lsupremo Loc: Palm Desert, CA

I recently purchased a sea gate external biackup system and when I set it up my first backup had all kinds of stuff being backed up, I started wondering what do all you UHHers back up besides your pictures files? Also if you delite some unwanted photos from the pictures file on your hard drive will they be deleted from you next backup or will they stay there forever?

Fotoartist Loc: Detroit, Michigan

Pay $35 and get Carbon Copy Cloner. Your files will thank you. Or get Super Duper. It's free. What they do is Clone your hard drive. So whatever is there is copied and whatever is not there is erased. A perfect clone.

VisualMusing Loc: Carrollton, TX

I use network attached storage set to RAID 0 to protect from hardware failure. The "keeper" photos are published to a cloud portfolio manager service (2nd copy) after editing. In January of each year I will use LR to compress and zip the previous years folders to an external drive which goes into the fireproof safe (3rd copy)

If I have a fire or other disaster, I would be able to recover all of the images I published plus those in the safe. That is an acceptable level of risk for me.

Backup software can be a pain. All I care about is the data (photos), so the method above is easy and part of my PP workflow. No extra steps until the year end exercise for long term archiving.

PS... I work for a data protection software company and the method I described is close to what companies do with low RTO/RPO applications and data.

mwsilvers Loc: Central New Jersey

Whether they will be deleted from you back up or not will depend on the backup software being used and how its configured. More than likely though, by default files deleted from your source will be deleted from your backup disk when the next scheduled backup is run.

Since my main desktop is used for business, personal finances, and as a music server as well as for photos, I back up every file that is important to me. I have almost 275gb of music files and around 265gb of image files. Added to that I backup around 85gb of business, financial and other personal files. I have 4 redundant backup drives and backup up at least twice a week. I always keep an updated copy outside my home. My backup drives range from 1 terabyte to 4 terabytes in size. The largest two drives maintain multiple iterative backups so that if a file is deleted accidentally from the source I will still have a backup copy even after the next backup is performed. You can never have too many backups if data is important to you.

insaneo Loc: Byram, ms.

Backup's are a good thing. What I did was purchased 2 seagate 1 tb hard drives. Then purchased a rosewill hdd enclosure with fan and on/off switch. The other is a hot swappable sabrent lay flat enclosure and plugged them into usb 3 ports. On each one I keep an image of the C:\ drive which has programs and the OS on it and the other internal hdd D:\ which has photos, songs documents etc. on it. That way if one hdd fails I can still rely on the other. I also keep two images of each and when windows comes out with updates I'll make another one so I'll have one current and one past image. I also copy folders for stuff on other external, but way smaller external hdd's that I've had forever, but are usb 2.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

I have seven folders backed up: pictures, files, downloads, music, etc. I don't have to backup the OS or programs. I use Syncback SE with two external drivers and a NAS. I've been thinking about a cloud service, and I like BackBlaze - low, flexible pricing.

yssirk123 Loc: New Jersey

Lots of good ideas here. I have a pretty large collection of images from many years of photography. I locally back up all files to a mirrored pair of 8TB Seagate external USB hard drives. I clone a copy of my working PC hard drive, and use Backblaze for cloud backup. I think your backup strategy should have local and remote storage, and all images need to be stored at a minimum of n+1 (although n+2 is safer).

rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

My backup scheme is pretty simple. I download the images from the memory card, copy those files to two additional drives, then copy them to my imaging computer. So, I have two backups of every image I have. I'm about to purchase a third hard drive to copy all of the work I have done on each images as well.
--Bob

Fotoartist Loc: Detroit, Michigan

Don't forget your third backup should be offsite.

rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

That's my fourth backup. I'm going to be adding a fifth at some point in the future.
--Bob

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

Of all the RAID levels, RAID 0, which is striped volume with no redundancy, is absolutely the least secure of all the RAID levels. You experience a hiccup on one drive, your data is permanently lost. The only advantage of RAID 0 is a wider data path and faster performance, but in a NAS environment you are not likely to see any benefit, since data transmission over ethernet is going to be your bottleneck.

Jeffers

I use SyncBackSE software which is easy to use. I have two 1 TB external drives. One sits in a Bank Safety Deposit Box. I connect the other to my computer each evening when I'm done.

At 6:00 am, automatically, SyncBackSE first backs up my OneDrive folders (Sync'd to both of my computers). Then, through the home WiFi, it backs up my wife's OneDrive folders. Since I use OneDrive fully sync'd to our computers, the OneDrive files are on our computers' C:/OneDrive drives and there is nothing in the C:/This PC. If you don't use OneDrive, SyncBackSE can be configured just as easily to back your C:/This PC folders.

Once a month I swap the two backup drives. I back up one direction, computer-to-external drive, because that makes the two external drives interchangeable with no hassle. First backup with the swapped drive brings it up to date. Because it's one-way, over time, stuff that I had deleted from my computer builds up on the external drives. So once a year I wipe each drive of data right after the swap and start fresh. The drive I just put in the Safe Deposit Box protects me if something goes wrong.

The other beauty of SyncBackSE is that it doesn't encrypt your data. So to retrieve something from a backup drive, I plug it in and open it with File Explorer.

There are more complex backup systems, but this one is simple and easy to check and maintain and it's never failed me. Like setting up any backup system for the first time it was initially daunting. But if you get the paid version (~$45) you get full technical support. It's only by email, but it's excellent.

rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

My personal favorite is RAID 5. I've used that for years. Probably overkill for most, and a bit more expensive.
--Bob

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

You should back up your data as you are doing now. Then create a restore-able image of your system drive, in the event you lose that. With an image you can be back in business in less than an hour. I've had good results with Acronis and Easus.

I keep only software on my system drive, and I have several data drives running in a RAID 1+0, which is a striped mirrored configuration. It has 2 redundant drives, controlled by an AVAGO raid controller - and all of this is in my tower computer. It's fast and safe.

I use SyncBack Free to manage the daily backup.

Backblaze holds my archived files - just in case of a disaster.

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

RAID 6 is better, even though it requires an extra drive. If and when you lose a drive your data is extremely vulnerable until you rebuild the array. RAID 5 keeps me awake at night. . .