Backup storage solutions

[Nwcid]

Now that I am shooting professionally and not just for myself, along with a camera that has ~50mb file sizes I am eating up storage space.

I am looking for options that can vary from how to use LR better to how to back up better and anything in between.

Right now I have 2 back up drives, one at home that automatically backs up my laptop (1TB) whenever it is on my home network. I also have a 2TB portable back up drive that I use when traveling, which is frequent.

To keep from overfilling my laptop hard drive I have 1TB SSD drive that I am storing all of my business images on. I also have another 1TB SSD that stores all of my video. I went SSD so they would be fast enough to work directly from, and they are.

So my issue is that I have not found an automatic way to back up these external drives. Does one exist? I know I can do it manually, but that requires that I remember to do it and also backing up the whole file, not just changes. This can take a long time.

I am not opposed to a home RAID, however as much as I am gone a more portable solution would be preferred.

I am sure I left out some important detail, just let me know what other info is needed.

 

[Nwcid]

I had one of my drives formatted wrong. Once I reformatted my 1TB SSD it would show up as an option to be backed up in Time Machine (Mac). My plan is to buy a 5TB HHD to back everything up on. This will give me a full back up at home along with a full portable back up.

 

[ebyelyakov]

Portable drives usually have average HDDs in there. I've had some failing on me so after that lesson, I use Synology NAS. As my storage needs grow, and none of the WD NAS disks have failed in me in 8 years, I've added another NAS and configured both to sync my important files to cover for any failure that outside the RAID tolerances. I'm using the Synology equivalent version of RAID 5 where I can sustain a death of one disk, potentially more. On top of that, I sync what I cannot afford to lose to Glacier. Synology has that capability -- tell it what to protect, give your Glacier credentials, and you all set.

 

[Nwcid]

Portable drives usually have average HDDs in there. I've had some failing on me so after that lesson, I use Synology NAS. As my storage needs grow, and none of the WD NAS disks have failed in me in 8 years, I've added another NAS and configured both to sync my important files to cover for any failure that outside the RAID tolerances. I'm using the Synology equivalent version of RAID 5 where I can sustain a death of one disk, potentially more. On top of that, I sync what I cannot afford to lose to Glacier. Synology has that capability -- tell it what to protect, give your Glacier credentials, and you all set.

Understandable but traveling with a NAS is not very practical. That is why the 5TB HHD is main back up for travel. I still have the main images either on my computer SSD or portable SSD. At home it is also backed up to a WD desk top drive. This gives me back up in 2 separate locations.

Also when we travel, I can keep the main drives with me and my wife can back the portable back up.

 

[ebyelyakov]

Portable drives usually have average HDDs in there. I've had some failing on me so after that lesson, I use Synology NAS. As my storage needs grow, and none of the WD NAS disks have failed in me in 8 years, I've added another NAS and configured both to sync my important files to cover for any failure that outside the RAID tolerances. I'm using the Synology equivalent version of RAID 5 where I can sustain a death of one disk, potentially more. On top of that, I sync what I cannot afford to lose to Glacier. Synology has that capability -- tell it what to protect, give your Glacier credentials, and you all set.

Understandable but traveling with a NAS is not very practical. That is why the 5TB HHD is main back up for travel. I still have the main images either on my computer SSD or portable SSD. At home it is also backed up to a WD desk top drive. This gives me back up in 2 separate locations.

Also when we travel, I can keep the main drives with me and my wife can back the portable back up.

Absolutely. For travelling I use my laptop (when I use it as a tethering host) or an WD My Passport Wireless Pro that I use to empty my SD cards.. That also serves and an WiFi access point and extender that suits my other needs.
Having said that, I wouldn't trust neither the laptop nor WD. These are portable devices, not long term storage devices.

SSDs fail as well, had that happened to me in the past. Desktop drive - generally equals "cheap with MTBF being low or not-measured". My selection of NAS drives is NAS or higher class as defined by the vendor (well there are actually two vendors worth consideration - Seagate and WD), 3x years warranty, minimum 1 million hrs MTBF.
But this is me and my specific experience with disk failures

 

[ClickAddict]

Although neither a laptop or portable drive are excellent storage solutions, combined they are not bad. The odds of both failing at the same time are slim, so if one fails, you still have your second copy and you replace it.
The key to a home/business storage solution is off site storage. If maintaining files is an absolute necessity, you have to protect against fire. And no manner of home backup / redundancy solution will work if all your equipment goes up in smoke.

 

[ebyelyakov]

I got some uncounted TB on AWS Glacier which costs me like a whopping $5 a month. Thank you, Mr Bezos. Yes, I understand it will take me potentially months to restore stuff if my house burned down but at lease there is an opportunity.
Absolutely support the recommendation for an offline storage.

ps. I didn't have a need to restore stuff from AWS (and hope I will never have).

 

[Original katomi]

Nas, raid. These are? Enlighten please

 

[ebyelyakov]

Nas, raid. These are? Enlighten please

That's could be an involved conversation, depending on how technical you want to get.

I suggest checking the Synology website. Been using them for the last 10 years or so (after my external single disk enclosure died wiping out most of the digital content I had accumulated before).
RAID is an organisation of disks for redundancy/performance. The most basic would be mirror, when you use two disks with one used to mirror another. Your storage equals one disk, since another is used for the redundancy. Another would be RAID5 -- minimum three disks -- add a performance edge to it. The volume size equals two disks, and the system can sustain a failure of a single disk. A three bay enclosure is the minimum I recommend. For myself, I have two NAS -- 5-bay (fully populated) and 8-bay (only two disks -- considering quality 14TB are $AUD 700 each, I'm slowly growing them).

 

[Nwcid]

Nas, raid. These are? Enlighten please

NAS = Network Attached Storage, Network-attached storage - Wikipedia

RAID = Redundant Array of Independent Disks, Standard RAID levels - Wikipedia

 

[Original katomi]

Thanks makes sense now

 

[Romphotog]

I use Google Drive, and Microsoft Cloud. I pay $69 for 1TB+Word per year. I keep external hdd in the safe at the bank. I no longer use CDs nor DVDRs. I wanted to use BDs, but felt HDDs and Cloud was better. Also, tape per mb is cheap, but the drives are too expensive.

 

[Nwcid]

I use Google Drive, and Microsoft Cloud. I pay $69 for 1TB+Word per year. I keep external hdd in the safe at the bank. I no longer use CDs nor DVDRs. I wanted to use BDs, but felt HDDs and Cloud was better. Also, tape per mb is cheap, but the drives are too expensive.

Cloud is a great solution, if you have the bandwidth for it. I live rural and travel so using that solution would burn up all of my limited data.

 

[Derrel]

For the past nine years I have been using Western Digital My Book external hard drives in three or four terabyte sizes these are relatively inexpensive. I find that I no longer use my Buffalo network-attached storage Drive raid array.

 

[Nwcid]

For the past nine years I have been using Western Digital My Book external hard drives in three or four terabyte sizes these are relatively inexpensive. I find that I no longer use my Buffalo network-attached storage Drive raid array.

That is essentially what I am doing now. At home I have a 6TB drive that backs up wirelessly though Apple Time Machine. As redundancy I also have a 5TB portable drive that I keep with me. It also backs up via Time Machine whenever I plug it in, which is at least 1 a week or anytime I do a business shoot.