TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

After your primary and backup storage BOTH fail or become corrupted, that’s when your DR (disaster recovery) copy of your data in the cloud will save your a$$.

jrm21

If I've read it once, I've read it 1,000 times in the various NAS forums... RAID is NOT a backup strategy.

As with most things, YMMV.

cytafex Loc: Clarksburg MA

I have a couple of LaCie drives and they have a protective wrap around the edges makes for a functional setup out and about. Have a 2 TB and 5TB drives that can travel with me.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Get two, they're small and the latest and greatest.

/s

jrm21

Since you can get 256GB cards (or larger) for your camera, why not just get a new card(s) instead of an external drive?

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Why?
A large drive can hold a mess-o-cards and changing cards would not be necessary.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

As previously stated and for a variety of reasons, large SD cards, USB thumb drives, CDs/DVDs and cheap HDs are NOT reliable long term storage media. SSDs, enterprise quality HDs, encrypted cloud storage from a major provider and MDisks ARE. As photographers, most of us emulate the professionals by buying good cameras, quality lenses and studying composition, exposure and PP techniques. Why not emulate the professionals when it comes to storing your most important asset that you spent all the time and $$ to produce - your data?

jrm21

My reply was to the poster who wrote about multiple 250GB drives. With a size smaller than readily available SD cards, it seemed cards might be a better solution. Using 250GB drives to back up 256GB or larger SD cards seems kind of pointless to me. Its a different story if you are working with multi-TB size drives.

I totally agree that SD cards are not viable long-term storage. I agree with the rest of your comment with one exception. I am not personally convinced that SSDs are a viable long-term storage media either. Personally, I put them in a class not much different than cards or thumb drives (from quality sources). Maybe that's the luddite in me, but I don't currently trust them to last years. Optical is a proven media. While spinning drives aren't perfect, they also have a proven track record. Cloud is terrific, as long as your provider doesn't go belly-up (stick with the big boys and you _should_ be relatively safe).

To be clear, I wasn't advocating SD cards as a good storage media. My own back up strategy includes an on-site NAS, an off-site NAS, and m-discs. At any given moment I have at least 3 copies of everything and at least four copies of anything important - one to two (or more) of those off-site.

I would incorporate cloud storage, but have been told by providers not to bother. My data is >15TB, which the providers tell me is impractical. That's why I rolled my own solution with an off-site NAS.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Maybe you should have explained that instead of just saying why not use 256Gb cards?
Which we took as you advocating to do so...

jrm21

Because... if you are using tiny 250GB drives to "back up" your SD cards, you are probably no worse off using quality SD cards as the storage media. It pretty much amounts to the same thing, without the hassle of copying. As I mentioned, a cheap 250GB SSD is no better than a quality thumb drive or SSD card IMO.

I'll be much more careful with my wording next time so as not to confuse everyone. :)

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Completely agree with you, and perhaps I misunderstood your previous post - if so, you have my apologies.

Regarding SSDs, I can only tell you that my personal experience is that I’ve been using a number (9) of Intel (and recently Samsung) SSDs going on 8 years now without a failure. From a professional perspective, I’m recently retired from 50+ years in IT, 25 years of which was specializing in storage for the largest storage companies in existence (EMC/Dell, IBM, NetApp, DDN, Oracle), and I have never seen an SSD fail (not that they don’t, but I haven’t experienced it), but I have seen all sorts of mayhem and pain caused by all sorts HD and backup failures. I have seen entire businesses go belly up, CIOs and Admins fired, invaluable data lost, and fielded literally hundreds of calls from frantic customers who had just lost data, some due to drive failures, some due to environmental issues and the biggest due to human mistakes in administering storage, so data loss is a sore subject with me! In my business data loss was a capital crime and the loss of a valued customer.

Cheers,
Chris

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Brings up an interesting thought. How many computers, tablets, phones out there are not being backed up?
At least 20 I'll bet.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

My guess (and it’s only that) would be that 80-90% of personal computers are not backed up. The percentage would be higher, but there are more and more people in the IT business and consequently, more knowledgeable.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

We could ask for a poll, but we'd get all the different methods, equipment, recommendations, justifications, reasons for what they do instead of: do you backup: yes or no; and how often: regularly or not. No dissertations necessary.

jrm21

You present some compelling reasons why I should re-considered SSDs as potential long-term storage. I won't give up my m-discs (as relatively slow as they are), but may now add some SSDs to the mix and see how they work out.

Any suggestions on what to look for in a SSD? Brand name, other factors, etc. to separate the reliable ones from the cheap knockoffs?