Backup media suggestions

[RobEW]

Hi. I wonder if anyone can advise. Most of my photos are on a 4Tb network attached storage drive (Seagate "Personal Cloud"), and it's not really backed up. I want it to be.

Cloud backup seems very expensive, but obviously protects against more contingencies than a second hard drive. But a quick look at the market suggests I could get a second hard drive of the same capacity for well under £100 and not have to pay rental. Is there any disadvantage in this? Is there a best way of attaching this to my system (either desktop or router) to optimise speed? Is there software to automatically replicate from one disc to another in real time, rather than periodic backups?

[ronidog]

Seagate do back up drives that come with full software. I have a laptop with an added drive for a project. When i back up the laptop this added drive is included in the process.

[steverh]

Assuming you have decent upload and download speeds, you should definitely consider online backup.

I use IDrive (nothing to do with Apple ). You can get 2TB for about a fiver a month. At the moment 5TB and 10TB are on offer at very good prices. It does snapshots and versioning. - up to 30 versions of a file.

https://www.idrive.com/cloud-backup

[Otto]

I only have about 0.4Tb and use the free BTCloud backup I have as part of my BT Broadband package. It constantly monitors the folders I specify for backing up and automatically backs up any changes. I don’t know if the 1Tb capacity that’s free can be expanded or at what cost. For local backups I use a USB hard drive with Macrium Reflect software. The basic version of that is also free and capable enough for most needs. If you’re quick the full version is half price until tonight!

[moggi1964]

I use Carbonite Safe Plus to backup everything on my computer on a continuous basis. Yes it's an annual cost but it's an extra level of security I am willing to pay for.

[timboo]

I’m still in the stone ages I have a small solid state drive for the operating system and a larger solid state drive for programs then raid 1 for backup using 2 seagate barracuda. I then have 2 usb 3 external drives, which live separately. So even if my ohuse burns down i am ok.
I’m sure i will move to the cloud one day just not yet. Software I use nti shadow. Will double check the manufacturer if u are interested.

[DekHog]

A horrible thought, but if your house goes up in flames it doesn't matter how many hard drives you have syncing with each other, everything is gone!

Google drive does 200gb for a measly £25 per year - just sort the stuff you really need to keep into a folder and sync it online.

[timboo]

Sorry should have said one of the usb drives lives off site, so odds are defo in my favour.

[blu-by-u]

How many terabytes are you having now?

I have this friend that works this way. He started many years ago with the external drives. First he would fill a 200Gb by the time he fills that, he buys an 500Gb, then transfers the whole 200Gb into the new 500Gb, then labels it and keeps that 200Gb. When that 500Gb fills up, he then gets a 1Tb. transfers over, then repeats.

[RobEW]

I've just checked. At the mo I have a 4TB external (spinning) drive which is only about 25% full, and if I had been deleting all photos which are useless it would be much less full than that. So maybe a better strategy for me would be to prune the dross from 4 years worth of photos and then back up onto a solid state drive periodically and keep it offsite.

[timboo]

All backups have always been 1TB and I’m nowhere near filling it. Primarily because I only shoot stills will save a lot compared to videos.

[Melaka]

The advantage of OneDrive or BT Cloud and the like is that if the house goes up you don't lose the backup. On the other hand if you accidentally delete something it's lost for good.

[blu-by-u]

Try dropping or knocking over a spinning drive. You loose that permanent also..I know cause I did that.

[shenstone]

I have a system where each of my 3TB internal photo storage drives and my other non photo drives such as the 2 SSD drives that are OS and working storage are backed up to another internal drive once a week and then I have 2 sets set of external drives which I back up onto as and when I think I have made significant changes (say monthly to 6 weekly) and take a copy to the in-laws and swap back the other set

The key thing with a more complex setup like this is to make it easy to use and the software I use is https://allwaysync.com/ you do have to pay for the pro version for the number of files I am backing up, but it is reliable and easy to use both as a scheduled process (the internal drive version) and to the external drives

BTW if anyone is thinking that it's not worth all this bother I had one of my main photo storage drives crater earlier this year.. in the end I lost about 2 files I had just taken a day or so before and had wiped from the card after storing.. Not much at all compared to what I could have lost if I had not had decent backups in place

I hope that helps
Regards
Andy

[wornish]

I am brutal in deleting all my old stuff that I rarely ever want to look at or need again. Almost all the 6300 in my Lightroom catalogue have been converted to jpgs to save space.
It is only a very small number that I actually keep as raw files for possible future tweaking and they tend to be the more recent ones. As they get older they are converted to jpgs.

If I haven't touched an image file in the last couple of years I cant see any reason to keep the raw version.
My 6300+ images are stored on my main system and also on a separate time machine backup drive which gets updated weekly. The total size of my picture directory approx 100GB. I also have the important stuff like kids weddings etc stored on iCloud to bore them with when they come to visit now and again.

I don''t have many videos and if I start to do more videos then that is when the storage demands will explode. Even a short HD video runs into the 100's of MB.

[c12402]

I have since many years a Synology private cloud storage with 14TB, it’s very convenient and fully accessible from anywhere. It has raid 5 redundancy and in case of one disk failure, you have just to replace it without disconnecting the equipment. Very recommendable.

[OM USer]

Another vote for Synology. I recently upgraded mine to two mirrored 8TB drives. However this does not solve the off site storage problem. Maybe I should keep my 4TB 2.5inch USB disk in a shed and rotate it with an identical one.

[RobEW]

Thanks for all suggestions, observations, thoughts and sharing of experience.

I think given my circumstances and the fact that as yet my photos are not the crown jewels, I'll not invest in the Rolls Royce solutions (which seems to be some combination of Synology and cloud storage). Think I'll embark on serious pruning of useless / duplicate images, and periodic backups on to portable drives, maybe storing some off site if I'm really paranoid about the house burning down (though I'd probably have more pressing concerns if that happened). Maybe I'll get software to facilitate incremental update of backups rather than have periodic 6 hour processes as I did yesterday.

[DerekW]

"though I'd probably have more pressing concerns if that happened"

Looking at the images that had been preserved off site might be essential family therapy in the event of a total burn out.