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

ocabj wrote in post #10086673
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.

I am a DIY kind of guy when it comes to computers. I don't think I have ever bought a computer (other than my Macs). Getting a server chassis and buying a power source and some RAID cards isn't too bad. I guess for those who aren't as into computers, a DROBO (or some other prebuilt RAID system) would be a good solution.

As for all the folks recommending against RAID, the OP didn't delete his photos, there wasn't a fire, he had a HARD DRIVE FAILURE (actually he had two hard drive failures). RAID is a perfectly viable solution against hard drive failure. I fail to see how an external RAID system is not a backup solution. Many companies use RAID systems as storage. An external RAID system is like a external hard drive thats protected against hard drive failure.

Guapo wrote in post #10057336
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/

I use a similar on line backup here in UK and it has got me out of trouble several times. For £60 a year (for 50GB) it is a no brainer as hard drives can crash without warning.

re bit....ridiculously simple backup. Mine is a terabyte.

http://www.rebit.com/

FWIW - Here's what I do

All images stored on my NAS, a Synology DS209 with two 1,5tb drives in Raid 1.

A friend of mine has the same NAS unit, but any NAS capable of rsync will do.

I have an external 500gb drive plugged in to his NAS, and every night a scheduled backup checks my images folder for changes and copies any new or changed files to the external disc at my friends house, about 50 miles away.

Granted, that first backup will take some time if you do it over the internet, but you could just as well plug that external drive into your PC, drive the 50 miles and hook it up.

The beauty of this is that for me to lose any images, both hard drives in my NAS should fail simultaneously AND the external drive 50 miles away should go bad as well. And thanks to rsync, only the changed data is being copied, not all 200gb of it every night.

Oh, and he has an external drive plugged into my NAS as well, doing the exact same thing, just the other way around

After reading the entire thread, I have some comments...

1) DO NOT trust an external harddrive as your only backup or storage. As the name implies, it is just another hard drive. Great for storing stuff, but never trust them more than your regular hard drives.

2) Raid is not backup. It is a security against data loss in the event of hard drive failure, but should NEVER be considered "backup" on it's own. I store my images on a Raid 1 array so I can afford to lose a disk, but if my basement is flooded, I'd be up a certain creek without a paddle if it wasn't for the automatic off-site backup my NAS does every night.

3) Do not trust DVD's. They will go bad. Online storage solutions are safer, way easier and most of them cheaper than DVDs.

My own experiences

Losing drives sucks when I was in school there was a bad batch of drives that they gave to everyone, and then used the same batch to replace dead drives, so I went through 3 one month.
My wife lost her iMac hard drive this winter. One week and $900 later ESS data recovery was able to give us everything back. At that point I decided that we could keep lots of copies for less than the cost of doing that again.

I still don't have a good home backup plan, but we both have our data on external drives now at least, and if nothing else I guess we could keep them in the fire proof box with our passports and stuff when we are not actively backing up to them.
Long term I like GilesGuthrie's method, but for now I am happy with just another copy especially since my main computer is a laptop that occasionally leaves the house.

Instead of spending money on good backup software I wrote the following which is plenty for me and only ever adds files, so I won't loose things I accidentally erase. On the down side I will have to clean out the garbage at some point. It is just good enough that it only updates files that have been modified, but no real features other than that.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
#copyright 2010 Christopher Stockbridge

@dirs = qw{/Users/Stocky/Deskt​op /Users/Stocky/llama /Users/Stocky/Movies /Users/Stocky/Library /Users/Stocky/Document​s 
			/Applications /Users/Stocky/Applicat​ions /Users/Stocky/Music /Users/Stocky/Pictures /Users/Stocky/snake}; #folders to backup

#note that /Users/Stocky/archives is a soft link to my external drive

use File::Find;
use File::Copy;
use File::Path;
use File::Basename;

$ageFile = "/Users/Stocky/archive​s/age";
-e $ageFile or die "Could not find the age file!\n\nIts possible that your backup drive is not mounted!!\n";

find(\&checkbackup, @dirs);

sub checkbackup {
	
	$oldfile = $File::Find::name;
	my($dec, $ino, $mode, $nlink, $uid, $gid, $rdev, $sive, $atime, $mtime, $ctime, $blocksize, $blocks) = stat($oldfile);
	my($dec1, $ino1, $mode1, $nlink1, $uid1, $gid1, $rdev1, $sive1, $atime1, $archiveAge, $ctime1, $blocksize1, $blocks1) = stat($ageFile);
	#print "looking at file ", $oldfile, "\n";
	#print "the archive age time is", $archiveAge, "\n";
	if(-f $oldfile && $mtime >= ($archiveAge-900) ) { #if it is more recent than the age file (with 15 minutes to make sure you don't miss things from the last backup session)
			
		print "$oldfile", " $mtime", "\n"; #progress indicator
		$newName = "/Users/Stocky/archive​s$oldfile"; #define the new file name
		my($filename, $dirs, $suffix) = fileparse($newName);
		-e $dirs or mkpath($dirs);
		copy($oldfile, $newName) or warn "copy failed $oldfile\n";
		utime $atime, $mtime, $newName;
		#print "\n";
	}
	
}

system "touch $ageFile"; 

dkspook wrote in post #10087948
3) Do not trust DVD's. They will go bad. Online storage solutions are safer, way easier and most of them cheaper than DVDs.

Most people here, though, are likely to have consumer-type network connections with limited uplink speed. Probably not a big deal for JPEG shooters, can be a real problem for raw files.

You both have static IP addresses? Again probably not something most people here will have.

You trust your data to some proprietary-format hardware RAID? If the card smokes, how confident are you that you'd be able to recover your data?

I've thought about such hardware, but have yet to come across one that's reputed as being reliable. The Drobo looks cool, but there are way too many horror stories about the units and the company's CSO.

RandyS wrote in post #10050383
Can't really help much with what all the costs are, but ...

RAID1 is two partitions in a mirrored array. When you write data to one partition it automatically is written to the other. An asyncronous mirror means you get your system back as soon as the first write is acknowledged, and don't have to wait for the 2nd to finish. I use the term "partition" as it's possible to make an aggregate partition out of more than one drive. Normally though, you'd think of raid 1 as two equal sized slices, each on a separate drive.

A full backup backs up everything on the drive/partition/slice (however you have the job configured).

A differential incremental backup backs up everything that's changed since the last backup.

A cumulative incremental backup backs up everything that's changed since the last _full_ backup.

ETA: The advantage to doing cumulative incrementals is that to do a full restore of a drive means you only need two backup images. The last full, and the last incremental. A full restore from differential backups means you need the last full as well as all incremental images taken afterwards. Actual best performance from cumulative and/or differential jobs depends on just how frequently the data on the partition being backed up changes.

none of that makes sense to me. could someone please translate? I don't understand what any of this means, SATA, NAD, RAID (I'm sure there are others). HAHA

also, which external harddrives have you found reliable ? I have had problems with 2 seagate freeagents and I do not trust them anymore.

unlikely but it happens, A friend of mine recently had acid or some kind of chemical drip from the ceiling where she works which completely fried her PC, then less than a week later, her external harddrive was damaged by another coworker who tripped on the wire and threw it across the room. They sent it in and could not recover anything. I'm learning how crucial back-ups are.

There's a lot of background info on Raid if you do some research - really not that hard .

Western Digital makes very good drives. I typically don't by their external drives other than their small 500GB Passport that I carry with me. Instead, I'll by their internal HD's, usually the 500GB or 1TB sizes, and then put them in my own external enclosures. I currently use this external case:

http://www.vantecusa.c​om/front/product/view_​detail/213

What's nice about it is it has two drive bays so you can stuff a whole lot of storage in it if you wish.

SnapsbyPoteat wrote in post #10135068
none of that makes sense to me. HAHA

also, which external harddrives have you found reliable ? I have had problems with 2 seagate freeagents and I do not trust them anymore.

I use Mozy and have a 320GB backup image currently. It took a few days to do the original backup but now that that's done it runs every night and I never even know about it.

I just bought this from costco last weekend.. I have backed everything of value on my hard disk and it is going in the safety deposit box on Saturday. It should fist in the small box.

http://www.wdc.com …/products.asp?d​riveid=721

themadman wrote in post #10048694
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.

I'm skeptical that the latter isn't subsidized by taxes or something.

Be careful that those safes may be airtight enough keep the stuff inside from burning much, but in a serious fire they won't necessarily stop the contents from melting.

anthony11 wrote in post #10136419
Be careful that those safes may be airtight enough keep the stuff inside from burning much, but in a serious fire they won't necessarily stop the contents from melting.

You are right.. but they are rated, some are good for 10 minutes, most for an hour.. and that is for heat.

The real problem with many safes, however, is mold. If you use a safe, you need to open it every few days. I didn't know that when I used a fireproof safe for my important papers, and some cash too. I opened it after about a month and everything was covered with mold. I didn't have any media in it back then, but I imagine any type of disk (possibly except for CDs and DVDs which could be washed) would have been destroyed too.

The teller gave me one of those memorable looks when I brought in a stack of moldy $20 bills to be deposited.

DIY http://www.engadget.co​m …-with-insane-build-quali/