Backing up vs. storage

TerryP

I have a 150GB hard drive with 143GB used (Mac G5). That concerns me, of course, since I keep loading pictures on. I have a 500GB external back up for low cost but that doesn't solve the immediate issue of my hard drive loading up.

Should I get a bigger internal and keep the backup as backup, or leave as is and move my pics to yet another external HD for storage?

I need my pics in two places. CD's are way too cumbersome although photographers are smitten by them.

Any ideas or comments on how you handle back ups and ever decreasing HD space would be appreciated. :bow

Terry

JESTER

Terry,

I try not to clutter up my computer internal hard drive so I have two Lacie 160GB external hard drives that I use and I back up my photos. I also make an origianal DVD when I download them before I do anything to them. I also have them on Smugmug after they have been adjusted. I ordered a backup from them once and I received all my photos on a DVD for about $30.00 I think. (Depends on how many photos you have.) You can't beat that.

claudermilk

TerryP wrote:

I need my pics in two places. CD's are way too cumbersome although photographers are smitten by them.

Smitten? I wouldn't say so. CDs suck for digital photographers--700MB doesn't go too far these days. Even DVDs at 4GB doesn't go too far. Then don't even get me started on the longevity of those disks (or rather lack thereof).

For the expanding storage needs, here's what I have done--based on recommendations from several others: One small, fast drive for the OS and applications. One large drive for data (or, in my case four, in a RAID 10). Then a couple of removable drive bays to handle offloading data when the main drive gets full and for backups.

I run a pair of sets of drives for backup. For expanding storage, right now I need to transfer data about twice a year to external drives (which also get backed up).

For hardware, I get the bare drives and separates cases from Newegg.

cletus

I got your storage...
Only $35,000 for 24 TBs

Take a look at the stuff made by Addonics. They make all kinds of different drive mounts and enclosures. With a couple drives mounted in removable trays and and an internal or external tray mount you can be really flexible. My office PC has a 320 GB primary internal drive and one drive tray mount. I have two 320 GB drives in trays. I'll normally keep one tray in the mount so a software backup system can run nightly backups of the data on the primary drive to the tray mounted drive. Every couple of weeks I'll swap out the tray drives and store the unmounted drive off site. That way if my primary drive dies I loose at most one day's worth of data. If the office burns to the ground, I've lost at most two weeks worth of data.

ian408

You can find drives in the 1TB range (Lacie) and lower. There's always a trade off between cost and size. If you're handy, it's pretty easy to put any drive into a system.

Whether you should RAID or not depends on your backup strategy and how lucky you feel. You can go from a simple mirror (two drives of like size) to any of the RAID standard configurations requiring more drives. More drives is pretty much always LOUDER too

Another device you might consider is a self contained set of drives that serve CIFS and NFS that you plug into the network and which are available to network systems. These are generally raid of one flavor or another. Easy to set up and administer, they're a nice alternative to drives installed in your system.

Good luck with your decision.

TerryP

Thanks everyone. I am leaning toward two external drives. One for additional storage including exising pics on my existing hard drive to free up the OS drive, and one backup. Heck, a 500GB LaCie is $120 (USB, not Firewire which is too bad since I can't boot from it). Cheaper than investing in a bigger internal HD, though, and I have my pics in two places in case of a crash.

You've given me a bunch of ideas. Thanks!

Terry

claudermilk

cletus wrote:

Only $35,000 for 24 TBs

Woohoo! 48 500GB drives?! I'm all over it. That ought to last a little while.

jdryan3

cletus wrote:

Only $35,000 for 24 TBs

FORMAT C:\

claudermilk

:splattwitch:grim

...the most feared command ever.

scottV

I am rapidly running out of space on my 150g external drive. Thinking about going with the linksys nas200 , a little more expensive but you can easily upgrade the drives at a later date, looks pretty nifty. For backup I use jungledisk with the amazon s3 service, happy with that.

scottV

I did some more searching and found this bad boy:
http://www.drobo.com/products.aspx#products_nav

kinda expensive but super cool.

ian408

f00sion wrote:

I did some more searching and found this bad boy:
http://www.drobo.com/products.aspx#products_nav

kinda expensive but super cool.

For 1TB system, not too bad. I wonder if you can buy disks elsewhere?

For comparisons sake, a similar system went for about a grand a year or
so ago (maxed out).

scottV

ian408 wrote:

For 1TB system, not too bad. I wonder if you can buy disks elsewhere?

For comparisons sake, a similar system went for about a grand a year or
so ago (maxed out).

It's actually $500 without any disks...it can hold up to 4, mix and match any size. If you need more space you just replace one of the smaller disks with a larger one, it takes care of everything for you.

photobanks

I use g-safe from g-technologies (Highly recommended!!). 250GB Mirrored so if one drive goes down, you always have the other as a back up. They are firewire 800 and usb 2 so data transfer is quick. They can also be daisy chained to add extra capacity when you get low with your original drives. You can also swap discs easily if you want to rotate a back-up disc to take off-site.

I also upload all my finished images (only the ones I am going to want to keep forever) to Smugmug as an extra security!

Michael