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Archive 2013 · Your Back Up Solution

  
 
Daum
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · Your Back Up Solution


Hey guys, I'm looking for a back up solution for my photos. I've looked into the Drobo 5N but have mixed feelings about it because it seems like half of the reviews are good and the other half are bad. I don't need more than 4gb for now and i want to keep it under $1,000 or lass if possible. What do you guys use?


Feb 09, 2013 at 01:08 PM
Paulthelefty
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · Your Back Up Solution


4gb?? I will make you an amazing deal...

I am looking at back up options as well, and I expect to create about a Tb this year. My current cheapskate plan is to get a hot swap docking station and just use standard HDs for back ups (primarily archives), and rotate them weekly or so. I also have a WD my book 1Tb that is running all the time, so I will have multiple back ups of everything.

Paul



Feb 09, 2013 at 01:37 PM
binary visions
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · Your Back Up Solution


Unless it's off-site, it's not a backup. In my opinion.

Depends largely on the average amount of data you create. If you stay within an amount that you can upload in reasonable timeframes, then I'd recommend - in addition to an onsite backup - you subscribe to an off-site backup service such as Crashplan (which I use and like).

If not, you'll need to look at rotating off-site drives.

I'm not sure if you've considered this or not - so if you have, great. If not, though, a lot of people don't understand that it's pretty easy for ALL of your backups to be destroyed in one shot. Whether it's fire, flood, or theft (I was burglarized; I had backups, but they were taken), you have to get backups out of your household.

I keep in-house backups too, for convenience, and for that I currently use two separate 3 TB USB drives. This upcoming year, I plan to bite the bullet and buy a Synology NAS, probably a 4 bay model, then populate it with higher end SATA drives like the Western Digital RAID Edition drives. Not for performance, but for reliability and support for some RAID firmware features.



Feb 09, 2013 at 01:42 PM
M635_Guy
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · Your Back Up Solution


I have a dual-drive ReadyNas Duo. At some point my intention is to set it up so it is backed up by Carbonite.


Feb 09, 2013 at 01:55 PM
durianisgood
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · Your Back Up Solution


I have a server with a bunch of 2 TB drives and ended up writing my own software to back them up (supports de-duplication, duplicating data across drives, syncing backups across machines). The biggest missing piece right now is offsite storage, and to handle that I've been thinking of updating the software to use Amazon Glacier storage. Luckily I'm not in a flood zone, but fire and especially theft are constant worries (lots of burglaries in this area).


Feb 09, 2013 at 02:06 PM
Daum
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · Your Back Up Solution


I meant 4tb. Sorry. Offsite back up is something I would like to do in the future. But as of right now, I'm looking for something that's easy to use and won't cause headaches. Basically an automated raid 1 type of set up. What are your thoughts on drobo?


Feb 09, 2013 at 02:09 PM
schlotz
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · Your Back Up Solution


Drobo is essentially a Raid 5 system albeit proprietary. No Mirroring (raid 1) per se.. As others have said, to really have a backup it needs to go off-site. Now that's out of the way, if you start getting into photography a 4TB solution will fill up a lot faster that you would think. Having something that can expand with your needs can be an advantage. What Drobo does provide is a simple straight forward raid solution for the user, it can be configured to support two drive failures yet still keep ticking. Drives can be added or changed out on the fly and it will maintain its integrity. Again, it's all about the money, ie having move drives to throw at it.

Regardless, if you read enough about any solution it will usually end up as a 50-50 split. It works for some, not for others. Key being you never get the root cause of the opinion, just multiple positions. At the end of the day, only you can decide what is best for your situation.

For me, the Drobo does what I want it to do.

Regards,
Matt



Feb 09, 2013 at 05:31 PM
Sunny Sra
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · Your Back Up Solution


I use Synology NAS, actually 2 of them. Both units are set to sync automatically at night. The files are downloaded to the computer, which then syncs with 1 NAS after that the NAS sync.


Feb 09, 2013 at 05:46 PM
Lars Johnsson
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p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · Your Back Up Solution


I use 3 Drobo's. One for all my photo's, and the other two for backup

Edited on Feb 10, 2013 at 11:11 AM · View previous versions



Feb 10, 2013 at 11:03 AM
EB-1
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p.1 #10 · p.1 #10 · Your Back Up Solution


I would use QNAP, though Synology is similar. In order to have a true backup, you would need two similar systems.

You can do offsite incremental or differential backups frequently if a full offsite backup is too large or slow to handle. My incremental/differential backups are currently on portable drives that I carry with me. When the incrementals get too large I run a new differential, and then create a full backup about once per year that is stored far offsite.

I have close to 100TB of drives, so there are multiple backups of data at any given time. At home there are at least two full copies, one offsite copy, extra copies of some critical data, and several rotating incremental/differential backups.

EBH



Feb 10, 2013 at 11:11 AM
Hardcore
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p.1 #11 · p.1 #11 · Your Back Up Solution


I use a Synology 413j and it is amazing. Bought 2 3tb drives and using the hybrid raid setup. I can add another 2 3tb drives in the future and it will automatically resize the raid array and give me a total of 9gb of space. Very very easy to use and the software is heads and tails above what other competitors are offering for around the same price.

I also use it as a cloud system and as a security system. Great piece of hardware.



Feb 10, 2013 at 02:37 PM
Bifurcator
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p.1 #12 · p.1 #12 · Your Back Up Solution


Common Backup Solutions:

  1. 4GB is a single DVD. So make as many backups as you need for about 15¢ each and put them anywhere you like; office, Mom's house, etc.

  2. When your collection gets bigger you can do the same thing with hard-drives or better still SSD drives. Cheap 120/128GB SSDs are about $100 so just buy two of those, hook them up to a free SATA port somewhere or plug'em into a cradle and make your backups. Keep one at home and the other at Mom's.

  3. Same as #2 but additionally use a software product and an 2nd HDD to keep and maintain an online backup. Similar to Time Machine or other such products do. (add $75 to $150)

  4. Same as #3 but where the 2nd HDD is in an external cabinet with it's own power switch. (add $50 to $150)

  5. Same as #4 but where that cabinet has its own processor for RAID and supports various types of connections such as eSATA, USB 3.0, FireWire, LAN, etc. (add $50 to $1,000)

  6. Same as #5 but incorporate an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) into the configuration. (add $150 to $1,000)

As you like...

I've used both cheap and expensive solutions and there's little or no quality differences. In my experience there is absolutely no need to name off brand names. Just check and compare the specs and the prices of whatever components you select for your system.

Currently, I'm at level 5 even tho I have a UPS for a level 6 configuration. Level 5 is nice if you're also maintaining system backups.



Feb 11, 2013 at 12:50 AM
binary visions
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p.1 #13 · p.1 #13 · Your Back Up Solution


Just as a consideration for #1, consumer DVDs typically have a shelf life of <5 years. Some last longer, some shorter, but you shouldn't burn a DVD, throw it on a shelf somewhere and consider it "archived."

I think Bifurcator is an IT guy, or at least a tech guy, so he knows but for everyone else, burnable DVDs are simply a layer of dye sandwiched between plastic. When you burn it, you're simply altering that layer of dye - and the dye doesn't last forever, even under ideal storage conditions, which most people don't have.

If you use DVDs for a backup, the key is multiple copies and refresh them every couple years.

There are archival quality DVDs out there, but they're a heck of a lot more expensive.

My backup is pretty simple right now. I subscribe to Crashplan, so my files are backed up off-site nightly. I also have a backup job on my computer that compresses my photo folder and duplicates it to another drive in my running machine. Lastly, about once a week, I plug in my 3 TB external drive and run the same duplication backup job, except to the external drive this time.

That gives me 3 backups - if one hard drive fails, it's easy to just copy from the other drive and keep working. If my computer fails, it's easy to just copy from the USB drive and keep working (I can restore the single week's worth of data from the online service). If I have a real disaster, I go to my online backup. Also, this is all very cheap - online backup is $5/month, and my external and internal drives cost me $100 each.

This year I'm planning on buying a NAS and connecting it to its own high-quality UPS, and doing away with both of the extra duplications, so I'll have one online backup and one local backup.



Feb 11, 2013 at 05:40 AM
pmiller228
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p.1 #14 · p.1 #14 · Your Back Up Solution


I too thought about a drobo or one of the other NAS drives. The problem with them is cost and if you need to file recovery it can be very difficult (expensive!) to recover your data in the event that something goes wrong

I ended up building a freeNAS file server. I built a pretty simple computer with solid energy efficient components, 8gbram, and 2 - 2tb WD caviar black drives set up. as a mirror. I think total cost was about $810 thanks to the HDD shortage last year.




Feb 11, 2013 at 10:46 AM
Lars Johnsson
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p.1 #15 · p.1 #15 · Your Back Up Solution


pmiller228 wrote:
I too thought about a drobo or one of the other NAS drives. The problem with them is cost and if you need to file recovery it can be very difficult (expensive!) to recover your data in the event that something goes wrong

I ended up building a freeNAS file server. I built a pretty simple computer with solid energy efficient components, 8gbram, and 2 - 2tb WD caviar black drives set up. as a mirror. I think total cost was about $810 thanks to the HDD shortage last year.



Why would you need a difficult an expensive "file recovery" when it's a backup solution That's one of the reasons we do backup



Feb 11, 2013 at 11:05 AM
Bifurcator
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p.1 #16 · p.1 #16 · Your Back Up Solution


Well if lightning strikes the Drobo will probably need to be sent to a really expensive recovery service and I bet the process would be quite difficult. It happens too. My next-door neighbor had their TV set blow glass all over the room from such an event and it killed my fax machine.


binary visions,
Yup, good points. But I'd say once a month or once every few months. Also, if that's a layer of dye it has a foil backing.


pmiller228,
Good on you! I looked into roll-your-own solutions a few years ago and they're super easy to set up, usually with better specs than turn-key offerings, and were about 1/3rd the price after everything. Had I not gotten mine for free I would have built my own - probably from an old DEC or something.



Feb 11, 2013 at 04:49 PM
pmiller228
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p.1 #17 · p.1 #17 · Your Back Up Solution


Lars Johnsson wrote:
Why would you need a difficult an expensive "file recovery" when it's a backup solution That's one of the reasons we do backup


In some NAS systems the files have a proprietary file system. IF the NAS has a failure those files can be difficult to recover. Its been awhile since I did all my research so I dont remember all the specifics (i'm a photographer, not an IT guy ). I chose to have a mirrored raid array so that if I DO lose a drive it is very easy to rebuild without a huge loss of time and money and in case of a total system failure I can pull the drives and still read them from an enclosure.


Also, a NAS/server is only part of your backup solution. I use mine as a central point to save everything from my laptop/desktop. The files on the NAS then need to be backed up to external drives/off site.

It might sound like paranoia to go through all that hassle but I have a friend that lost everything when he thought he was safe.



Feb 11, 2013 at 09:17 PM
Lars Johnsson
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p.1 #18 · p.1 #18 · Your Back Up Solution


Bifurcator wrote:
Well if lightning strikes the Drobo will probably need to be sent to a really expensive recovery service and I bet the process would be quite difficult. It happens too. My next-door neighbor had their TV set blow glass all over the room from such an event and it killed my fax machine.


Why would you need a really expensive recovery service for your backup files you still have another copy them.. That's why we have backups. If lightning strikes the backup or the original, we still have our pics or data.

This thread was about a backup solution. And then you have at least two copies of your files. He even wrote that he was looking for a Drobo as a backup solution for his photos. What you are saying is that he should send the Drobo to an really expensive recovery service. Instead of just copy his photos again Why would anybody do that



Feb 11, 2013 at 09:20 PM
pmiller228
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p.1 #19 · p.1 #19 · Your Back Up Solution


Lars Johnsson wrote:
Why would you need a really expensive recovery service for your backup files you still have another copy them.. That's why we have backups. If lightning strikes the backup or the original, we still have our pics or data.

This thread was about a backup solution. And then you have at least two copies of your files. He even wrote that he was looking for a Drobo as a backup solution for his photos. What you are saying is that he should send the Drobo to an really expensive recovery service. Instead of just copy his photos again Why
...Show more

Instant access to your files.

If you lose your physical backup you need to download your cloud backup. A couple TB takes a long time to download unless you are one of the few that is blessed with fiber

If you lose your NAS drive you are left with your external drives. If something happened to damage your NAS it is possible the same thing happened to damage your external drives/computer. (lightning strike for example)

Its just my preference that the files on my NAS would be easily recovered in the event that I needed to do it.

If you have more money than time a drobo is a good way to go. Since NAS devices were part of the discussion I threw in my .02 on that topic.



Feb 11, 2013 at 09:56 PM
Lars Johnsson
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p.1 #20 · p.1 #20 · Your Back Up Solution


pmiller228 wrote:
Instant access to your files.

If you lose your physical backup you need to download your cloud backup. A couple TB takes a long time to download unless you are one of the few that is blessed with fiber

If you lose your NAS drive you are left with your external drives. If something happened to damage your NAS it is possible the same thing happened to damage your external drives/computer. (lightning strike for example)

Its just my preference that the files on my NAS would be easily recovered in the event that I needed to do it.

If you have more
...Show more

If you loose your backup. You will still have the original files for instant acces. When leaving your drives to an expensive recovery service, you will NOT get instant acces to those files.

And why would he need to download a cloud backup ? if he still have the original files!!!

When a person have multiple backups of the files like you describe. I don't really belive he/she will be that stupid that he/she have all Drobos/NAS/external drives in the same room connected to the PC. So the lightning will damage all backups and the original files at the same time. Why make backups then All serious people would have at least one backup in another place



Feb 11, 2013 at 11:36 PM
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