Best hard drive method for data backup for M8/M9

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eleskin

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I have a friend that works for Columbia University's Information Management Dept, and he told me many people he knows buy internal drives and use cables to connect them as an external, and then disconnect them and store them as backup. He said you could have a few drives that are the same, and store them away to keep data safe. Cheap and effective.

I have 3 external hard drives with the same data (photos from M8, etc,,) on them , and I am wondering if I should just buy the internal drives, and swap them in and out of the enclosure (why pay for more enclosures when all you need is one, or maybe just a a power and cable connector).
 
I have two 1TB USB Drives which I store my files on. I have a laptop so the option of internal drive is out of the question. I think that external drives are relatively cheap now that you can buy them for close to the same price as buying the drive itself.

You can also purchase a drive dock. And instead of installing the drive internally just dock it in, copy your files and undock it for storage.

http://www.buy.com/prod/cables-unli...sata-hard-drive-dock/q/loc/101/210906349.html

On top of this I also have an online backup subscription for just in case something does happen to the physical drive or the location the drives are located at from natural disasters or what have you.

You can also buy an Ipod, store the files there and take the ipod with you 🙂
 
I use the method your friend suggested. I have an external dock e.g. http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3516746&Sku=T925-1219, which is the Thermaltake BlacX N0028USU Hard Drive Dock - 2.5"/3.5" SATA to USB 2.0.

I have two 1-TB internal 3.5 inch SATA drives for backups: one of just photo data and one a system back up/drive image (programs, files, everything -- I use Acronis). The back up drives are not connected to the system in daily use, I generally back up new data only once a week.

At US$35 for the enclosure and $89 each for 1 TB SATA drives, this is pretty cheap, durable storage. For the truly paranoid: store one drive off-site.

BTW: it is worth doing: I had a system crash last week (system would not boot) and was able to restore everything to a new drive with little pain. First time in my life the desire to back up actually _preceded_ the crash.

Ben Marks
 
You need a minimum of two external hard drives (including one that's always offsite when you're not backing up to it). You might also want to use one of those drives (or better yet, a separate one) that runs incremental backups throughout the day, similar to what Time Machine for Mac OS X does. That would help protect you in case you need to undo accidental file changes or deletions.
 
I have a Mac with a firewire external drive via Time Machine.
I also have a Ubuntu Linux machine that I put together as a network backup device. I also have a third off site server.

Yes, I have lost data with just two backups. So, now I run three separate automatic backup programs, with three different destinations. One destination is off site.

I may begin to backup to 50GB optical media and store in a fireproof double safe. I have all components, just haven't done so at this point.
 
Hard Drive Dock looks great!!!

Hard Drive Dock looks great!!!

The hard drive docks look like the winning ticket to me!

My question is should I buy USB 2 (cheaper) or buy one that is Firewire (I only see one model , that is unfortunate).
 
I'm using macs and external lacie drives. I've tried internal drives in enclosures and had problems transfering files and infact this evening tried to back up something to one and it failed to complete. I've so far not had transfer problems using lacies. The only problem I've had with the lacie Porsche drives I'm using is that one yesterday would not mount. I took it apart and discovered that the drive is fine, it's the casing thats buggered. I have 4 identical copies of all my data on seperate external drives. I prefer the firewire drives as i've found them faster than the usb ones.
 
I am cheap and so use USB 2.0. I also only back up once a week because I don't add that much data to my system on a daily basis (weekend photo-warrior). Obviously, if you are a pro, or such a photo-mavin that you are generating important files every day, you would want to take a more conservative approach. I tend to set the backup as the last thing I do in a day and let the thing churn away unattended at night until it is done.

I should also say that I might take a different approach if I was using these external drives to do active image editing as opposed to periodic backups. Although I hadn't said before, I am using a PC.

A couple of months ago, there was a rash of burglaries in my rural neighborhood. I looked around and realized that the only things in the house that couldn't be replaced were the photographs, negatives and the digital archive. This was before I started backing things up regularly. I consolidated everything that I had produced digitally up to that point on a 1 TB drive and stored it off site. Now: No worries. I predict that managing this data over the years is going to be something of a challenge. After all, I can't read any of the electronic artifacts of my college days (20-odd years ago) -- so some effort is going to have to go into maintaining file integrity, compatibility etc.

NB: every digital camera I have purchased makes larger files than the one before it . . . Look at the M9 -- you are going to get whopping files with that one. In the future, I also see . . . larger hard drives. . .

Ben Marks
 
Currently I have 100G of images.

Mirroring is basically required and I use it with double redundancy.

But do not forget that disks also get corrupted "silently," and that's why my storage system is running on OpenSolaris with ZFS. It is pointless to back up corrupted data.

Offsite backups are important and a problem not solved yet for large volumes. I am using a make-shift solution because I haven't found anything ideal yet. I think that the best situation would be to have a friend with the same setup and backup to his computer, while allowing him to backup to yours...

Depending on your job, backing up to your job or your job's laptop when you bring it home is also an option. You could then have an external HD at work for double redundancy. I had this setup at one point.
 
My collection is relatively small (100GB) and I use a number of mechanisms.

My laptop has two physically seperate drives, OS on one of them. My main collection goes onto the other, and I mirror regularly to a backup on the OS drive. I then regularly mirror to a NAS drive, which regularly unders a propriotary RAID (not ideal) sync to an external drive. Pretty much should be able to cope with a failure of 3 of the four drive units and still recover.
 
eleskin said:
The hard drive docks look like the winning ticket to me!
Click to expand...

They are convenient and cost-effective, but pay attention to cooling. If you do a massive data transfer, the drive may overheat and malfunction. Keep in mind bare drives are vulnerable to static electricity, and a case like those made by Wiebetech is a simple yet cheap way to protect them.

My question is should I buy USB 2 (cheaper) or buy one that is Firewire (I only see one model , that is unfortunate).
Click to expand...

If you own a Mac, Firewire is marginally faster, but the difference probably does not justify the steep price increase.

I have a drive dock, but I do not use it for backups. I trust online media because they can't develop errors in storage, in other words the watched pot does not boil. I documented my backup strategy here, you may find some useful tips.
 
One of the great things with digital is that you can store data in two physical locations. If you ever get burgled, the chances are that the external drive goes along with the silverware...

So, I always store one copy at my studio, and one at home. Then I have one extra, as a precaution - and also because it sometimes takes a night to sync my backup with my working drive at the studio.

I use macs, and I keep everything in a structure of folders which is basically the same. In terminal I use this short command to update my backup drives: cp -Rvn

This is the one setup that has worked great for me this far. Perhaps I should think about getting some more drives and stash away a complete copy once a year, say, it seems a good idea to keep frozen backups in case I make some systematic errors that wipe out seldom checked folders... On the other hand, I feel quite safe as I am now doing everything manually - and checking thoroughly the state of the drives after backing up.
 
martin s said:
A raid 1 setup is the way to go.

martin
Click to expand...

martin's suggestion is the right choice.

There are some external drives which mirror backup feature included out there.
The raid 1 is a safest method for data backup. for example the My Book Mirror Edition of Western digital.

Also the normal external drives are safe enough for backup too. In my work that have to deal with large files from digital backs (30mb per image - 160mb per image) and the file after processed of 110 mb - 120 mb or larger. I also use normal external drives (desktop version) and store it in the shelf.


crusius said:
But do not forget that disks also get corrupted "silently," and that's why my storage system is running on OpenSolaris with ZFS. It is pointless to back up corrupted data.
Click to expand...
I agree. I've experienced this once when I got my first computer. It's a nightmare if my drives get corrupted these day.



anat
 
Last edited:
RAID 1 is an excellent recommendation, however these days I'm telling people external drive plus online backups which costs about $5.00/month. I had mixed experience with Mozy but I got my data back. I backed up 250GB. I set it to run while I was at work and asleep. It took a few weeks to back it all up, but it protects against fire and theft.

James
 
Hi All,

Quick Question. I'm using external 1TB drives (esata, USB, Firewire). Say I already have a 1TB drive almost filled up and now take an identical 1TB external drive hook it up to my desktop at same time as the 1st.....what is the most efficient way at this point to make a backup copy of everything on 1st drive onto he second? Simply "copy and paste" would probably take forever. Is there a backup program that can be used and loaded and introduced at the point where one 1TB drive is full and a second empty one is then hooked up? Thanks for any insight.

Dave (D&A)
 
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