Backup question (Page 3): What really drove it (RAID 6) is the proliferation of large SATA drives. It might only take an hour or two to rebuild an older 36 or 72GB SCSI drive, but a...

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

rmalarz wrote:

RAID 6 came out after my days as a sys admin. However, it's worth looking into should I decide to do all my backups in one location, or have a master backup and still use the separate system disks.
--Bob

What really drove it (RAID 6) is the proliferation of large SATA drives. It might only take an hour or two to rebuild an older 36 or 72GB SCSI drive, but a 4TB or 8TB SATA might take a week if the system is online serving data, and you're vulnerable to a 2nd drive failure during that time.

clemente21

In addition to my three backups for photography I also back up the operating system (C:\ drive in windows). Once got a nasty virus and all I had to do was to exchange drives in the PC.

VisualMusing Loc: Carrollton, TX

Gene51 wrote:

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.

Gene... you are correct. I am actually mirrored at RAID 1 on the NAS. My mistake.

aellman Loc: Boston MA

lsupremo wrote:

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?

The ultimate backup solution is an external drive AND cloud backup. External drives have a certain life before they fail. I use Carbonite for automatic cloud backup for $60 a year. Well worth it. In answer to your questions: If your backup is duplicating files from your internal hard drive, which it no doubt is, files you delete from your internal drive will not be backed up in the next cycle. Whatever backup system you use, you can tell it what folders or files to backup. These should include any files you don't want to lose. >Alan

mwsilvers Loc: Central New Jersey

aellman wrote:

The ultimate backup solution is an external drive ... (show quote)

I would agree to use the cloud for non critical data like image files, but there is no way I would put my personal financial data or business data on a 3rd party cloud service. Even if the service is reliable, with all the hacking going on these days I'm not going to put my important data at any more potential risk than it's already in.

JD750 Loc: SoCal

rmalarz wrote:

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

Smart man.

Dairygoat

RAID of any flavor should never be used to back up your files. Always use a program designed for that purpose. This is a good article http://www.petemarovichimages.com/2013/11/24/never-use-a-raid-as-your-backup-system/. I use a RAID 5 on my system and Acronis True Image to Back Up all of my files.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Dairygoat wrote:

RAID of any flavor should never be used to back up your files. Always use a program designed for that purpose. This is a good article http://www.petemarovichimages.com/2013/11/24/never-use-a-raid-as-your-backup-system/. I use a RAID 5 on my system and Acronis True Image to Back Up all of my files.

That simplistic reference is filled with inaccuracies, including the basic confusion that RAID is synonymous with mirroring - it isn't, and that is the issue. It confuses HW issues (will the recording device fail?) with SW issues (is the data corrupted, accidental deletions, etc.), and assumes that backup and archive are the same - they are not.

Regardless of whether you mirror or use backup SW or just manually copy files (SW issues), you have to choose a media to put the backed up copy on (HW reliability issue). What would you suggest (other than cloud)? A single drive? tape? CD/DVD? A single drive is not as resilliant from a HW perspective as a RAID 1 - period (read up on N+1 or N+2 resiliency). Unless you use MDisks, CDs and DVDs are unreliable long-term, and tape is no longer relavent for the home user.

JD750 Loc: SoCal

mwsilvers wrote:

I would agree to use the cloud for non critical data like image files, but there is no way I would put my personal financial data or business data on a 3rd party cloud service. Even if the service is reliable, with all the hacking going on these days I'm not going to put my important data at any more potential risk than it's already in.

No need to because your bank does that for you. LOL.

I can understand your point, why increase the risk by putting sensitive material on "cloud" servers? Wherever you store it encryption is recommended.

But the topic here is image file backup, not financial file backup.

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

VisualMusing wrote:

Gene... you are correct. I am actually mirrored at RAID 1 on the NAS. My mistake.

Now I can go back to my premise that you simply made a typo and are not completely insane!

mwsilvers Loc: Central New Jersey

JD750 wrote:

No need to because your bank does that for you. LOL.

But I can understand your point, why increase the risk by putting you sensitive material on "cloud" servers? However you store it encryption is recommended.

But the topic is image file backup, not financial file backup.

I use Quicken to manage my finances and have at least twenty accounts that are not held by my bank. I'd have to log into a dozen different websites and none of them know which transactions are donations, which are professional deductables and which are otherwise tax deductible. They don't maintain the information with regard to my home office or a hundred other things. Yes its true that the original topic was image backup, but I wonder how many people have a computer dedicated to that one thing. I have 6 computers in my household and none of them is dedicated to photograohy alone.

Tet68survivor Loc: Pomfret Center CT

lsupremo wrote:

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?

Well if you did a "windows" backup, that's exactly what you got, junk. But that's not a bad thing, niw your operating system and programs are backed up. If you just wanted to back up your photos, then you should have done that, by backing up only the folders or photo files, depending on how you stored them on your original computer! It's really easy, you just need to know where your photos are stored! For your photo files and/or folders, just use the "copy" command, copy from original drive, paste to new drive.

aellman Loc: Boston MA

mwsilvers wrote:

I would agree to use the cloud for non critical data like image files, but there is no way I would put my personal financial data or business data on a 3rd party cloud service. Even if the service is reliable, with all the hacking going on these days I'm not going to put my important data at any more potential risk than it's already in.

At Carbonite your data is encrypted. Anyone who steals it has garbage. >Alan

Jeffers

As you can see, there are a lot of solutions out there and every person who has a solution that works for them, is very passionate about their solution. You need to pick a solution that meets your lifestyle and needs. It should have the following minimum characteristics: Complete copies of your data should exist in at least three places: On your computer; in an external drive which may be in your home; in an external drive or cloud type storage, off-premises. Irreplaceables, such as pictures should also be on another external source, such as on DVD's, preferably off premises. Also, whatever system you settle on should be easily manageable by you. Otherwise, however good it is, it'll fall into disuse.

The time to get going on your backup system is now.

aellman Loc: Boston MA

Jeffers wrote:

As you can see, there are a lot of solutions out t... (show quote)

The off-premises factor is so critical,and many people don't understand (or ignore) its importance.