gdanmitchell
Offline
• • • • • • •
Upload & Sell: Off
|
Bruce n Philly wrote:
I am a bit old fashioned in that I have a four-disk Network Attached Storage (NAS) RAID 5 (allows for a disk failure and no loss of data) on my home network. Further, I run backups of the RAID array to three different high capacity hard drives. So that is more than quadruple redundancy. I recently had two NAS drives fail over three months...
Peace
Bruce in Philly
I like your old-fashioned paranoia! No, seriously. I apply a philosophy that I picked up way back in my days as a fanatical cyclist who would commute between 20 and 55 miles per day, coming home after dark: "If you don't have enough lights that your friends laugh at you, you need more lights." So, when it comes to backups, if your friends don't laugh at what they view as the apparent paranoia of your approach you probably don't have enough backups.
Let me count:
1. A daily automated backup of my main drives (computer's internal SSD and the attached drive with all photographs) to an attached RAID 0 enclosure. This backup updates new/changed files only.
2. An hourly automated update (using Time Machine) to a server on our local network that has a large disk array that backs up all computers here. Time Machine has a special feature that allows one to "go back to" any version of a volume or individual file since the backup was first made... so if I need to recover a version of a file as it existed at 10:00PM on March 13 I can do so.
3. A periodic manual backup to a separate array of drives, also using the first method. There are two sets of drives and one is always stored off-site. Every few weeks or so I exchange the local version with the offsite version. So if the giant meteor hits our place and destroys all of our technology (yes, I will survive!), I will only lose the work done since I last exchanged offsite copies.
4. When I travel I carry a small portable drive with copies of all of my finished Photoshop files. (Nope, not ALL of the raw files... so I guess there is still room for more paranoia!) This has two benefits: I have full, local access to these files in case I need one while traveling and I have a last-resort backup of these most important of files.
So, counting my original drives (internal SSD and attached photo drive) there are always four full copies of everything plus the photoshop files on the small drive.
Also, as pointed out in the thread, drives fail. Multiple drive arrays fail is special and extra fun ways and do so more often. That's another reason to have multiple backups. One more reason for multiple backups: Imagine that your main drive fails, in a panic you realize you now have only one copy of your precious files, and in your panic you do something dumb while restoring from it and wreck your only backup. It happens.
Paranoia is a good thing. ;-)
---------------------------------------------
billsamuels wrote:
What do you guys think about for really special trips like I just returned from Europe, before I left, I had purchased a couple of new Sandisk 256GB Extreme Pro SD cards. I haven't been anywhere since Europe so the cards still have the original trip on the cards. I'm wondering for special trips like this, does anyone maintain the SD card also as an ultimate back-up where they put away the card, maybe even slide the small copyright slider on the side so it can't be overwritten? I know these cards are expensive, but so is an external hard drive. Do they lose memory if stored properly? I think the Extreme Pro are supposed to be radiation and magnetic-proof.
Another idea is I have some older Sandisk Extreme Pro's that are 64GB and some Sandisk Extreme's that are 16GB & 32GB so moving the data from the new cards onto the old ones and storing them away forever after wouldn't even be that big of a deal. Is this worth it?...Show more →
I suspect that no backup medium that most of us have access to is a "forever" solution. A combination of using the most reliable methods available to us, having multiple backups, and (I believe) using more than one backup method are probably the best bet.
So stashing some most important files away on extra cards isn't a bad idea in some ways, and you might be able to find something there years from now if all of your main backups somehow failed... but I think it is probably best to focus on flexible and redundant regular backups.
Speaking of travel, given the potential for loss, theft, or damage to cards and other gear when traveling, I think it is a good idea to have a redundant approach while on the road, too. Even on long trips I try to carry sufficient card storage that I'll never have to erase a card or delete files from it in order to get more space. As many of you probably do, I use cameras that have dual cards, and I write my duplicate raw files to both cards in case of a card problem. Periodically — daily if possible — I transfer the raw files to the laptop that I usually carry when traveling. I also carry a small backup drive to backup the laptop. (If you are counting, there are four copies of all photo files at this point.)
It won't always work, but I'm considering the possibility of doing daily cloud backups while traveling when connectivity permits. That's not, in my view, a realistic option when using only a phone connection, but with access to a decent wireless network (the word "decent" is doing a lot of work here, as travelers will recognize) it could work. Since I'd use my 2TB iCloud account, this has the added advantage of automatically transferring the files to any other computers that are connected to that account... including my computers back at home. (There are some potential issues, too, but I'll spare you.)
Dan
|
