External hard drive storage vs DVD vs online

I have two externals. The chances of them BOTH failing at the exact same moment is 1 in 19 trillion. So...if one fails, I go to the store, buy another one and copy everything from my remaining external and bada-bing, I once more have two copies of every file I have. It's a great system, easy to maintain, secure and relatively cheap...especially because I'm still on my original two externals (never had one fail)

mbellot wrote in post #11599631
EMP (Electro Magentic Pulse) from a nuke detonation would wipe them all out.

But I figure in such an instance there would be bigger things to worry about than losing some photos.

Exactly! Like will this damage the CMOS sensor in my camera??

digirebelva wrote in post #11594843
Ues a raid 1 system on your computer, that way if one HD goes bad the data still resides on the other one. Replace the bad one and the data gets copied back over to the new drive, Then backup to 2 different portable HD's. 1 attached to the computer and 1 you take with you offsite. If you have a fire at home all the backups in the world wont matter if they all get destroyed in a fire.

hi could you be a little bit more detailed with the raid system imformation thanks in advance,duncan

steely wrote in post #11602783
hi could you be a little bit more detailed with the raid system imformation thanks in advance,duncan

Runnind Raid 1 (there are other Raids like 0, 2,3,4, 5, etc.) on a system involves have 2 hard drives where the data is copied to both HD at the same time, they are in effect mirrors of each other. Some motherboards have the ability to set up a raid natively in the bios (requires 2 or more HD connectors on the board), others do not and would require a add-in card to do it.
Its not completely foolproof as some seem to think, they can both go bad at the same time especially if you happen to get HD's from the same lot and that particular lot is bad..I have seen that on raid 5 systems which use 5 HD's, 3 of the drives went bad at the same time, rendering the benefit of running raid completely useless...doesnt happen often, but it can and does..
That being said, if 1 of your drives fails the data still sets on the other. Drop in a new HD, use the bios (or software) to tell it to start copying the data back over to the new drive and you are back in business.

digirebelva wrote in post #11603419
Runnind Raid 1 (there are other Raids like 0, 2,3,4, 5, etc.) on a system involves have 2 hard drives where the data is copied to both HD at the same time, they are in effect mirrors of each other. Some motherboards have the ability to set up a raid natively in the bios (requires 2 or more HD connectors on the board), others do not and would require a add-in card to do it.
Its not completely foolproof as some seem to think, they can both go bad at the same time especially if you happen to get HD's from the same lot and that particular lot is bad..I have seen that on raid 5 systems which use 5 HD's, 3 of the drives went bad at the same time, rendering the benefit of running raid completely useless...doesnt happen often, but it can and does..
That being said, if 1 of your drives fails the data still sets on the other. Drop in a new HD, use the bios (or software) to tell it to start copying the data back over to the new drive and you are back in business.

thanks so much for explaining that, i have been looking at these for the last couple of weeks and have,nt bought one yet ,do they just work on macs or can they work on windows as well thanks duncan

I used to use multiple external hard drives and mirroring software. However recently I picked up an HP MediaServer 490EX from Costco. Its a great little device and for the price you can't beat it. I currently have 3.5 TB of total storage space on 3 hard drives on my network. The really nice that about it has a folder duplication feature that allows you to take any folder on the root level and "duplicate" it. This puts a copy of the folder on every hard drive so that if you have a drive failure you still have at least one copy of your data. It works with my Macs and my PCs so for me its the best overall solution.

spkerer wrote in post #11592420
Not a rumor in my case. I tried using paid Mozy and while that gave me "unlimited" online storage space and I have fast fiber upload speeds from my home, my upload rate to Mozy was throttled by them to such a low rate that uploading the photos from a single shoot sometimes took 2 or 3 days of constant uploading time.

When I canceled the Mozy service, their first choice on "why are you canceling?" was "upload speed." I'm convinced that upload speed is where they limit their exposure on data storage space per user.

Well that is not my experience. I have unlimited Mozy also and my initial backup has taken really loooooong time (it just finished last nigth in fact). Total 635 GByte.

Friday I upgraded my internet connection from 2 Mbit upload to 5 Mbit upload and I could definately see a difference in upload speed to Mozy.

Now I truely belive that there is NOTHING that is unlimited and that goes for Mozy too. If they throttle upload speed then that is fine with me. The service is in my opinion still cheap and good.

As for OP question. I did start out with backup on DVD but with 600+ GB that is a lot of DVD's so I dropped that. I have my photos on multiple harddisk. I copy my photos from the primary internal HD to a secondary internal HD. And to a third hd on a different pc. And a fourth copy on a NAS. So I have 5 copies of all my photos now that my Mozy backup has finished.

digirebelva wrote in post #11603419
Its not completely foolproof as some seem to think, they can both go bad at the same time especially if you happen to get HD's from the same lot and that particular lot is bad..I have seen that on raid 5 systems which use 5 HD's, 3 of the drives went bad at the same time, rendering the benefit of running raid completely useless...doesnt happen often, but it can and does.

Yeah too many people think they are safe with mirror raids. I have had TWO mirror raids where BOTH disks died at the same time. Fortunately I had all my data on a third disk in both cases so I did not loose any data.

I believe in the need for 3 copies to be safe, on my main drive, on a Drobo, and in the cloud. I use a Drobo system to storing my photos locally. It holds 5 drives, and I can mix and match drive size. I use Carbonite back up for cloud storage, yes it does take a while to get the first back done. Once the first one is done, it only takes 1 or 2 days to send an added photo shoot up.

Mark

tommykjensen wrote in post #11609464
Well that is not my experience. I have unlimited Mozy also and my initial backup has taken really loooooong time (it just finished last nigth in fact). Total 635 GByte.

And how long would it take to download those 635 GB? A backup that takes three months to restore is pretty useless.

hollis_f wrote in post #11609581
And how long would it take to download those 635 GB? A backup that takes three months to restore is pretty useless.

Then don't use it.


If needed it is possible do get the data delivered on DVD's.

tommykjensen wrote in post #11609599
Then don't use it.

It should come as no surprise that I've no plans on doing so. Not until I find a sensible answer to the restore problem.

tommykjensen wrote in post #11609599
If needed it is possible do get the data delivered on DVD's.

Which, while better than downloading it all, still isn't very satisfactory. Restoring from 90 DVDs is still going to be a real pain. Which means that cloud backup still isn't a realistic total backup solution.

Where the cloud is useful is for having easy access to important data from just about anywhere in the world. But Dropbox, or something similar, seems perfectly adequate for that.

I am almost sure that if you are willing to pay for it the data can also be delivered on a harddisk.

I worry about storing my data in the cloud..what happens if said company suddenly goes out of business, then what..its not like that doesnt happen..I just wouldnt use that as my primary backup...last resort maybe

digirebelva wrote in post #11609678
I worry about storing my data in the cloud..what happens if said company suddenly goes out of business, then what..its not like that doesnt happen..I just wouldnt use that as my primary backup...last resort maybe

For me the Mozy backup is not my primary it is my 5th I would never have it as primary backup.