovery cd, 30 minutes later she was back up and running just like before.

I have a custom build WHS with 3tb of drive space in it now, so I have an additional layer of backup by synching my pictures to the picture folder on the server and having it make that redundant by spreading it across multiple drives.

I am pretty committed to backup, so I also backup my pictures to an external HD that I keep in my cabinet at work. I use 2 drives and swap them out about once a week.

For some files, my partner dealt with an online storage web site and as someone else mentioned, the place shut down without notifying anyone that had files there. Good thing we had here copies of those files. So I don't think online file backups is such a hot idea after this experience.

I'm not a professional photographer, mind you, but my backup strategy goes like this...

I have a LaCie Quadra plugged in the FireWire port. I use it to make my SuperDuper! backups. I paid my licence so I have different options for my backups.

As soon as I'm done with my photos on my internal hard drive, I burn them to DVD and catalog them with Tri-CATALOG so I can find them again easily if I need to use them again.

You could have a second external hard drive and make a backup on it too, so you'd end up having two backups on two different external hard drives.

I never use Time Machine. Not enough configurable to my taste and I also have read about it acting weird and corrupting backups that end up being unusable. So no TM for me.

My photo-processing machine stores the photos on a 4-disk RAID 5 array that can stand to lose a disk with no loss of data.

Nightly, all my photos, videos, documents and music are spread across a pair of Linux boxes in the garage. These are ancient PCs with new drives in them, both have RAID 1 mirrors, so each of them can lose a drive with no loss of data too. And the garage is behind double-skin firewalls from the house. Also, one of the Linux boxes is configured as a media server, and streams music around the house.

Finally, all photos, documents and video are backed up to Mozy online. Mozy is owned by EMC, who are the largest storage vendor in the word, and also own VMware and RSA SecurID so are probably fairly safe financially. It costs $5 per month for unlimited storage, and I have more than 400GB there. Takes absolutely ages to upload, but the product has become considerably more stable over the last year. All files are versioned, with all versions from the last 30 days recoverable.

This addresses the following needs:
- in the event of accidental deletion of files from the main photo computer, files can be quickly recovered from the Linux boxes.
- in the event of total loss of the main photo computer, files can be quickly recovered from the Linux boxes.
- in the event of overwriting of files, of more than 3 versions (which the Linux backup takes care of) but less than 30 days, files can be recovered from Mozy.
- in the event of loss of the study, files can be recovered from the Linux boxes in the garage.
- in the event of loss of the house, files can be recovered from Mozy.

Additionally, the whole thing is entirely automatic, with zero administration from me. The Linux backup (run from the PC with SmartSync) sends me e-mails comtaining the job stats, and Mozy pops a window up when it's finished.

And if all this fails (err, OK) I noticed that my house insurance includes provision of up to £2,500 for "professional computer data recovery services."

This is surprisingly inexpensive. The most expensive part was putting in the network cables that terminate in the garage. The switch at the core of the network is a 3Com 3300, but I got it off eBay for £40. You could do it with wireless bridges if you wanted, but I experienced quite poor performance with these. As mentioned before, the Linux boxes are retired PCs, which had new drives fitted at a cost of around £75 per machine. SmartSync costs around $30 to buy, but I got an OEM licence off an old rubbish piece of NAS hardware. And Mozy is $5 per month.

This is the result of telling the wife that if we had computer failure, she'd lose the photos of the children, and her saying to "do whatever's needed" to stop that happening.

i al3ways burn my important files on a dvd and keep them safe in a case! as always i also have external HD as backup too

I'll throw in my $0.02. I have much data to backup and researched off and on for years. I have need to be cost conscious and secure. My summary:

1) RAID is not a backup solution. Viruses, bad power surge may kill both drives simultaneously. It only protects against loss of 1 drive from normal wear and tear
2) offline and offsite backup is critical. Never put all of your eggs in one basket. Fire or theft and BAM! main and backups are gone.
3) don't trust exact same media for backups in case you get a bad batch. E.g. if you use multiple hard drives or optical media, get different brands, or at least different lot numbers.

My cheap home solution:
1) 1 TB online storage HDD, WD brand
2) two 1 TB offline HDD, Samsung brand.
3) use esata dock to propagate all additions and deletions from WD HDD to offline Smsung HDD.
4) 1 backup stays with main computer, 1 always stays offsite.
5) weekly backups. The most I lose is 1 weeks worth of work which is tolerable.
6) likely will do blu-ray backups as price is getting quite good. <$2 for 25 GB incremental backups.

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.

I will advise against doing this. RAID is not a backup, it merely provides an up-time and redundancy against hard drive failure. If gong the NAS route, make a few copies with external HDs.

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.

I think you meant to say he should buy a rackmount chassis. A 'server rack' is just a shelf system to held rack units.

But your recommendation of getting a rackmount is pretty simplistic. You should note that it's a lot more complex since you have to worry about power (AC vs DC), cooling, noise, the actual rack to be mounted in, as well as how big the chassis should be (1U/2U/4U etc) and how it will be accessed (fiber, copper, iscsi, etc). Not to mention what RAID controller to use and FS type.

Personally, I think getting a rackmount to house a bunch of drives in a RAID5 setup is the wrong way to go.

If you want to go RAID, just get a DROBO. If you're going to go all out with a rackmount, then use ZFS.

No, don't use RAID as a backup :/ It's not designed for that. If you accidentally delete your whole photo directory, then you've lost it on the redundant drive(s) as well. RAID is not a backup solution!

For my home stuff I try to keep it simple. I have an internal backup drive (NOT raid) that I backup to incrementally daily. Once a week I backup to an external drive. Once a month backup to yet another external drive and I swap the external drive with another external drive that my brother keeps at his place. So, 4 backup drives in total. Once a year I trash the whole lot (or re-purpose them) and get a new set of backup drives. The cost of the drives is (a LOT) less than the value of my data.