gdanmitchell Offline Upload & Sell: Off
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Count me as almost paranoid when it comes to backing up. So either look at parts of what I do for guidance... or accept that paranoia isn't necessarily a bad thing when it comes to backup strategies. When you do lose a drive (and it will happen), you will be quite happy that you were paranoid.
At a minimum I always have four complete copies of all of my drives.
1. The primary computer's own data storage includes in internal SSD, an internal 2TB drive, an external 4 TB drive. Internal SSD is for OS, applications, and some working files. Internal hard drive is for Photoshop files. External HD is for RAW files.
2. I use one backup application (SuperDuper!) to backup all of these volumes daily to drives that are directly attached to the computer via USB. Speed isn't really an issue, since I have the software setup to do an automatic background backup at night and because the backup is incremental, updating only the files that have changed. One advantage of the SD! backups is that they are directly bootable in an emergency. A disadvantage is that they hold only the most current copy of any file.
3. I use Apple's Time Machine to automatically perform a second complete backup process (also on all drives) every hour. This backup is done across the internal network to (currently) a NAS device or (previously, and still with my laptop) to a drive attached to another computer on the network. This storage should, ideally, not be in the same room as your working computer — for reasons that you can probably imagine. You can do this across a slow network or even on wireless. Your initial backup will be very slow, but the follow-up backups (which are incremental) won't take so long. The advantages/disadvantages of Time Machine backups reverse those of SD!. They are not bootable, but TM keeps archival copies of files from weeks or months ago. If the most recent backup copy is bad, you can go get one from last month.
4. In addition, I also make a separate backup set using SD! to small external hard drives. I set these backups up so that they execute automatically any time the drives are connected. These drives live at an off-site location about 10 miles from my location, and every few weeks I update them.
Bonus: Being truly paranoid — and wanting to be able to respond to clients even while traveling — I also carry a copy of all of my Photoshop final files on small, portable USB drives when I travel.
Drives are cheap. Losing data is a horror.
Also, I wonder about your strategy of using a bunch of SSD devices. I think that using one for the OS and applications makes sense, but for most people they are not yet a cost effective storage option for large numbers of photo files — too little capacity and too expensive. And the speed increase isn't really that big of a deal in your situation. Frankly, I'd probably just get one large capacity external hard drive with a reasonably fast connection to the computer... and invest the savings in backup gear.
Dan
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