TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Further on SSD reliability. This article is from Backblaze, the well regarded cloud storage company that publishes quarterly reports on the tens of thousands of drives they deploy in their data center:
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/how-reliable-are-ssds/

speedmaster Loc: Kendall, FL

As for now I would stay with a 4TB Western Digital Passport Ultra. They are relatively fast (USB3.1) and, the best, they are hardware encrypted so if you lose it or are stolen your digital assets are safe. The con is that if you use it encrypted you wont be able to connect the drive to your camera for transfers as it needs Windows or Mac Os to open the drive for reads and writes. My solution is a couple of M2 drives mounted in USB enclosures for the field transfer the files to the passport drive once back to the base (wherever it might be). All the solution take very small footprint and when you are on the road a couple of M2 SSDs with enclosures will not even make a bump in your pocket.

Obs: the way the WD Passport Ultra works is through a passphrase that opens the disk for read and write. Once you disconnect the cable or shut down or sleep your computer, the encryption is activated and you will need the passphrase to access data again. You can also set up for it to open when windows login is accepted or to not use encryption at all if you do not bother to have it safe in case you lose or are stolen...

WJShaheen Loc: Gold Canyon, AZ

Thank you for that. I'm looking to upgrade my 4tb HDD to an SSD for increased reliability and speed and your comments removed the one perceived negative I had - the speed concern.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Also, if you use SSD TRIM, it makes deleted files and folders unrecoverable in the event of unintended deletion. The upside is that write performance is improved.

lschiz Loc: Elgin, IL

Many good ideas! One more here.
Two 4T drives (or 8T), spinning disks in a RAID1 box. Very affordable and extremely safe ie excellent back up.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

.

Good points. TRIM is enabled by default on Windows 7 and 10 (but can be disabled). On Macs, if ordered with SSD, TRIM is enabled, but if you add a 3rd party SSD, the availability of TRIM depends on the OS version - you can check if it is enabled by looking in System Information/Hardware at the specific drive.

aellman Loc: Boston MA

Why not get cloud backup and be confident you will lose NO photos?

gouldopfl

I think it depends on your workflow. I put every photo through LR and/or PS. Using my NAS is much faster. Once I am done and they are automatically moved to long term storage and I have a nightly back up to cloud storage. I always keep the initial RAW and the modified RAW files.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Depends more on your level of paranoia.
If I change a file, Carbonite backs it up within minutes.

I can just imagine your computer sitting there...
Did he close it yet? Did he close it yet?
C'mon, close it so I can back it up.

gouldopfl

I used Carbonite for years until they deleted over 5000 photos and about 1200 mp3 files and all they could do is say sorry they had a controller on that server fail. Luckily I had them on my NAS unit. At this point the only place I would use for cloud storage is Amazon AWS or Microsoft Cloud. I'm currently using AWS. As a programming consultant I save all customer work on AWS.

drjuice

About two years ago I decided I didn't want to be at the mercy of Western Digital (altho they'd just bought SanDisk). What I do now is set aside about 1/2 of each of six 128GB SanDisk USB stick for what I call current work which is organized into what I call printqs, each of which is one month worth of current work. Inside the printqs, there's a file for the current month with any files I want to save at least until the next day. So for
printqs-2020Aug I have 31 separate directories, one for each day. It looks like for each month of 2020 to date I have saved about 250 MBs of files, which isn't a lot.

For some really particular files that I edit repeatedly (and sometimes too rapidly) I may keep a copy in what I call my "Personal" directory which is further subdivided into "Life", "Medical", and "Longterm". Life contains things like resumes, CVs, and what I call critical (paperwork of various sorts while I'm working on them -- new house, new car, monthly bills until they are paid. Then they and their receipts go onto the printqs for that month for the second Wednesday (when my SS arrives and the due dates for all my bills; receipts are also scanned that evening). Medical has everything for the current medical year until the next year starts and I put everything into the 31Dec day for that old year. Longterm gets anything that I'm working on for longer than a week. When it's done it goes into the last day of the current month on the appropriate USB stick.

Approximately monthly, I make a CD of the current month's files off the USB stick and save it in my bank's safety deposit boxes. (The bank got started in the 1840s so I figure it's got a reasonable life span.)

Questions? drjuice

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

I don't consider a CD/DVD an archival form of storage. Home-burned optical disks operate by burning holes in an organic layer on the disk. That organic layer is susceptible to oxidation/aging, so those disks have a lifetime that is too short to be considered archival. Commercially produced CDs use a metal film layer and the holes are punched in that film. The metal film has a significantly longer lifetime than the organic layer.

M-Disks claim extended lifetime. Also larger capacity than a CD/DVD. I think they're too young to be properly evaluated (lifetime estimates are extrapolations) but they appear to be promising.

All this is dependent on your expectations for backup. In my opinion, backup is for things you expect to use fairly soon. Archive is for things you want preserved for a long time. "Soon", and "a long time" are things you have to define for yourself. I place the dividing line around 10 years.

And when you're talking about archiving things, you have to consider maintenance. That includes transferring files to new media when the old media become obsolete (like CDs are now). Even M-Disks, with long lifetimes as a given, will eventually be superceded by newer technology. When that happens you will lose the ability to obtain readers for the old technology (can you buy a wire recorder these days?). And do you think the readers you buy today will still operate 50 years from now? Will they even be compatible with computers by that time?

Dikdik Loc: Winnipeg, Canada

A few months back I picked up an ASUS ROG Strix Arion M.2 NVMe Portable Enclosure, and put a 2TB M.2 memory card in it. The card is PCIe 4. If your computer can accommodate the latest PCIe, then the drive is very fast and reliable. The motherboard is a relatively new ASUS board with the AMD X570 chip capability.

I also just purchased a 10 TB Sony external drive that was on sale. Both work, except the M.2 drive does in minutes what the 10 TB drive does in hours.

Dik

gouldopfl

After the Adobe fiasco causing those who have updated to the current update which destroyed years of peoples work, having an external storage ( for me only a NAS drive), would have saved their customers from this tragedy.

I had the same thing happen to me with another cloud storage provider.

aellman Loc: Boston MA

Sounds perfect. You are a cautious person like myself. As someone who does almost no post processing, I am an outlier. I am a SOTC adherent. It's not snobbery or "I'm better than anyone else." It's just a choice I made when I entered the digital world that still works for me.

Best wishes >Alan