The art of redundanct backup...

[Antithesis]

So, pretty much my only copy of my entire body of work from the last two years is missing... fml.

 

[Village Idiot]

Servers and backups. FTMFW.

 

[Antithesis]

Spellchecking the post title: FTW. FML.

 

[mtfd635]

I keep three full copies on two external, one internal HD, sneaked a copy onto server at work and then burn DVD's. And shopping for online data storage now.
Paranoia? I don't think so, have had 3 internal, 2 external HD's die over the years!

 

[aerialphoto]

The more I have the more paranoid I get.

I built my machine with two removable HD slots/sleds/cartridges (whatever you want to call them). One holds my normal daily image storage, the other is for other stuff. On a regular basis I slide in a different drive in that 2nd slot then back-up all my image data to it. On a less regular basis I do the same thing with a 3rd drive then store it elsewhere. Swapping the drives in/out is as easy as slipping in a floppy disk, and when I need more storage I just order a new drive and cartridge to stick it in.

That's just for image data though. I do a lot of software work, and other things too - all that gets stored the same way. The software code is usually small enough I can store it on USB drives and DVDs too, if need be.

I've tried Carbonite a couple of times. It works great, but on the connection I've got it can take 1-2 days to backup a single directory of images. I'm still pondering using it for other things after I permanently transition to Windows-7 later this month.

 

[schumionbike]

I was lucky enough to back up everything from my laptop to an external hardrive 2 weeks before the laptop die. The 250 gig external drive was only 60 buck too.

 

[Antithesis]

I had it all on a huge spindel of Archival DVD's which has now gone missing

I should know better, but I just assume they would be there when I finally got a new computer, and they've vanished. I plan to backup all my edited work on a storage site and DVD's in a safer spot than on my desk. Swapping drives might get a little too expensive, and I'm using a laptop so a hotswappable system would be expensive and unwieldly. Live and learn I guess. I just hope that I can find those DVD's, because the only thing I have to show for a few years of photography is a few poor images on my old flickr site . My best work had yet to even be edited.

 

[aerialphoto]

Swapping drives might get a little too expensive, and I'm using a laptop so a hotswappable system would be expensive and unwieldly. Live and learn I guess.

It's all relative I guess. You really have to read up on what drives are good and bad (I don't think there are any that don't have someone saying "don't buy this"), but there are external USB drives like the Samsung 1.5TB that run about $130. That's roughly (roughly!) 300 single-layer DVDs. Granted, it isn't archival and drives can fail - but I look at drives like that as part of a backup plan and not the whole thing.

 

[RyanLilly]

A whole stack of DVDs missing, hopefully this was just a simple mistake. From where did they go missing? Home or office? I find that in an office when someone "borrows" something, a polite email to everyone will make it reappear, though often it will reappear in a cabinet or drawer, so it seems that "I must have misplaced it." Yeah, Right. But at least its back. Well Good luck, and get some external firewire drives to go along with your next set of DVDs.

Im pretty happy with my storage solution right now, I have a two 1tb drives in a mirrored raid for photo storage, Its only a software raid, but seems to serve me well, and I also have another drive for my time machine, which backs up every night as long as I plug it into my laptop. The of course some DVDs, to keep at work. Really with the price of storage being so cheap now, there is no reason not to have a redundant backup system.

 

[aerialphoto]

Im pretty happy with my storage solution right now, I have a two 1tb drives in a mirrored raid for photo storage

Which 1TB drives? I keep seeing Seagates a decent prices but everyone complains about them and says "get WD". I see WDs at decent prices and read all the complaints about dead drives.

My inclination is to get a couple WD drives based on past experience, but some of these complaints with the 1TB and larger drives make me wonder.

 

[SpeedTrap]

I started using a Drobo this year.
I have a main working drive on my PC that holds alll my current work and then a copy on the Drobo.
I had one older drive fail in in and it worked like it should and rebuilt the volume as soon as I slid the new drive in.
It can be a bit expensive, but my data is worth it.