Posted by Ed Cordes on November 10, 2007 at 12:14 PM
I know this topic has been discussed before on this and other forums. I have read most of it. However, I would like to pick your collective brains regarding current approaches.
I have a tower computer with two 160 Gig HDs raided to look like one 320. I keep my current images on it with any and all adjustments i.e. RAW as well as processed TIFF images. From time to time I back up these images to an external HD. When the tower HD if full I remover the older images after ensuring they are backed up on the external.
In addition to this I copy the image files to DVD. So, if the images are a year old or less I have the original on the computer, a copy on an external drive and another copy on a DVD. When the images are removed from the computer's internal drive I only have a copy of the images on the external drive and DVD.
Now, I am getting quite a collection of DVDs taking up a lot of shelf space. I also understand that DVDs are not without their potential issues for long term storage. So, I have been contemplating on changing my flow.
I am considering getting a large external drive to be used only to back up the smaller external drives instead of using DVDs. This would eliminate the DVD storage issue and be convenient. For the older images I would then have 2 copies - one on each of 2 different HDs. The archive HD would only be turned on for creating the back up files and would be stored in a location away from the main computer and external drives.
The risk of continuing to use DVDs is data integrity of the disks. The risk of eliminating the DVDs and going solely to multiple HDs is the reliability of the HDs.
What do you think? Is the reliability of using 2 separate HDs with one as an archive drive only better than relying on the reliability of DVDs?
BTW, I do not want to use on-line services to store my images. It's a personal thing.
Thanks for taking the time to read this long post. I look forward to your input.
The biggest two advantges I see to using a drive rather than DVD's are emergencies and organization.
In an emergency bail-out from my house, it would be a lot easier to grab a hard drive or two rather than great stacks of DVDs.
And much as I prefer to rely on DVDs over drives for backups in our volcano-rich local environment, they create organizational nightmares. Drives are really easy to sort and organize, in comparison. I spend waaaaay too much time thumbing through DVDs as it is, and using a drive would eliminate that completely.
As for security, I'll always back up at least my prime images to DVD or whatever its sucessor, simply as a means to get them offsite from my home. I have a set of those here at home, another thirty-five miles away in a couple of safety deposit boxes at our bank, and another several thousand miles away since our bank sits exactly in the path taken by the 1964 tsunami in Kodiak. I could probably do the same with drives rather than DVD's, but that would get way expensive I think.
Posted by Wim Reyns on November 10, 2007 at 3:36 PM
Hank, i just bought an external 500gb hard drive for just under 100€ that's around 140$ i guess, so prices of drives are dropping drastically. And too answer Ed's question, i myself use 2 external hd's one is a copy of the other, and i do think they are reliable. the chance's of both drives crashing are very very slim. And as Hank pointed out, its a lot easier storage wise and safety wise.
Very timely discussion. I was just on line looking for yet another external drive. I have been using the main drive and external drive for over a year now and like the overall process and safety in the redundancy. However, as the files I work on are LARGE tiffs from 4x5 scans, the main drive is being filled fast along with other normal items. So, I will get another at least 300gig external and mirror the two externals, then slim the main drive way down to just the often used primary images.
question here. What software do you use for backup? Just what comes with your computer, Retrospect, or something else.
Posted by Dan Borzynski on November 10, 2007 at 7:36 PM
I am using two hard drives as external backup, one being more or less a duplicate of the other. The second is stored offsite.
Between times where I backup on the offsite drive, I have a second hard drive on my machine to backup the primary, and use dvds to back up the machine in case the machine decides to become one with toast. I'll clean up the machine hard drives once I backup to the offsite drive. Effectively, once I backup on the offsite drive, I have copies on dvd, onsite and offsite. Unfortunately, the dvd's are poorly organized, but everything there as an emergency third form Those dvds are stored in a closet, but I have only once needed to go back to them. I don't follow the advice to check the dvds/cds once a year for failure since I consider the likelihood of losing to hard drvies and the dvd to be effectively nil.
For backup, I just select and move in Windows. Not high on the list of effecient, but since everything is also dated, it is pretty straightforward. If I had a more detailed naming system on my primary machine, this would be a problem, but I tend to view the machine drive as temporary space.
Posted by Ed Cordes on November 10, 2007 at 8:10 PM
Thanks for all the fast responses! I think I will go with HDs for back up but still back up the images I printed or otherwise consider not replaceable on DVD. This should reduce the DVD demand a lot.
Barbara, since I don't actually mirror my droves I am currently doing the same as Dan. I use the Windows "copy" command on the files I want. I have not been convinced that any other software will automatically select the files I want without issues. Besides, with the "copy" command I know exactly what I am copying at all times.
I have two computers that are networked. When I bought my new machine, I kept the old one. My primary machine has two drives in Raid-0 that store all my files. Since I shoot 4x5 and scan only the ones I plan to print, my drive has plenty of space.
I use my second computer for back-up. Since my machines are on a network, I simply copy the folders to a 300 GB drive (divided into two equal partitions) reserved only for backup (The OS and other stuff are on a second physical drive on that machine). I usually do a backup every week.
I may get a large external drive that will be used for backup. It will be stored offsite in case of a disaster. I am not a fan of DVD's or on-line storage.
-PB
Posted by Gary Shepard on November 11, 2007 at 10:33 AM
Hi All -
As for backup software, if you're using the Windows platform, Microsoft has a free program "Synctoy", which allows you to create backup sets and execute them whenever you want. It always amazes me that some software costs money and others is free; this program is so elegant and easy to use. Give it a try, you won't be disappointed!
-EarlyMan
Posted by Bill Chambers on November 13, 2007 at 10:41 PM
Ed, I use external HD's for backup - WD 500GB My Books, and have been very pleased with them. I use NTI Shadow 3 software to automatically backup every day. I know very little about back-up software, and only bought this one because a friend recommended it. So far, never had to actually use it thankfully, but it was is extremely easy to use and configure (important for my technically challenged mind).
Posted by Jay Ryser on November 14, 2007 at 2:48 PM
Watch out for that RAID 0 configuration - if just one of the drives goes, you'll lose everything. I had 2 160gb drives in a RAID 0, lost one, got another 160, lost the other original drive & lost everything, then bought 2 new 160gb drives, and both quickly failed. Now I have a pair of 250gb drives in a RAID 0, and so far no problems. You just never know.
I discovered that the back up software I thought was keeping every thing safe did nothing after the first big failure, and the same happened with the second failure with different software, so I back up everything manually now, even though it's more labor intensive.
I use 2 external hard drives - a Maxtor (300gb) and a Seagate (500gb), and religiously back up all new pics. the RAW and the processed on different drives.
And it really is "RELIGOUSLY" backing up files. I light some candles, say a prayer or two while on my knees, and thank the Digital Gods when things go well.
Posted by Tim Behle on November 14, 2007 at 8:08 PM
How would I go about hooking up an external hard drive, offsite for back up?
If I were to buy a new External, could I put it in my parent's house, 1800 miles away? How would I tell my computer where to send the files to be backed up?
Posted by David Sparks on November 15, 2007 at 8:01 PM
Once you have your files on two or more hard drives, there is the problem of keeping them synchronized. I've been using Beyond Compare, a file/folder compare/merge/sync tool. Using this tool, it is easy to see which files are older, newer, different and move, delete, or copy only those files. The software is reviewed at this site
http://www.donationcoder.com/Reviews/Archive/CompareTools/index.html
This is not a backup tool, buy a synchronization tool. I use it and like it a lot.
Discussion
12 repliesI have a tower computer with two 160 Gig HDs raided to look like one 320. I keep my current images on it with any and all adjustments i.e. RAW as well as processed TIFF images. From time to time I back up these images to an external HD. When the tower HD if full I remover the older images after ensuring they are backed up on the external.
In addition to this I copy the image files to DVD. So, if the images are a year old or less I have the original on the computer, a copy on an external drive and another copy on a DVD. When the images are removed from the computer's internal drive I only have a copy of the images on the external drive and DVD.
Now, I am getting quite a collection of DVDs taking up a lot of shelf space. I also understand that DVDs are not without their potential issues for long term storage. So, I have been contemplating on changing my flow.
I am considering getting a large external drive to be used only to back up the smaller external drives instead of using DVDs. This would eliminate the DVD storage issue and be convenient. For the older images I would then have 2 copies - one on each of 2 different HDs. The archive HD would only be turned on for creating the back up files and would be stored in a location away from the main computer and external drives.
The risk of continuing to use DVDs is data integrity of the disks. The risk of eliminating the DVDs and going solely to multiple HDs is the reliability of the HDs.
What do you think? Is the reliability of using 2 separate HDs with one as an archive drive only better than relying on the reliability of DVDs?
BTW, I do not want to use on-line services to store my images. It's a personal thing.
Thanks for taking the time to read this long post. I look forward to your input.
In an emergency bail-out from my house, it would be a lot easier to grab a hard drive or two rather than great stacks of DVDs.
And much as I prefer to rely on DVDs over drives for backups in our volcano-rich local environment, they create organizational nightmares. Drives are really easy to sort and organize, in comparison. I spend waaaaay too much time thumbing through DVDs as it is, and using a drive would eliminate that completely.
As for security, I'll always back up at least my prime images to DVD or whatever its sucessor, simply as a means to get them offsite from my home. I have a set of those here at home, another thirty-five miles away in a couple of safety deposit boxes at our bank, and another several thousand miles away since our bank sits exactly in the path taken by the 1964 tsunami in Kodiak. I could probably do the same with drives rather than DVD's, but that would get way expensive I think.
Wim.
Between times where I backup on the offsite drive, I have a second hard drive on my machine to backup the primary, and use dvds to back up the machine in case the machine decides to become one with toast. I'll clean up the machine hard drives once I backup to the offsite drive. Effectively, once I backup on the offsite drive, I have copies on dvd, onsite and offsite. Unfortunately, the dvd's are poorly organized, but everything there as an emergency third form Those dvds are stored in a closet, but I have only once needed to go back to them. I don't follow the advice to check the dvds/cds once a year for failure since I consider the likelihood of losing to hard drvies and the dvd to be effectively nil.
For backup, I just select and move in Windows. Not high on the list of effecient, but since everything is also dated, it is pretty straightforward. If I had a more detailed naming system on my primary machine, this would be a problem, but I tend to view the machine drive as temporary space.
Barbara, since I don't actually mirror my droves I am currently doing the same as Dan. I use the Windows "copy" command on the files I want. I have not been convinced that any other software will automatically select the files I want without issues. Besides, with the "copy" command I know exactly what I am copying at all times.
I use my second computer for back-up. Since my machines are on a network, I simply copy the folders to a 300 GB drive (divided into two equal partitions) reserved only for backup (The OS and other stuff are on a second physical drive on that machine). I usually do a backup every week.
I may get a large external drive that will be used for backup. It will be stored offsite in case of a disaster. I am not a fan of DVD's or on-line storage.
-PB
As for backup software, if you're using the Windows platform, Microsoft has a free program "Synctoy", which allows you to create backup sets and execute them whenever you want. It always amazes me that some software costs money and others is free; this program is so elegant and easy to use. Give it a try, you won't be disappointed!
-EarlyMan
I discovered that the back up software I thought was keeping every thing safe did nothing after the first big failure, and the same happened with the second failure with different software, so I back up everything manually now, even though it's more labor intensive.
I use 2 external hard drives - a Maxtor (300gb) and a Seagate (500gb), and religiously back up all new pics. the RAW and the processed on different drives.
And it really is "RELIGOUSLY" backing up files. I light some candles, say a prayer or two while on my knees, and thank the Digital Gods when things go well.
If I were to buy a new External, could I put it in my parent's house, 1800 miles away? How would I tell my computer where to send the files to be backed up?
http://www.donationcoder.com/Reviews/Archive/CompareTools/index.html
This is not a backup tool, buy a synchronization tool. I use it and like it a lot.
David Sparks
Pensacola, FL