You guys do offsite backup?

[RaymondC]

<p>In case of fire etc etc ... The reason I ask is that I know some a person that he recently just splurge on the cyclinder Mac Pro and then Promise Pegasus HD RAID unit which is at the Apple store as well ie - 4x drives. That's some serious disk space. Then the question is how does one get that offline? We only have 50Mbps upload speeds for fiber optic in New Zealand. Generally the data is not unlimied usage. With a download of 100 or 200Mbps. But still you can imagine ...</p>

<p>I don't shoot that much so it's ok but again I still shoot film for this hobby so I guess there is only one copy and any scanned copies are not the same but I guess better than nothing ... But I have 2 HDs in machine so 2 copies there, and 1x external. Looking at putting 1x in a bank safe. But again, I've only got 250GB of stuff.</p>

<p>Cheers.</p>

[waltflanagan]

<p>I have 7TB of data and I'm very serious about my data but I don't do any kind of online/Internet/cloud backups. I have 3 sets of drives. One set in the computer and 2 sets of external drives that I rotate every other week between a relative's house 20 miles away. Here in the US I have 15Mbps download and just 1Mbps up. I can pay for more but it's not worth it to me. It would take around 7 months to upload all of my data at 1Mbps.</p>

[lornesunley]

<p>Off site backup can be done using slender external hard drives and a safety deposit box at your bank</p>

[john_harper9]

<p>After analyzing the costs and bandwidth required for corporate database and image collection backup to a cloud vendor in a bandwidth-constrained location, multiple portable drives are the cheapest solution but require your attention to swap drives and store them is a separate location. </p>

<p>Fiber uploads? I'm jealous, but that bandwidth is good for cloud backup and a daily backup will send only new/changed data and happens automatically (a good feature). The decision for cloud backup will then be the vendor's costs for storage size and your perception of the vendor's stability and how subscription rates will change in the future. It's risk management and your tolerance of loss vs. cost of maintaining multiple copies.</p>

<p>Also, a backup is worthless if you cannot recover the data. Test whatever solution you choose.</p>

[Matt Laur]

<p>John hits on an important thing: even if you DO get everything up to a cloud storage provider, how long will it take you, in the middle of a panic following some emergency, to retrieve tens of gigs of (for example) video file data for a project you were right in the middle of completing? <br /><br />Physically re-locating second and third copies of data on big drives is the only practical way to deal with it when you're into the multi-terabyte zone. <br /><br />But then, Western Digital and Seagate have each started selling modestly priced 4 and even 6TB drives. Compared to the direct and indirect costs of losing all of that data, the drives and enclosures for them are cheap, cheap, cheap. You just have to get religion about moving them off-site to a safe deposit box or a good spot in a friend or family member's house.</p>

[will_daniel1]

<p>I drive my off-site storage disk just around the corner to my daughter's house. I do this a minimum of once a week -- more often when I'm working on a book project. Burn, baby burn, but you won't get my data. Another thing I think is important is keeping your data files on a separate drive apart from your operating system files.</p>

[digitaldog]

<p>Yes, CrashPlan now for about 2 years. No issue. It took a long time initially but now it happens while I sleep. I don't backup everything. All images of course, User's folder on Mac. Pointless to backup applications and the like. I think I have about 5TB's stored there. Never needed to take anything off there, I have multiple HD backup's on site. To me, this is a belt and suspender approach.</p>

[Charles_Webster]

<p>My off-site backup disk is stored at a friend's house about 5 miles away. We trade disks once a week, so the off-site is seldom more than a week old.<br>

<Chas><br /><br /></p>

[bgelfand]

<p>I have several backups.</p>

<p>Like you, I have two disks in my computer - a Windows 7 machine, plus an external 750 Gigabyte USB 3 drive and several flash drives, both USB3 and USB 2.</p>

<p>Windows backup backs up data from my prime disk to the secondary disk in my computer once a week. This provides archived data going back several years.</p>

<p>I use Sync Toys to back up data to the external USB 3 drive every day usually at night, just before I turn the computer off. If I upload pictures or create any other important data during the day, I will run Sync Toys after the data is created and then again at night. The external drive is turned off when I am not backing up data. </p>

<p>At least once a month, usually just before I apply the monthly Windows updates on Patch Tuesday, I use Windows backup to take System Images, physical images of my disk, to both the second internal drive and the USB 3 drive. This image will get me back to a working system with all my software installed in case the primary hard disk crashes, or a really nasty virus infection. I also take a System Image before any major system changes or software installations. There is an old engineering adage, "Don't go nowhere you can't get back from no how." <Grin></p>

<p>Like you, I use mostly film, although I have a point-and-shoot digital camera and my cell phone for digital images. Low resolution scans of the film are on my computer and backed up with the rest of my data. High resolution scans of selected negatives are on DVD filed with the negatives. The scanned images and digital images are cataloged in Photoshop Elements Organizer.</p>

<p>Once a month I use WinZip to create off site backups of selected files; the Zip files are copied to a USB flash drive. The Photoshop Elements Organizer is backups up to a second flash drive. Very important files - financial files and my full household inventory and inventory programs - are copied to both flash drives. The flash drives are stored in my Safe Deposit box. I have two sets of flash drives - one is in the bank, the second is in my desk drawer ready to be used for the next months backup; they rotate each month.</p>

<p>If my data out grows the flash drives, I will use 2.5 inch laptop drives for off site backup.</p>

<p>Is this perfect? No, but it should serve in a disaster.</p>

 

[EricM]

<p>First, I burn (most) data to dvd as I create/ingest it. Second, is Crashplan in the cloud, and third (lowest priority as it's the most vulnerable and least secure form) is duplicating my drives to other external drives. The dvd's and externals are driven across town to another location.</p>

<p>CD's I burned with Toast in 1997 still open in my dvd player...amazing.</p>

[JDMvW]

<p>I have 9TB or so, 6TB of them Thunderbolt, half a TB in SSD, hooked up more or less directly to my Mac Pro.</p>

<p>I do have DVD and other backup of my main data files, as well. I always keep my install files and such separately as well.</p>

<p>I don't care for clouds - I really don't like any external connections, but can't live without the internet, unfortunately. Otherwise, I'd like to be like Gene Hackman in <em>Enemy of the State</em> (talk about your prophetic movie), a hermit in an electronic cage.</p>

 

[AlanKlein]

<p>I'm an amateur so I only burn DVD's of selected digital and scanned film photos. I create slide shows of these on DVD's and give one set to my daughter who lives elsewhere and keep one set in my house. If other family is involved, I'll give them a set. </p>

<p>My film and slides just sit in boxes or slides trays here in my house. If they burn up in a house fire, I suppose I'll have bigger problems to deal with. Curious, what did people do with their negatives in the "old days"? Were they as "anal" as us?</p>

[JDMvW]

<blockquote>

<p>Curious, what did people do with their negatives in the "old days"? Were they as "anal" as us?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>definitely. Many of us kept elaborate systems of storage and recovery. We also made "backup" duplicates of our "prize" images, both prints and slides. Nowadays it's such a comfort to the anal retentive to be able to back everything up, not just the best.</p>

[stp]

<p>I do what Lorne suggests.</p>

[david_henderson]

<p>Yes, via external drives where I have one set at home (switched off unless being updated or checked) and one set at a daughter's home. I do fret a bit over external drive reliability, especially as neither Western Digital nor Seagate have an outstanding quality reputation yet seem to have acquired much of the competition in this market that you might assume make their own drives.</p>

[johne37179]

<p>Backups of backups. All drives fail. These are the rules!</p>

[PaulCoen]

<p>Crashplan has an option called "Restore to door" if you need large data sets restored. They'll put it on an external HD and ship it to you, along with a return label to ship the drive back. Costs about the same as a large external drive. <br>

Given the fact that you're probably unlikely to need it (let's face it - a drive failure is the most likely issue, and if you've also got a local Crashplan - or other method - backup, you'd just restore from that), it's probably an acceptable option for many.</p>

 

[leicaglow]

<p>I started with a consumer grade online backup service, then online mirroring, then aws cloud, then it became too unmanageable online, so I bought hard drives. I rotatate between three drives and rotate until filled. One set is always in my office, and the other two in storage, locked in a gun safe in a storage unit. It isnt that complex really, but I have lost so many images on cds and dvds from digital rot.</p>

[goldbergbarry]

<p>The key for backups is to have redundant systems. I do the following.<br>

1. All of my pictures are on my Macbook on a SSD drive. This is my primary editing computer.</p>

<p>2. I backup the files to a local drive on my home network. </p>

<p>3. I use Crashplan. The thing I love about it is that it happens automatically. You don't need to remember to rotate drives or anything else. It take a couple of weeks for the initial backup to complete but once that it done, it keeps current pretty easily. One of the big issues of any backup solutions is having to remember to do the backup. This is why I recommend Crashplan.</p>

<p>4. Every once in a while, I will also copy the files to another hard drive but I don't deal with swapping drives or placing any of the drives off-site. I depend on Crashplan for that.</p>

<p> </p>

[parv]

Has anybody restored >10 GB of data over Internet connection (even as an exercise) in a single instance?

[dcstep]

I'm in the USA and have just over 2TB of images. I've got an on-site external HD back-up and an off-site HD back-up, at my office.

 

I started BackBlaze cloud back-up last week. With my 10mps upload speed, it's uploading around 100GB per day. Unlike a couple of other cloud backups I've tried, it's not throttling down my upload speeds after a few GB. It keeps running full speed. There's even a manual throttle, where I can slow down the back up, if I need to do some other uploading. At $50 annually, it was one of those "why not?" kind of things. So far, it's working as advertised.

[PapaTango]

Amazon S3 is a solid choice. One can choose the 'Glacier' option which is simply an archive folder--not intended for dynamic recall. Filezilla Pro (at $10) offers S3 functionality now so it is relatively easy to move stuff in and out.

[dcstep]

Amazon S3 is a solid choice. One can choose the 'Glacier' option which is simply an archive folder--not intended for dynamic recall. Filezilla Pro (at $10) offers S3 functionality now so it is relatively easy to move stuff in and out.

 

For my 2.2TB, Glacier would be $105 annually, which isn't really bad.

 

Were you able to upload at unthrottled speeds when first moving your archive there?

[bobbudding]

I use CrashPlan. The initial backup took several weeks, but that was 2 TB. Now it just runs in the background.

[digitaldog]

I've been using CrashPlan for about 3 years, zero issues. I've only got about 750 gigs up there.