Your Back Up Solution

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pmiller228
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p.2 #1 · Your Back Up Solution

Ok I guess i'll put it another way. If your Drobo breaks you will not have a NAS until 1) you replace it 2) you send it out for repair and wait for it to come back.

If you build your own server/NAS you can fix it yourself and have less down time.

Since most photographers aren't chase Jarvis I think most would agree a cheaper, easily rebuilt solution is a good way to go.

Feb 12, 2013 at 11:19 AM

Lars Johnsson
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p.2 #2 · Your Back Up Solution

pmiller228 wrote:
Ok I guess i'll put it another way. If your Drobo breaks you will not have a NAS until 1) you replace it 2) you send it out for repair and wait for it to come back.

If you build your own server/NAS you can fix it yourself and have less down time.

Since most photographers aren't chase Jarvis I think most would agree a cheaper, easily rebuilt solution is a good way to go.

You can only "maybe" fix it yourself. And first you have to find out what's wrong. And what parts you have to replace . Then you have to buy new parts after that. And I would not say that your solution is a cheaper or easily rebuilt either. You wrote it cost you $ 810 including two 2TB WD harddrives. you can get a four bay Drobo with the same harddrives a lot cheaper than $ 810.
And not all photographers like/want/have time or even can build their own NAS server. The main reason people buy a Drobo is that they just like to plug it into the PC and insert the drives. Two minutes after unpacking it you are ready to do your first backup.

Feb 12, 2013 at 12:54 PM

pmiller228
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p.2 #3 · Your Back Up Solution

Lars Johnsson wrote:
pmiller228 wrote:
Ok I guess i'll put it another way. If your Drobo breaks you will not have a NAS until 1) you replace it 2) you send it out for repair and wait for it to come back.

If you build your own server/NAS you can fix it yourself and have less down time.

Since most photographers aren't chase Jarvis I think most would agree a cheaper, easily rebuilt solution is a good way to go.

You can only "maybe" fix it yourself. And first you have to find out what's wrong. And what parts you have to replace . Then you have to buy new parts after that. And I would not say that your solution is a cheaper or easily rebuilt either. You wrote it cost you $ 810 including two 2TB WD harddrives. you can get a four bay Drobo with the same harddrives a lot cheaper tn $ 810.
And not all photographers like/want/have time or even can build their own NAS server. The main reason people buy a Drobo is that they just like to plug it into the PC and insert the drives. Two minutes after unpacking it you are ready to do your first backup.

I will agree with you completely. Plug and play is great

I had time on my hands so I did a little research and built what I wanted. I can add up to 6 drives as my needs change and more if I change out the case. I admit I was tempted to go the drobo route but it seemed like a lot to spend on something with limited expandability.

Another thing, if you have any old computer laying around you can turn it into a NAS with the freeNAS software basically for free. I definitely overbought on the system I built in case I decided to go with full featured server software down the road.

Feb 12, 2013 at 01:29 PM

Bifurcator
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p.2 #4 · Your Back Up Solution

Yeah, that's what I was thinking - your last sentence there. A full 32TB system separated in two 16TB per connection interfacing at 6gb/s fully saturated over each would only cost me the price of the drives. Or really any configuration I chose. I would imagine quite a few people here already have all the gear they need - except maybe for the actual drives. It looks to me like system setup time after assembly would only be about an hour or so for 1st timers. Things like non-destructive dynamic re-partitioning are standard these days after all. There's really nothing "special" about any of the turn-key systems I've seen.

http://lifehacker.com/5822590/turn-an-old-computer-into-a-networked-backup-streaming-or-torrenting-machine-with-freenas and etc.

Feb 14, 2013 at 07:52 AM

15Bit
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p.2 #5 · Your Back Up Solution

I have a second PC running Ubuntu Linux and set that up with hard drives / RAID etc as needed. I use Synctoy to do the backups over a shared network drive (using samba at the linux end).

It has the advantage of being cheap (old PC parts), and i also use it in a multifunctional capacity - watching movies etc. The Linux RAID setup is not enormously difficult to setup and maintain, but it does require a reasonable level of computer competence. A good, and less technically demanding, alternative solution would be the same hardware running FreeNAS.

Feb 14, 2013 at 08:57 AM

Bifurcator
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p.2 #6 · Your Back Up Solution

Yup, and a good alternative is also SAN over iSCSI.

Feb 14, 2013 at 12:00 PM

15Bit
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p.2 #7 · Your Back Up Solution

Bifurcator wrote:
Yup, and a good alternative is also SAN over iSCSI.

I should probably play with that sometime, but my better half has enough trouble mapping network drives with samba....

Feb 14, 2013 at 12:38 PM

liamtoh1
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p.2 #8 · Your Back Up Solution

Here is my backup solution

I have 2 external 3TB drives. I use a free tool from Microsoft called SyncToy to make my backups.

My main desktop PC has 180GB SSD as my boot disk, 640GB for all my documents, files but not my photos/videos. 1TB internal HDD has all my photos, another 1TB internal HDD has all my videos.

On a regular basis (daily or weekly, depending how many new critical files have been added) I sync all the relevant folders from all my 3 internal HDDs to one of my 3TB external drive. The 2nd 3TB external drive is kept at my work location. Once a month I swap the external drives. With this approach, I will probably lose only 1 month's data if both my internal HDDs and the 3TB external at home is destroyed (like flooding or natural disaster).

Mar 04, 2013 at 03:43 PM

Paul Mo
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p.2 #9 · Your Back Up Solution

Likewise, except I use Karen's Replicator. I have three 2TB drives which I sync manually depending on how much I've shot.

If I ever build a computer I'll install a RAID card and consider running a RAID 10 array of about 15TB.

Mar 06, 2013 at 03:31 AM

Hawkan
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p.2 #10 · Your Back Up Solution

I have a little server (dirt cheap Intel Atom 2 mini-itx motherboard) with mirrored hard drives in my closet. rsync scripts run on my Macs to transfer all images to the server periodically (or at will, like after an important image import). The server and all Macs all run Crashplan to sync up to wherever.

I have had one computer die on me. It was a breeze restoring it from Crashplan.

Mar 07, 2013 at 11:04 AM

johnahill
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p.2 #11 · Your Back Up Solution

I have a simple solution with a Sata hot dock in my tower, I use 2 X 2TB drives which i rotate between my home and my workplace so I always have an offsite backup.

The benefits are speed, being SATA it's pretty quick compared to USBx and price, bare internal sata drives are cheap.

The cons are that I need to remember to backup manually and to rotate my drives.

Apr 10, 2013 at 08:48 AM

ffstory
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p.2 #12 · Your Back Up Solution

My primary backup/archive is Apple Time Capsule. It just sits in my network and is incrementally backing up everything I do on my computer every hour - setting it up can't be easier. Last month I was able to retrieve pictures I rejected and deleted after import in Ocober last year. This is sometimes handy.

Less often I attach an extrenal harddrive and do one-off backups of my Aperture library.

I am now thinking adding a cloud based solution to have at least one backup outside of my house.

Apr 10, 2013 at 12:45 PM

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