SuperflyTNT Loc: Manassas VA

You don’t need a Mac to use iCloud.

bobby901

I had a "burn to the ground" house fire a few years ago, so I'm fanatical about backups. I use a MacBook Pro docked to a large monitor as my main system because I travel so much. The laptop only has my applications, and day to day things like e-mail, contacts, etc.. I use a small hard drive with the Time Machine program to back that up. Everything on it is can be re-downloaded from the app store, or in the case of day to day docs, Evernote notebooks, etc... I use the iCloud and/or Dropbox. All else is stored on a 16TB SSD RAID drive. It's portable, so i can take it on location if needed. Next to it I have a 8TB regular drive that is an exact backup. I have two of those, and rotate so one is off site. Try to do it every couple weeks, sometimes more often if I've done a lot of work. Last year I bought one of those charity software bundle deals, and it included a 1 year subscription to BackBlaze. The first backup takes a couple weeks (even with a pretty speedy internet connection) but seems to work flawlessly. (should do a test recovery, but haven't taken the time yet) When I went to the RAID, I took all the really old stuff that I realistically probably won't ever use again and copied it into what I call my archive drives. I only have two - one buried in a cabinet in the studio and the other off site. As I fill up the RAID over time, I'll just continue to make space that way.

Dun1 Loc: Atlanta, GA

When I select the edited files I upload to my webpage, I make a copy of them and transfer them to another machine that is not connected to my primary computer. I also keep my images on external hard drives. My main machine as well as the external hard drives are backed up to iDrive. You have to understand, it's not will a hard drive fail, it's when. The exception being some of the SSD drives that are not as prone to failure.

Rick0747

PAB20 - Since you never moved the external hard drives, then another offsite option is Dropbox. For $100 a year for 1TB, it is safe, secure and you can share photos from Dropbox as well. And you can access your Dropbox files from any computer with internet service. I never used Backblaze so I do not know how it compares. I use Dropbox for a lot of things, not only photos.

jdubu Loc: San Jose, CA

Any back up strategy that you employ isn't important until you actually need it. That's the time you will find if the stratagem did what you hoped it will do.

I have 2 Synology NAS in the home, one for my photo business and one for my wife's interior design company. Both are mirrored RAID systems. My working external hard drives automatically backs up to my Photo Synology and the design program on the PC backs up to her Synology. Both auto back up to my third Synology kept at my sister's home across town. I don't have to do anything for everything to be backed up multiple times. Originally, One NAS was at her office and mine at home, both backed up to each other. Since she closed her office and works out of the house, I now have my sister as an off site point.

Manually, I do make M disc copies of all client original RAW files and edited versions and anything I wish to preserve personally or for my extended family. Older DVD's and CD's have been recopied onto M discs and all is kept in a fire resistant safe. I don't understand using memory cards as your storage strategy, it's still only one copy and price per gb is more expensive than for a HD or SSD if you are using pro level cards.

I have lost one drive within my setup and it was easily replaced and repopulated automatically. The time I upped the photo Synology from two 4tb to two 12tb drives was the only time I had a problem, but I was the cause of that and soon sorted it out.

speters Loc: Grangeville/Idaho

Yep, that are the ones I've been using ( I call them granite discs)!

Mr. SONY Loc: LI, NY

I recall reading about the latest in hard drive advancements regarding the largest drive to date.
1 gb. So expensive it was only offered on a lease. Not for sale.
How about 16mb's of memory for a fantastic price of only $600.00.

PAB20 Loc: From Louisiana, but now live in Florida

Good points! Thanks.

PAB20 Loc: From Louisiana, but now live in Florida

Thanks for your reply, and good luck.

PAB20 Loc: From Louisiana, but now live in Florida

Thanks for your reply.

OleMe Loc: Montgomery Co., MD

PAB20,

You did not describe "crash." Sometimes one CAN recover from such a disaster, depending on what the problem is. If the disk will spin-up, I suggest sping-rite: https://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm

It's not free but has a good reputation. I don't know if they have a version for a MAC but, if not, one could probably recover on a Windows machine. Buying an external drive adapter, can facilitate this. To wit:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B011M8YACM/ref=oh_aui_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

/Roger

larryepage Loc: North Texas area

You're just a young guy. My first 5.25" Winchester hard drive (we didn't call it that then) was 5 MB. Cost was $2000.

Mr. SONY Loc: LI, NY

I remember seeing them.
Winchester drive that is.
The first hard drive's I had experience with was a Seagate 5-1/4 10mb.
When I installed this new HUGE drive (84mb 3.5") in a customers machine after checking with engineering to see if our BTOS computer could format and use a drive that size.
Until till then the largest we used was a 5-1/4 half-height 40mb.
Our floorstanding word processor (the first in the world to utilize a screen) used 5-1/4 360k floppies.
Or a mag-card reader to load the OS and storage.
48K memory.
40k for the system.
8k for the video.

https://gizmodo.com/seagate-st-506-the-daddy-of-modern-hard-drives-5495502
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=857&v=CBjoWMA5d84

JD750 Loc: SoCal

Ok so that was your point. Got it.