External hard drive (Page 4): I have three 8TB external hard drives attached to my computer. One is for photos, one is a backup of the photos and the third is a backup of files and...

Flyerace Loc: Mt Pleasant, WI

I have three 8TB external hard drives attached to my computer. One is for photos, one is a backup of the photos and the third is a backup of files and photos. I'm operating with an abundance of caution.

A year ago, I was cyber attacked and the bad guys started going after my files. They got some off the computer and off the first external, but I killed their lead and still maintained the other two external hard drives. I brought my computer to get it fixed, which they were able to do. I upgraded the externals to the 8TB and never allow anyone into my computer again.

Buy the biggest, best externals you can afford. It wouldn't hurt to have more than one. Good Luck

gouldopfl

I was in software development for 40 years. Even with my elaborate backup, I still upload to the cloud nightly. I only backup new files and changed files, Monday through Saturday and a full backup every Sunday. I keep my Neo catalog files current to every 15 minutes.

coolhanduke Loc: Redondo Beach, CA

Personally, I avoid the loud at all costs. One day it may go away, then what. Look at Costco and Shutterfly. Lots of people stuck not knowing what to do.
Create your own cloud with a fault tolerant big SSD drive.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

coolhanduke wrote:

Personally, I avoid the loud at all costs. One day it may go away, then what. Look at Costco and Shutterfly. Lots of people stuck not knowing what to do.
Create your own cloud with a fault tolerant big SSD drive.

Pretty risky to not have SOME sort of off-site backup for essentials...

I know a portrait photography company that went down the toilet when a flood took out all the servers in their offices. They had to sell their business. They had no offsite backup.

coolhanduke Loc: Redondo Beach, CA

I agree, but off site means different things to different people.
I backup with no less than 3 external drives.
One large mirrored in-house drive and then another I store out of the house. Like the garage or bank vault.
I won’t be held hostage to anyone and feel I have Mac backup in the event of house fire etc.

Harry02 Loc: Gardena, CA

kcj wrote:

B and h has their external sandisk hard drive on sale . Their 2tb has more off then their 1tb can someone explain why. Are they having trouble with their 2tb? Thanks

Look up "wd external hard drive refurbished" o ebay.
Howza bout a 5gb for $90?
I've got a few, shucked them for the drives and put in the 1 and 2tb drives they replaced as giveaways.
Sofa king good!

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

coolhanduke wrote:

Personally, I avoid the loud at all costs. One day it may go away, then what. Look at Costco and Shutterfly. Lots of people stuck not knowing what to do.
Create your own cloud with a fault tolerant big SSD drive.

To each his own, but -

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

My "problem" is having too many hard drives. Aside from the two in the NAS, I have five in enclosures and at least half a dozen sitting on a shelf. The "shelf" drives are old and 1TB, or so. I also have a couple of M.2 drives in little enclosures. I'll have to get my backup system organized better.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

coolhanduke wrote:

Personally, I avoid the loud at all costs. One day it may go away, then what. Look at Costco and Shutterfly. Lots of people stuck not knowing what to do.
Create your own cloud with a fault tolerant big SSD drive.

No MAJOR cloud provider (Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple, IBM, HP…) has EVER gone away, only minor players that offer photo storage, and even in that case (Costco), customers were given notice and plenty of opportunity to move their photos to another provider. and Shutterfly announced for that accounts inactive for 5 years, that the data would be deleted.

The fact is that if you use a major cloud provider AND pay for the service, it’s the most reliable storage you can implement - immensely more reliable than ANY system you can conjure up at home. IT professionals know this, which is why all your banking, financial, medical, and social security records are in the cloud, along with >70% of all companies you do business with plus the DOD and all the three letter Intel agencies.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

TriX wrote:

No MAJOR cloud provider (Amazon, Google, Microsoft... (show quote)

The cloud providers usually have our data duplicated in multiple geographic locations. They don't want to lose anything. So they back up our backups. If an earthquake takes out a server farm in California, there's a server farm somewhere on the East Coast that is still running.

gouldopfl

You are absolutely correct. I use Idrive which is hosted on AWS. Many small services are hosted on the large company servers. They can lease images, put their own servers in a facility or a combination.

As a retired programmer, I learned the hard way about backups and storage. I am probably over cautious but I won't lose my important projects.