Off Site Backup

Hi everyone,

A little about my set up so far, I have two external hard drives, one the majority of the time plugged into my MBP which backups everything via Time Machine. On a schedule Carbon copy cloners copies an image of my hard drive onto another partition.

The second external hard drive is plugged in once a week, where carbon copy cloner copies my internal hard drive as an image. On another partition it backups up my photos music etc.

I am looking for an off site back up, and wasn't sure about online backup solutions? Either this or buying a portable external hard drive, as well as peli 1030 case to house it in. This could then be either left in my car (potential theft), or at work (place is like a fortress) and or the girlfriends.

Any opinions or options anyone can suggest?

Thanks,

Matt

An external drive kept at work is what I do. It fast, safe, and reliable. Internet backups take a lot of data transfers, more than people outside the US get, and soon the US will be limited too. It can also take months to do the initial backup if you want to back up your RAWs.

Too much data for online backup. Find a Safe Place for the offsite drive. There are services bureaus that can help if you can swing the $$$.

I have a safe deposit box that was free for life when I opened an account with CapitolOne. There might be something like that in your area. Otherwise, they are pretty cheap ($5-$10 a month for smaller ones). Bank safes are pretty much impregnable. Alternatively, once a month you could mail a drive to a relative you trust out of state so if something REALLY went wrong it would be safe. One lending institution I worked for used a armored car service that took our data to a secure site somewhere. That's pretty extreme though

Agree with MaxxuM...safe deposit box, with maybe weekly, or monthly, updates to an external.

I think I am going to look into the safety deposit boxes, but for now I guess from a practical point of view its better for me to get some portable storage and have a word with my boss about keeping it there.

Thanks for the input guys!

tim wrote in post #10483229
An external drive kept at work is what I do. It fast, safe, and reliable. Internet backups take a lot of data transfers, more than people outside the US get, and soon the US will be limited too. It can also take months to do the initial backup if you want to back up your RAWs.

How do you access the work drive? Or do you bring it back with you every so often?

Those of you on the safety deposit route... do you mean that once a period of time you bring the external [that you keep in the SD box] and back up whatever drive needs to be backed up?

I do regular backups to external drives. Once a month i take the critical backup drive and switch it with the one in the vault. I only backup my most important data that way (I couldn't possible store everything I have on one 1TB drive).

tigerotor77w wrote in post #10516782
How do you access the work drive? Or do you bring it back with you every so often?

Those of you on the safety deposit route... do you mean that once a period of time you bring the external [that you keep in the SD box] and back up whatever drive needs to be backed up?

Every time I photograph a significant event I take it home with me, and if I have no events I take it home once or twice a month. I do the backup, then put it in my bag beside my bed in case I have to leave the house quickly, as I always take my bag.

Between when I take important images and when it's fully backed up offsite I keep the CF cards in my car, inside a GEPE CardSafe. I figure the chances of my house burning down and my car being stolen at the same time is slim, and if it is i'll have bigger things to worry about than photos.

I use bare internal drives for back up. Drop them into eSATA docks and back up using MS SyncToy. They are stored in anti-static boxes that I bought off eBay. They are mirrored 1 TB drive. One is at home and one is at work. Every two weeks I take the one from home (with the latest back up) to work and dump it in a locked drawer in my table and bring the one that's in there back home.

Simple, cheap and effective.

Thanks for the replies -- sorry to hijack.