Need Advice on Storage

RMander

I was going to buy a portable Hard Drive to Back up my pictures! So before i do i was wondering if anyone has any thoughts on a good brand or a good product?
Thanks Again for the advice :bow

Art Scott

so far the only brand I have not had any troubles with is SEAGATE.....and for back up I use the SEAGATE FREEAGENT PRO EXTERNALS....the Pro has ben superseeded by the SEAGATE FREEAGENT EXTREME.

I am looking into docking stations and using only internal drives as back ups also for economy reasons.

Rocketman766

I personally use both Seagate and Western Digital. SO FAR.... I have not had any problems with either one. Call me paranoid, but I actually back up my back up and ALSO burn a backup DVD. Drive space is somewhat cheap... Also, if you plan to access this data often or use the drives for more than just backup, look into a firewire connection if your computer supports it.

troybal

Rocketman766 wrote:

I personally use both Seagate and Western Digital. SO FAR.... I have not had any problems with either one. Call me paranoid, but I actually back up my back up and ALSO burn a backup DVD. Drive space is somewhat cheap... Also, if you plan to access this data often or use the drives for more than just backup, look into a firewire connection if your computer supports it.

Yeah I do a back up of my backup on 2 different drives. So three drives total. But dang your right, I should go to DVD as well. I lost some not so important data about a year ago when a external HD crashed on me (just movies) so I instilled a back up of a backup. My 3rd drive is a 320GB Passport, which is small enough to fit in my fireproof safe (just in case).

I am looking to get a 4TB system designed as a Raid 5 which will allow better recovery for me if a HD fails. Working on having that by summer.

gryphonslair99

Art Scott wrote:

so far the only brand I have not had any troubles with is SEAGATE.....and for back up I use the SEAGATE FREEAGENT PRO EXTERNALS....the Pro has ben superseeded by the SEAGATE FREEAGENT EXTREME.

I am looking into docking stations and using only internal drives as back ups also for economy reasons.

The only one I have had that did die was a Seagate Freeagent Pro. My WD's have never failed me. Personally what ever you buy, get a pair and keep dual backups. There are no fool proof drives.


Yes I still use Seagates as well as WD.

The Mack

RMander wrote:

I was going to buy a portable Hard Drive to Back up my pictures! So before i do i was wondering if anyone has any thoughts on a good brand or a good product?
Thanks Again for the advice

Everyone and their brother has at one point in time had problems w/ every brand.
I use maxtor, have 2, and a 1tb internal hard drive

just pick one at a store you can afford that you like.

RMander

Thanks for all the advise! You all are right i must 2 of what ever i buy! That is a good plan to burn them to a dvd!

thanks again

Shane422

You might also look at online backups. These all run about $60 per year for unlimited storage.
www.carbonite.com
www.mozy.com
www.backblaze.com

crmitche

I rotate a couple external drives AND use Carbonite. If you are interested in Carbonite shoot me an IM and I'll send you a referall. It gets you an extra month free.

Cheers
Craig

RMander

That Carbonite seems like a sweet deal! Thanks Again

Scott_Quier

I did some quick and dirty research (is there really any other kind on the internet?) and came across this review which includes, in part, the following:

Normally, Carbonite backs up at full speed. Upload bandwidth is generally limited only by the speed of the user’s Internet connection. Most broadband connections allow 2-3 GB per day of upload bandwidth. Carbonite claims that there is not practical limit to the upload speed other than your own connection and the latency and speed of the various peering points between your computer and Carbonite’s data center in Boston, MA.

This got me to thinking .... hmmm .... that seems a bit slow, especially if I want to backup the RAWs from a wedding (think 20G - 30G, easy). So I went to my ISP web site to see what their propoganda has to say about upload speeds:

Cable is faster than DSL. Let’s compare typical speed ranges:

Download Speed*             Upload Speed *  
DSL up to 7 Mbps             up to 1 Mbps 
Cable up to 15 Mbps          up to 2 Mbps

A bit of math:

(2mbp/sec)(1B/8b)(60sec/min)(60min/hr)(24hr/day)(1GB/1,000MB) = 21.6GB/day

Understanding that this computation ignores overhead, collisions, etc, this seems a bit high (seriously, no pun intended:D). Either I'm off by an order of magnitude or ?????

My take-away: Even if the 21.6GB/day is an accurate representation of the performance I can expect, I'm thinking this is still too slow - a day to a day and a half to get just the RAWs backed up? Hmmm, and that doesn't address the PSDs, etc. And, that assumes that I don't want to do anything else on-line during that backup period.

I fear I've missed something really big here and I have no clue what it might be. Anyone else have some ideas?

chrismoore

Scott_Quier wrote:

I did some quick and dirty research (is there really any other kind on the internet?) and came across this review which includes, in part, the following:
....

I fear I've missed something really big here and I have no clue what it might be. Anyone else have some ideas?

Online backups are SLLLOWW. I use Mozy, unlimited for $5 a month. It took weeks to do the initial backup of my 350GB photo folder. After that it only backs up what changes, but if you shoot a wedding and add 30gigs that would take several days. I'm paranoid as well and have three external drive clones, so the Mozy is sort of my failproof and since it runs in the background I usually just ignore it.

Village Idiot

The Mack wrote:

Everyone and their brother has at one point in time had problems w/ every brand.
I use maxtor, have 2, and a 1tb internal hard drive

just pick one at a store you can afford that you like.

I'm scared of Maxtor. Our inital order of over two hundred had quite a few DOA. Over the past four years we're down to probably 1/4 of what we started with because some one wanted to buy cheap.

I'd like to do DVD backups, but at 4.7gb a disc, It would take me more than 45 disc to backup my backups.

The Mack

Village Idiot wrote:

I'm scared of Maxtor. Our inital order of over two hundred had quite a few DOA. Over the past four years we're down to probably 1/4 of what we started with because some one wanted to buy cheap.

I'd like to do DVD backups, but at 4.7gb a disc, It would take me more than 45 disc to backup my backups.

Well that's you. I've never had a problem with them.

Art Scott

crmitche wrote:

I rotate a couple external drives AND use Carbonite. If you are interested in Carbonite shoot me an IM and I'll send you a referall. It gets you an extra month free.

Cheers
Craig

What type of files can they store.... dng, jpg, tif or raw???

Scott_Quier

Art Scott wrote:

What type of files can they store.... dng, jpg, tif or raw???

According to their website, they'll back up everything except executables.

Shane422

drobo
If online backups are too slow for you, then the best on site tool for backups is the drobo. Its merely a stripped down computer that houses up to four hard drives. I believe it is linux based and connects through USB 2.0 or Firewire 800. But the drives don't have to match like in most RAID arrays. You'll need at least two drives for redundant backup protection. The only drawback is that it is onsite and therefore susceptible to power surges, theft, or fire.

The drobo is $500 without the drives. But you can get $50 off with a coupon code from the twipphoto.com pod'cast.

BradfordBenn

Just remember when looking at Online backups that depending on configurations, when you delete it on your local drive it is deleted on the online backup after 30 days. So it is not the same as moving data from one drive to another; there are others out there for that.

hyachts

chrismoore wrote:

Online backups are SLLLOWW. I use Mozy, unlimited for $5 a month. It took weeks to do the initial backup of my 350GB photo folder. After that it only backs up what changes, but if you shoot a wedding and add 30gigs that would take several days. I'm paranoid as well and have three external drive clones, so the Mozy is sort of my failproof and since it runs in the background I usually just ignore it.

Ditto on this. I use Mozy and am very happy but it is very slow. I back up my HD video and an hour of shooting can take over a day to backup. I have an old Mirra personal server that backs up locally as well as syncs my important stuff to three computers, and then Mozy running on one computer to back it all up again to the web. The Mirra client is a hog, but it does what it's supposed to and generally I can just forget about it. The offsite backup was a necessary evil, even with all my local redundancy - if the place burns down it doesn't matter how many melted HDs my data is on, you know?

Scott, the numbers in the Carbonite review are far more accurate than the theoretical calculation. Aside from the things the ISP does to cut back that theoretical max (balancing among users, and so on) and general internet speed/latency there is the sharing of your bandwidth with all your other apps and devices and then there's computer limitations. The backup software has to run on a client that is usually being used for other things. Granted, the upload bandwidth the client finds available is usually more limiting than the computers ability to encrypt and push the info out, but its still a consideration. From what I've seen 2-3GB/day is probably pretty spot on for an advertised 2mbps upload connection (that's what I have). YMMV

Test-Pilot

What if you want to use these online backups to clear up room on your computer?
Once all my files are backed up, can I delete them off my hard-drive, and still retain access to my files from their servers?

BradfordBenn

Test-Pilot wrote:

What if you want to use these online backups to clear up room on your computer?
Once all my files are backed up, can I delete them off my hard-drive, and still retain access to my files from their servers?

It depends on how you have it set up. But if it is an online BACKUP most likely not. I would recommend reading the FAQ on each of the solutions you are looking at.

Also something else I just thought of, some ISP have limits on the amount of traffic you are allowed to have each month so you might need to watch that also.

ziggy53

Test-Pilot wrote:

What if you want to use these online backups to clear up room on your computer?
Once all my files are backed up, can I delete them off my hard-drive, and still retain access to my files from their servers?

No way I could ever trust a "service" of any kind for anything critical.

My recommendation, and my technique, is to make 2 copies of everything critical on 2 different technologies. DVD R and an external hard drive might be viable media, for instance. Then you also "must" verify the files in order to trust the backup.

A service would be a last used and least trusted for anything critical. What happens to your files if the service goes out of business? What happens if the service suffers an attack by a disgruntled employee?

Backup services have too much risk for my comfort to trust them as a primary backup mechanism.

hyachts

ziggy53 wrote:

No way I could ever trust a "service" of any kind for anything critical.

My recommendation, and my technique, is to make 2 copies of everything critical on 2 different technologies. DVD R and an external hard drive might be viable media, for instance. Then you also "must" verify the files in order to trust the backup.

A service would be a last used and least trusted for anything critical. What happens to your files if the service goes out of business? What happens if the service suffers an attack by a disgruntled employee?

Backup services have too much risk for my comfort to trust them as a primary backup mechanism.

I agree - kind of. I wouldn't consider an online service my primary backup solution - it's sort of worst case scenario insurance. So no, even if they would allow me to delete the local files and retain it on their servers (which most of them do not - I know Mozy and Carbonite only retain deleted files for a few weeks - maybe 30 days) I wouldn't rely on them to keep my only copies. That being said, I think an offsite backup is absolutely critical for the reasons I and others stated. No matter how many formats and media you save your file to, if they're all under your roof they're subject to theft, fire damage, flooding, tornado (pick your disaster). Nothing you can do locally can protect your critical data from all of those things. Online services back up their data as well (generally offsite, too) so they're offering yet another layer of protection. If you are backing up locally AND using an offsite service, you protect yourself against all those local hazards as well as affording yourself the chance to change backup services if the one you've chosen no longer meets your needs - the likelihood that that will happen at the same time something disastrous happens at home is pretty small.

LifeandLens

My Research says... speed is critical
Okay. I'm an IT guy and have tried many technologies for my photography. I agree that online backups are way too slow. So are NAS backups even using GB switching. The only way to go is direct connect firewire or USB2. Firewire is much faster. (A new USB standard that kicks FW's butt is just around the corner)

The point I really wanted to make was to not use LAN NAS drives. I have a western digital My Book that connects via an ethernet connection. SLOW!!!!

Since I use a MAC I save to my local hard disk and rely on Time Machine (Mac's backup utility) to make a full backup on a USB hard disk. Then I manipulate the image using a lightroom/Photoshop workflow. When a folder of images is complete and ready to be archived (2 to 4 months after capture) I use Lightroom to move the folder to my firewire connected acomdata hard disk. I also backup the raw and jpegs to a secondary USB HD.

I used to back up to DVD but found that to be a nusance. So I always have two hard disks with my images now.

- Tom

chrismoore

I guess the bottom line from all this is that there is no right answer and find what's best for you. Personally, I move processed images off my computer to an external HD which backs up to an NAS drive via Chronosync (although NAS drives are slow, I can log into it from anywhere to access the image). I have a second external HD that I keep at work and bring home once a month to backup in case the house burns down. Mozy is my failproof. It is slow as molasses but I just try to ignore it and hope to never have to use it. They back up their data on several servers around the world, or so they say.