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backing up files -- external drive or online storage


sblitz

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running out of space and am thinking of getting another external hard drive as back up (hey, i've got closets full of old slides too, hard to part, my problem) there is the alternative of using online storage such as mozy (just a brand my it guy has told me about, no affiliation and not yet a customer) and was wondering what choices other forum members are making?

 

steve

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running out of space and am thinking of getting another external hard drive as back up (hey, i've got closets full of old slides too, hard to part, my problem) there is the alternative of using online storage such as mozy (just a brand my it guy has told me about, no affiliation and not yet a customer) and was wondering what choices other forum members are making?

 

steve

 

i use 1 2TB and 3 1TB drives attached with a pogoplug to my network.

the pogoplug mounts the 4 drives on my mac and makes them accessible over the internet (like dropbox) the only drawback to this situation is that if my house burns down or my house is burgled i lose everything (except my "most important stuff[images and docs] i compress and put into my idisk.

i choose not to use dropbox but that is a personal choice...

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The problem with online storage of large amounts of data is the time it takes to upload the data - and your ISP may have 'fair usage' limits in place even if they say the service they offer is unlimited.

 

From memory it takes me around 8 hours to back up a 1tb drive locally - using Firewire 800. I'd expect it to take a few weeks using ADSL.

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This might seem excessive but my wife keeps a backup copy at home and at work. (Her work is magazine layout and editing). Our IT department has identical backups spread over campus in case any one building is destroyed.

 

Me - I have several copies hard drives of all the computers I've had over the past ten years. It's a bloody mess.

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Steve

 

I for one would never trust my archive to the cloud. As mentioned above there is the painfully long upload times. But bankruptcy is the problem. They have and will go out of business. One company went out of business a couple of years ago, and then tried to sell the customer's archives back to the customer!

 

In my opinion you are better off just buying externals, and keeping two offsite backups, one at work and one at your brothers/sisters house. I use G-Technology Raids with Hitachi drives. Rock solid and not much more expensive than the run of the mill stuff. But Western Digital just bought them, so I might have to rethink that. Some people use Drobos, and I guess rotate out their old spare raw drives as offsite backups. Get ready to Google and study your options.

 

All the best

 

Mark

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I use Mozy in addition to Lacie RAIDS locally. In practice the speed out on your internet connection determines the convenience of Mozy and others alike. I have 4Mbit out and it took a while to do the first backups. With compressions and other techniques Mozy runs just a couple of hours at night with my use (a couple of GB of data per day).

 

The one thing I did notice, though, was the manyfold increase in price for my 1+ TB storage needs after the two year introductory offer expires.

 

Hope this helps!

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thanks to all who have responded, your thoughts and views are extremely helpful. seems like external hard drives including a redundant storage facility (will have to start talking to my sister again) makes the most sense. i guess i can also keep buying and then saving sd cards instead of erasing them after the pictures are downloaded and backed up.

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I have tried using mozy...... initially I had 145Gb of files to upload..... 5 months later I have uploaded 75 Gb and guess what I still have pendng to upload ...... yup ......145Gb....

 

With my pathetic UK rural internet speeds my accumulation of Leica images is just about equal to the amount I can upload daily.... and rather worryingly mozy seems to be uploading the recent images first .... so the old stuff is still sitting waiting to be archived.

 

I archive intermittently to a selection of removable drives, plus a second iMac connected to a Time Capsule. Transfer wirelessly on a Mac network from one machine to the other seems to take forever so I synchronise the 2 machines using a high capacity usb memory stick.

 

Despite all the hype, no one seems to have come up with an idiot proof solution. Ideally I want a fast wireless backup to an array of high capacity hard drives in a sealed waterproof box buried secretly in the back garden.

 

To be honest, with the current price of SDHC cards its tempting to regard them as 'negatives' and just use them once, transfer the data then store then somewhere safe for posterity.... I reckon you could get about 50 in a cigarette packet.....

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thanks --- i am beginning to think the same way regarding sdhc cards. wonder whether there is a degradtion of the information over time that is a) meaningful in the absolute sense and B) meaningful relative to an external hard drive.

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thanks --- i am beginning to think the same way regarding sdhc cards. wonder whether there is a degradtion of the information over time that is a) meaningful in the absolute sense and B) meaningful relative to an external hard drive.

 

flash drive/card info does not degrade over time- but each flash drive/card has a limited number of writes

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According to Wikipedia Flash memory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

 

Another limitation is that flash memory has a finite number of program-erase cycles (typically written as P/E*cycles). Most commercially available flash products are guaranteed to withstand around 100,000 P/E*cycles, before the wear begins to deteriorate the integrity of the storage.[8] Micron Technology and Sun Microsystems announced an SLC flash memory chip rated for 1,000,000 P/E*cycles on December 17, 2008.[9]

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100,000 sounds like an awful lot.....so taking the belt and suspenders approach, save the flash drive and back up the computer with an external drive and don't keep both next to each other. perhaps mail the flash drives to a swiss lock box :D seriously though, thanks for the responses, they have been very helpful.

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Every time, I migrate from one computer system to another (last time has been 3 years ago from a Windows PC to a MacBook Pro), I run both machines parallel, migrate all data, find substitutes for all functions and programs, I used to use on the old machine and save everything on the new machine, making sure, I can access file formats, etc.

 

I now run everything, I have just form said Mac, a mobile external photo and data archive via Firewire.

I run a full backup of all data at home every few days during the time of my morning coffee.

 

I keep an identical second full backup in my office, which is a few kilometers away from the apartment.

 

I intend, to do a third backup, which I will renew every few months, as I visit at my parents home for most possible total redundancy.

 

I do not intend, to use every any cloud based service, to which I copy my data.

My file sharing (websites, photo sites) is tightly controlled, where I only share selective data.

 

Never would I give a third party with unfathomable security risk of break, loss or share - a very, very neat example for this is the recent hack of the Sony Playstation network with the loss of customer data potentially including credit card information.

 

Don't trust anyone.

I am not one of the paranoid anti Apple crowd, but the rumored newest development in cloud computing scares me.

As long, as possibly, I will not use any such technology and hope, that hard drive manufactures can up their speed of downsizing size and upsizing space at a higher rate, to catch up with my internal HDD space needs.

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This might seem excessive but my wife keeps a backup copy at home and at work. (Her work is magazine layout and editing). Our IT department has identical backups spread over campus in case any one building is destroyed.

 

Me - I have several copies hard drives of all the computers I've had over the past ten years. It's a bloody mess.

 

Not excessive at all. Aside from my Mac, I always have additional portable backups af home and at work.

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Btw - I am using as my mobile image and data tank a Lacie Little Disk in 320GB.

It is so far the absolute smallest external drive with more than (useless) 120GB AND Firewire, that works reasonably quick with Mac (or PC).

 

I have searched very, very long and did not find anything comparable on the market (needs: as big harddrive space, as possible, Firewire, the smallest and lightest possible package, as I lug this drive around with the laptop at all times).

 

It seems, that this is the smallest, biggest Firewire solution out there :-(

 

I hope, Thunderbolt drives come quickly, extremely small and light and in BIG versions (think 1-2 TB in 3" or 1TB in 2.5" and compatible with internal drive for quick drive swap).

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