Bryan Posted February 23, 2015 Author Share Posted February 23, 2015 Thanks folks for sharing your experiences, clearly more than one digital location is needed to store data. However, I am currently using three, the 2TB drive in the box, and the two external mirrored drives. Cutting out one drive would leave me with two copies of all of my stuff, so it would take a dual failure, or as others have pointed out, fire or theft, to wipe out my images. I'll move the drives when we go on our hols, so that was useful advice. The idea of spending £90, not a lot of money in real terms, on a 3 TB drive when my two 1TB drives are functioning perfectly and not all that old, is unattractive when seen against my Alamy earnings. From memory they cost around £100 each when I bought them and presumably have negligible second hand value. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Allison J Posted February 23, 2015 Share Posted February 23, 2015 i won't go into great detail but I use two 4 bay Drobos backing up the working Drobo to the second. I had a self inflicted problem with the backup Drobo and had to re-set it and copy the working drive back [this takes days]. Then a drive on the main drive failed....This left very little working space. I had spare drives including a 4tb internal. I bought one of these from Amazon : ""iDsonix™ SuperSpeed USB 3.0/2.0 to SATA Hard Drive Docking Station For 2.5 or 3.5in HDD/SSD Tool Free Design - Supports 4TB+ Hard Drives Premium 12V2.5A Power Adapter&3.3 Ft USB3.0 Cable included"" I cautiously backed up the working Drobo to a 4tb drive in this device. This is now my off site back up. I managed to re-set the back up Drobo and repeated the process and then replaced the faield drive on the main Drobo. I can recommend these iDsonic devices. They are £19.99 each and take SATA laptop drives too. i have been very lucky. I now have additional backups and have learned my lesson and keep at least one off site.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Mitchell Posted February 23, 2015 Share Posted February 23, 2015 Thanks folks for sharing your experiences, clearly more than one digital location is needed to store data. However, I am currently using three, the 2TB drive in the box, and the two external mirrored drives. Cutting out one drive would leave me with two copies of all of my stuff, so it would take a dual failure, or as others have pointed out, fire or theft, to wipe out my images. I'll move the drives when we go on our hols, so that was useful advice. The idea of spending £90, not a lot of money in real terms, on a 3 TB drive when my two 1TB drives are functioning perfectly and not all that old, is unattractive when seen against my Alamy earnings. From memory they cost around £100 each when I bought them and presumably have negligible second hand value. I use a similar low-budget "Alamy special" setup to yours and move one of the external drives when I'm out of town. I've been procrastinating about permanent off-site physical backup but shall now give myself a prod. SSD's sound intriguing. I also have JPEG storage for many (but by no means all) of my images on PhotoShelter. The cloud world still doesn't appeal. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Martin P Wilson Posted February 23, 2015 Share Posted February 23, 2015 Cloud is not secure, or practical for many, for all sorts of reasons as a long term backup. My PC has mirrored drives so I am protected against a single disk failure. I use bare 2Tb HDs as a backup and keep one in my motorhome on my forecourt, or with us when we are on the road. I need to move to a copy fully off site, probably at my sisters but not conveneient for a weekly backup so I will probably do it quarterly or thereabouts. For that amount of storage SSDs or other solid state memory (USB flash drives, SDHC cars etc) are not financially viable unless you are a high earner, I am definitely not! I do need to rationalise my storage as I have multiple redundant (probably) copies of old stuff (main libraries are properly organised) that were created just in case when moving stuff around - I probably need to dump it all on to one drive and put it aside in case I find I am missing something. I would like to move to a Drobo or other NAS but sales don't currently justifiy it. And then there 10,000s negatives and 1,000s of transparencies ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Mitchell Posted February 23, 2015 Share Posted February 23, 2015 "And then there 10,000s negatives and 1,000s of transparencies ..." Mine are all sitting in a cabinet in my office. Fortunately, I've scanned a lot of the slides, which unfortunately are also sitting in my office on hard drives. I'm thinking that a portable regular HD might be an inexpensive option for offsite storage. Some are now small enough to fit in a bank safety deposit box (don't know what you call them in the UK). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NYCat Posted February 23, 2015 Share Posted February 23, 2015 I have portable hard drives in a safe deposit box. I acquire most of my images in my big trips so I don't need to update them constantly. I pick them up three or four times a year to update using SuperDuper. Paulette Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Martin P Wilson Posted February 23, 2015 Share Posted February 23, 2015 "And then there 10,000s negatives and 1,000s of transparencies ..." Mine are all sitting in a cabinet in my office. Fortunately, I've scanned a lot of the slides, which unfortunately are also sitting in my office on hard drives. I'm thinking that a portable regular HD might be an inexpensive option for offsite storage. Some are now small enough to fit in a bank safety deposit box (don't know what you call them in the UK). We call them ... "safety deposit boxes" it seems Although it seems most of the main UK banks no longer offer them for new customers and several are closing them down for existing customers. Question is do you then trust one of those springing up to fill the gap that have no history or credentials? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Mitchell Posted February 23, 2015 Share Posted February 23, 2015 "And then there 10,000s negatives and 1,000s of transparencies ..." Mine are all sitting in a cabinet in my office. Fortunately, I've scanned a lot of the slides, which unfortunately are also sitting in my office on hard drives. I'm thinking that a portable regular HD might be an inexpensive option for offsite storage. Some are now small enough to fit in a bank safety deposit box (don't know what you call them in the UK). We call them ... "safety deposit boxes" it seems Crikey, I'm gobsmacked. "Although it seems most of the main UK banks no longer offer them for new customers and several are clsoing them down for exisiting customers. Question is do you then trust one of those springing up to fill the gap that have no history or credentials?" Interesting point. I see banks as a necessary evil most of the time. The big banks still offer deposit boxes here in Canada. Haven't heard any rumours about the boxes disappearing, but I suppose it could happen. I don't have one at the moment. Shall look into it. Had a box for several decades but got sick of paying the annual fee. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Mitchell Posted February 23, 2015 Share Posted February 23, 2015 I have portable hard drives in a safe deposit box. I acquire most of my images in my big trips so I don't need to update them constantly. I pick them up three or four times a year to update using SuperDuper. Paulette SuperDuper? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NYCat Posted February 23, 2015 Share Posted February 23, 2015 I have portable hard drives in a safe deposit box. I acquire most of my images in my big trips so I don't need to update them constantly. I pick them up three or four times a year to update using SuperDuper. Paulette SuperDuper? SuperDuper is an inexpensive program that is very easy to use. I keep a clone of my Mac and a copy of the hard drive that has my images at home. SuperDuper will do a Smart Update so it doesn't have to recopy everything. I don't have anything that operates automatically. I just use the program now and then. I'm not great at the computer stuff and whenever I have had a problem (usually when I've forgotten how to do something) I've sent an email and received an answer within a few hours. Paulette Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Mitchell Posted February 23, 2015 Share Posted February 23, 2015 I have portable hard drives in a safe deposit box. I acquire most of my images in my big trips so I don't need to update them constantly. I pick them up three or four times a year to update using SuperDuper. Paulette SuperDuper? SuperDuper is an inexpensive program that is very easy to use. I keep a clone of my Mac and a copy of the hard drive that has my images at home. SuperDuper will do a Smart Update so it doesn't have to recopy everything. I don't have anything that operates automatically. I just use the program now and then. I'm not great at the computer stuff and whenever I have had a problem (usually when I've forgotten how to do something) I've sent an email and received an answer within a few hours. Paulette Thanks, Paulette. As it is, I just turn my external hard drives on when needed and update manually. Shall have a peek at SuperDuper, though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NYCat Posted February 24, 2015 Share Posted February 24, 2015 As I said, I'm not terribly knowledgable but you can make a "bootable clone" of your hard drive so if your computer fails you will still have everything. It's all very simple. There are also some more complicated things that you can do with a "sandbox" that I don't understand at all. I just do a smart update of my bootable clone and a copy of my images. I also have another copy that is made when I import images into Lightroom. I don't see a need to copy that one. Paulette Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil Robinson Posted March 1, 2015 Share Posted March 1, 2015 My backup cloud is a couple of hard drives at my parents' house. Two copies of everything at my place and a further copy with them, who I visit on a regular basis. Should be safe from everything but synchronised burglaries or nuclear war. I don't trust clouds. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darryl Posted March 2, 2015 Share Posted March 2, 2015 Short answer: Backblaze - backs up everything, including external drives for about $50 a year. Long answer below Here is how my backup process has evolved over the last 8+ years. Began writing to CDs then DVDs until large external drives got cheap. Bought a 500GB external. This is where all raw files are duplicated to as I dump my cards to my laptop. Also processed files and all personal data gets backed up there weekly. I currently use SyncBackFree which works well and fast. As that drive began to fill, I bought a 1TB and began syncing the two externals. When the 500GB got completely full, I bought a 1.5TB using the same sync process and stored the 500GB offsite Followed this same process, increasing the size of the larger drive, moving the full drives to various offsite locations until i hit 3TB. All of them were WDs and got knocked around occasionally with no problem. The 3TB was a Toshiba and it failed the first time it tipped over. Now I use a single external (currently a 2TB WD) for a single in-house backup for quick recovery and the following cloud based services. Backblaze. About $50 a year and ti backs up everything, including any externals that are hooked up during initial process. It took 2 months to get everything to the cloud. I test recovery once a month. Zenfolio. I had a Zenfolio account, but never thought to use it for backup. Now all of my processed images are there in 'hidden' folders. A somewhat manual process, but it doesn't cost me anything extra. I'm not currently using their RAW storage. Google. Recently discovered if you allow them to downsize your images, (2048 on long side) you get unlimited free, so this is a secondary backup of JPGs that runs in the background and is free. Hope I never have to use it for recovery, but it's there if I need it. It's also an easy way to show and share images from G+ as needed. I will probably go back to rotating external hard drives at some point, or wait until SSDs come down in price. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johnnie5 Posted March 2, 2015 Share Posted March 2, 2015 Data Retention; 1 year power-off once SSD reaches rated write endurance at 40°C This was one of the specs for a Samsung 850 EVO solid State drive. I had never thought about them losing data before, but apparently they will lose it if not powered up for long periods of time. Another cheap reliable solution as some one else mentioned would be a hard drive dock or enclosure with maybe a Western Digital Red Drive or even two that you could swap out while the other remained offsite. Docks and enclosures sell for around $30. If you use a dock you can find plastic anti static storage boxes for hard drives on Amazon or other online retailers. Jill mentioned that her computer gave her the message no OS. That does not mean that your files and photos are not still on the hard drive and not recoverable. It could be really simple to recover those files. Or not. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike R Posted March 30, 2015 Share Posted March 30, 2015 I suggest Amazon's cloud, which is $12/year with unlimited storage space. Has apps for all platforms, The downside is lack of organizing tools, folder creation etc. But if you just want a secondary to keep your files away from physical risk (fire, HD crash, etc) it's as cheap as it gets. https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/learnmore?ref_=cd_primepage_cdlm Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fotoDogue Posted March 30, 2015 Share Posted March 30, 2015 I suggest Amazon's cloud, which is $12/year with unlimited storage space. Has apps for all platforms, The downside is lack of organizing tools, folder creation etc. But if you just want a secondary to keep your files away from physical risk (fire, HD crash, etc) it's as cheap as it gets. https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/learnmore?ref_=cd_primepage_cdlm After last week's gas explosion in the East Village, I decided it was time to look into off-site back up for my digital archive, so I signed up for the free three month trial with Amazon. I just dragged and dropped my main photo folder and the files and folders seem to appear the same way on the server as they do on my computer. I've been uploading for the past two days and, at the rate this is going, it'll probably take about a week with my 100/10 mbps cable connection. I was hoping it would be similar to Apple's Time Machine that would work in the background and simply update any changes but that doesn't seem to be the case. You probably can't beat the price, it's free with Amazon Prime, but I suspect more expensive services may be more seamless. fD Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spacecadet Posted March 30, 2015 Share Posted March 30, 2015 Seems to be a lot more than that over here.£320/year for a TB. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike R Posted March 30, 2015 Share Posted March 30, 2015 I suggest Amazon's cloud, which is $12/year with unlimited storage space. Has apps for all platforms, The downside is lack of organizing tools, folder creation etc. But if you just want a secondary to keep your files away from physical risk (fire, HD crash, etc) it's as cheap as it gets. https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/learnmore?ref_=cd_primepage_cdlm After last week's gas explosion in the East Village, I decided it was time to look into off-site back up for my digital archive, so I signed up for the free three month trial with Amazon. I just dragged and dropped my main photo folder and the files and folders seem to appear the same way on the server as they do on my computer. I've been uploading for the past two days and, at the rate this is going, it'll probably take about a week with my 100/10 mbps cable connection. I was hoping it would be similar to Apple's Time Machine that would work in the background and simply update any changes but that doesn't seem to be the case. You probably can't beat the price, it's free with Amazon Prime, but I suspect more expensive services may be more seamless. fD I agree, as opposed to for example Dropbox, I suspect it's more meant as a file repository rather than a backup management service. I'm ok with that since I trust Amazon more than any other online service. Strange perhaps, but I've dealt with them for over a decade an not a single regret. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Linda Posted March 31, 2015 Share Posted March 31, 2015 Amazon $60 unlimited any type of file including raw. I also use Zen and Smug,external drives and recently stopped using DVDs as I have thousands and they will be hard to move... L Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Martin P Wilson Posted March 31, 2015 Share Posted March 31, 2015 Also DVDs will have a limited life as I discovered with writable CDs - they started to shed their surface coating after a few years. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keith Douglas Posted March 31, 2015 Share Posted March 31, 2015 I use external hard drives for backup storage. I've given up trying to keep up with DVD storage and I have concerns about its longevity. For my ultimate, all else fails, house burns down, off site backup I use Amazon Glacier storage. It's not intended for regular retrieval of data. It works out at about $1 per month per 100Gbytes of data. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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