Just wondering what you all do for off-site backup. I'm currently using CrashPlan, but it's pretty expensive and will only become more so as my images pile up.
I have multiple on-site backups (two cloned copies of my image drive), but obviously that wouldn't help much if my house burned down.
What's the easiest and most cost-effective way to do this?
This may sound silly but i keep a fire proof safe at my in-laws with a 3 TB External HD there. I try to update often. It's not an online solution but its rather inexpensive and takes care of both work and family related photos.
I literally think a bomb would have to go off before that safe is ruined. Not to mention I also have a back-up 3 TB here at home and a 500GB portable in my bag that I carry with me.
My friend and I exchange external hard drives each week, so there's always a backup offsite that's no more than a week old, and a backup onsite that's no more than one day old.
I use 500GB drives in USB enclosures.
I figure that if her house (12 miles away) and my house are both destroyed, I have bigger things to worry about than my photos
CrashPlan is expensive? I have 2 computers backed up. 2.5 TB total and I do the monthly plan. $12/mo unlimited. However I am going to go to the discount pricing because I have had them for over a year now and am very happy.
I think I got a little confused about CrashPlan pricing. I thought it was per GB, but I just went to their site and now I see that it's $50/year for unlimited. I don't know if they recently changed pricing structure, or if I was just out to lunch.
Either way, problem solved. I'm quite happy to pay $50/year to have an automated off-site backup!
I do Double HD, one in studio and one copy off site plus Crashplan for the jobs I have to save. I have had too many HD issues to count on them.Not to mention one drop moving it around from the studio to home would be the end of that back-up.
A HDD that lives at a mate's place (frequently updated), and Crashplan. Glad you got the pricing confusion sorted, I was getting confused reading about his it was getting expensive :-)
The problem is that I'm OCD about RAW file retention. I'll keep stuff I don't publish online simply because I might have a later use for it. I can easily shoot 3000 raw images over the course of a weekend. Even if I only keep a quarter of those that's still 250+ RAW files. It takes forever for Carbonite to ingest them all.
I have a USB 3.0 docking station and swap out 2TB drives every so often to a safe deposit box at a nearby bank. That gives me both a b/u on site and off site. I use GoodSync to do the back-ups. USB 3.0 goes pretty quickly.
i have a drobo in studio that holds all weddings and shoots. i have a second drobo that comes on site once a week to make a backup of the in studio drobo. i am getting a 3rd drobo that will sit at my parents house and will be my own personal cloud service that will constantly back stuff up on the in studio drobo.
once i finish a job it gets exported as jpgs and sent to zenfolio for the client, where the files live forever. Or as long as I am a customer of theirs. so 3 copies plus a 4th final jpg copy.
dennishh wrote:
Two e-sata drives in the trunk of my kid's car that sits in the yard. Both are encrypted and wrapped in plastic. Refresh data every couple of months.
Trunk of the car. Great idea. Would never have thought of that.
Is crashplan faster than Carbonite? I just started with Carbonite a couple months ago. Took 4 days for my first back-up. But that was all of my data. Updates are faster, but, like First Shadow says, 250+ RAW files. . .!
Not like I'm doing anything at 2 in the morning anyways.
I'm not sure, but I remember researching all of the choices and coming away with the idea that CrashPlan was the best choice. Not very helpful, I know. But there it is.
badlydrawnboy wrote:
Trunk of the car. Great idea. Would never have thought of that.
I used to think it was a good idea too, but it's subject to all sorts of temperature extremes, as well as being moved around a whole lot. I stopped doing it a long time ago.
