Back-up File System Recommendations

[wilfredo]

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I'm looking to back-up my files beyond the external hard-drives I've been using.  Any recommendations?

 

Thanks!

[pop]

I store all files I want to keep on a NAS server. Despite the large name, those things are quite cheap and quite capable. My favorite brand is Synology. They include a backup utility which lets you mirror all your files to another synology server or to an USB drive which you then can remove and store off the premises. You also could store the second NAS server off the premises, of course, and connect them over the internet. They also include a fairly simple photo browser program which lets you annotate and browse all of your photos. 

 

The only drawback: the cheap ones are somewhat slow, but that makes itself felt mostly when moving large collections of photographs. Once they have digested a large batch, they're reasonably fast. 

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[LocalHero1953]

Cloud storage with Crashplan, with a monthly subscription.

There's a range of cloud storage services, with varying degrees of immediacy from near instant syncing (dropbox, icloud, onenote - tend to be inherently less secure because it's easy to overwrite a good file with a bad one) to long term incremental storage with version control (Amazon Glacier - which can be slow to restore from). Crashplan and Backblaze are somewhere in the middle.

For all cloud storage you need a way of uploading your data at the start: even with fast broadband mine took over a week, but incremental uploads are much quicker.

I can vouch for recovering from Crashplan: a spreadsheet got screwed up over a period of several months, and I was able to download a file version for a specific date that I knew was clean.

Edited April 10, 2017 by LocalHero1953

[Exodies]

+1 for crashplan. My initial upload took over a month but it keeps itself up to date very well. If you need to do a full restore they will sell and deliver to you a physical disk.

[Jeff S]

Keep at least one drive off-site.

 

Jeff

[mikemgb]

Keep at least one drive off-site.

 

Jeff

 

This, I use a NAS, in addition to 2 backups of it in the house, I have one in my desk drawer at work. I switch it out regularly with a fresh backup. To go one further, my NAS is mounted in a large fireproof safe in the house.

[jip]

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I offer offsite Amazon Glacier backup setups, have helped some forum members already. 

 

Pricing is about:

 

0.01 dollar per GB

+ backup software compatible with your operating system. 

Edited April 11, 2017 by jip

[jim0266]

I offer offsite Amazon Glacier backup setups, have helped some forum members already. 

 

Pricing is about:

 

0.01 dollar per GB

+ backup software compatible with your operating system. 

 

 

+1 for Amazon Glacier. It can be a little tricky to set up. Highly recommend Arq to interface with Glacier. 

 

You can now store 1 GB for 1 month in the US East (Northern Virginia), US West (Oregon), or EU (Ireland) Regions for just $0.004 (less than half a cent) per month,

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/aws-storage-update-s3-glacier-price-reductions/

 

I see Glacier as a backup of last resort. My hope it I will never need to use it, with my local backups being my first line of defense. 

 

Backblaze is slow to seed. They throttle upload. With my 4MB/s upload speed DSL line, I only saw about 800k upload from Backblaze. It took about 8 months to upload my photos and other files with my computer running 24x7. I've run into several hassles with Backblaze the last few years and thinking of dropping them. 

[jip]

+1 for Amazon Glacier. It can be a little tricky to set up. Highly recommend Arq to interface with Glacier. 

 

You can now store 1 GB for 1 month in the US East (Northern Virginia), US West (Oregon), or EU (Ireland) Regions for just $0.004 (less than half a cent) per month,

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/aws-storage-update-s3-glacier-price-reductions/

 

I see Glacier as a backup of last resort. My hope it I will never need to use it, with my local backups being my first line of defense. 

 

Backblaze is slow to seed. They throttle upload. With my 4MB/s upload speed DSL line, I only saw about 800k upload from Backblaze. It took about 8 months to upload my photos and other files with my computer running 24x7. I've run into several hassles with Backblaze the last few years and thinking of dropping them. 

 

 

Yes 0.004 but don't forget the intermediary costs of S3 when using ARQ... so all in all it's about 0.01 dollar.

[jim0266]

jip, do you mean the requests charges?

[jip]

jip, do you mean the requests charges?

 

If you use ARQ you pay for Glacier, but also for temporary S3 bucket feeding the Glacier. So the 0.004 price is misleading  

 

I haven't even spoken of the request charges. 

[-Lss-]

Those are all actually pretty expensive services if you have a lot of data. I am interested in backing up all my data, and there's a lot of it. If I wasn't, I would just outright delete whatever I don't wish to have.

[jmahto]

Backup on a separate USB drive. I use NovaBackup utility that does incremental copy at scheduled interval. Note that intermediate updates will be overwritten but deletes will not propagate. Therefore it is safe to recover from accidental deletes. 

 

Once in couple of months I copy the entire USB drive to an archive drive and keep it in my office. There had been few times when I had to recover few pictures. It is easy since it is just a file copy.

[biglouis]

This is beginning to concern me. I am retiring in a few months time and therefore no longer have an offsite backup option.

 

At home I regularly copy everyting to my NAS drive and then once a month copy that to a drive I keep at work.

 

I need approximately 1.5tb of storage. I've started to get quite strict about dumping files but I still have 1.1TB that I don't want to reduce further.

 

That is perfectly fine for my offline drive at work (a 2TB WD green). 

 

One option I am thinking of is a small fire safe that I can store out of the way in my cellar. Covers fire (obviously) but also casual theft. There are much interesting things for an opportune thief to steal without having the hassle of breaking into a safe which they would have to find behind a load of trash in my cellar!

 

That's my logic, at least.

 

I would much prefer cloud storage and never having to worry about backing up again but costs look prohibitive (I think).

 

I can't work out easily what the Amazon Glacier cost would be?

 

LouisB

[jmahto]

This is beginning to concern me. I am retiring in a few months time and therefore no longer have an offsite backup option.

 

At home I regularly copy everyting to my NAS drive and then once a month copy that to a drive I keep at work.

 

I need approximately 1.5tb of storage. I've started to get quite strict about dumping files but I still have 1.1TB that I don't want to reduce further.

 

That is perfectly fine for my offline drive at work (a 2TB WD green). 

 

One option I am thinking of is a small fire safe that I can store out of the way in my cellar. Covers fire (obviously) but also casual theft. There are much interesting things for an opportune thief to steal without having the hassle of breaking into a safe which they would have to find behind a load of trash in my cellar!

 

That's my logic, at least.

 

I would much prefer cloud storage and never having to worry about backing up again but costs look prohibitive (I think).

 

I can't work out easily what the Amazon Glacier cost would be?

 

LouisB

Fireproof safe is only so much fire proof. They can stand direct fire only for so much time and you hope that fire is put out before that. for offsite storage if the work is not an option then I would consider a friend with whom we can have arrangement to keep each other's drive or renting a safe in your local bank (which is a good idea for documents etc anyway). The drives now a days are small enough not needing big space.

 

BTW, I am yet to trust cloud storage (and I work in enterprise software business which is moving fast to cloud.... but for personal stuff maybe one day I will trust cloud, but not yet).

Edited May 15, 2017 by jmahto

[fotografr]

I use a mirrored pair of Passport 1 TB external hard drives. Solid state, so no moving parts, very fast and reliable. Cost was under $100 each. For select images that I really care about (mostly personal work), I use a pair of 16 GB thumb drives that are stored in a vault at my bank.

Edited August 29, 2017 by fotografr

[antigallican]

I have everything on a library raid 1 6tb HDD and the stuff that's culled to edit on an editing raid 1 3tb HDD, both in my office. I copy the latter on a grandfather, father, son basis and keep one of these three at my son's house, 10 miles away. So there can be risk, but it's kept down to a minimum.

[Deliberate1]

I use a mirrored pair of Passport 1 TB external hard drives. Solid state, so no moving parts, very fast and reliable. Cost was under $100 each. For select images that I really care about (mostly personal work), I use a pair of 16 GB thumb drives that are stored in a vault at my bank.

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?item=N82E16820250094

 

Friend,

Can you tell me if this is the drive you got. If so, where are they sold for $100.

Thanks

David

[Jeff S]

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?item=N82E16820250094

 

Friend,

Can you tell me if this is the drive you got. If so, where are they sold for $100.

Thanks

David

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/search?N=0&InitialSearch=yes&sts=ma&Top+Nav-Search&Ntt=Passport%201tb%20drive

 

Jeff

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Hallo,

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