backup

G

gpc1

Suspended / Banned
Messages
2,289
Name
Greg
Edit My Images
No
Hi all

I took delivery of a shiny new mac for editing, have set it up in terms of using it as the 'business' machine (Macbook pro relegated to family use) and am now looking for a decent way to backup my files / mac.

The MBP i back up using a terabyte external hard drive which i keep off site. Its ok, but the HD has been at home for 3 weeks now as the in laws (where i keep the HD) are having the house refurbed.

Ideally i want a simple solution so i was looking at cloud back up. Looking for something that can schedule backups weekly / daily etc, or i can manually ad hoc a backup if i have finished a long editing session for example.

I dont edit on the go and dont generally need files on the move, but i suppose if i needed to access a document on the ipad whilst away from home it would be handy.

I was looking at backblaze. Any suggestions? ideas.

Rgds
 
I can't help feeling that cloud back up is going to be prohibitively expensive for photo business backups - you were probably on the right track before with a HDD or two kept off site
 
I used Just Cloud for a year but then they tried to convert me from a personal to business account at a whopping £750 per year!!! In the end I opted for 2 external HD's and everything gets backed up to Zenfolio too (£100 per year).

My workflow involves getting home after a wedding, backing everything up to the 2 external drives, then converting the RAWs to high res JPEGS and uploading them to Zenfolio. Then once the wedding is processed I upload the edited JPEGS (high res) to Zenfolio. It's an unlimited space for the £100 per year so I never need to worry about uploading so much.
 
I use Crashplan but I do know a few people who use BackBlaze. One friend has over 1.5TB stored with Backblaze using a personal account. I guess it's a bit naughty and if they detect then they will try to force you to upgrade to a business account which is too much for a small business like mine. But if you don't mind then go for it.

I guess it depends on how much you have to upload and the speed of your connection. My initial set of 500GB took over a month because despite having fibre uploads of 8Mbps, Crashplan was only allowing around 1Mbps. I know Backblaze was quicker. Now my set is complete, changes don't take long.

It is a peace of mind solution though. I don't have to remember to kick it off, store hard disks etc. It just 'works'
 
It's important to think about which scenarios you are protecting yourself against when considering backup options. The three common issues are:

1. Corrupt data or hard drive
2. Theft
3. Fire or water damage

To mitigate against no. 1 run a large HDD spare inside my machine (custom Windows rig) that makes it effortless to run backup and I don't get lazy with moving external drives about.

For 2 and 3, I have a dual bay external HDD enclosure that I keep offsite locally in secure storage. After an event I pick it up, copy files over and return to storage.

The only thing I create in between is LR edits, which don't immediately go to the external HDD, so I just save the XMP files in Dropbox.

Remember to retain backups of operating system, programs and custom settings. I'm confident I can be back up and running in a few hours following total loss of my main rig (god forbid!)
 
theurbanclown said:
Cloud backup is a pain as a main use.

I'd buy a Qnap or Synology NAS and a few 3tb WD red drives.
Click to expand...

trouble with NAS as back up though is that its in the same house and on the same network so it only protects you from HDD failure, so if you get burgled or the house burns down you'll lose the nas as well, and if you get hit with a virus or cryptolocker etc theres a good chance the NAS will get trashed too.

don't get me wrong I like NAS as a principal storage - but you need some sort of unconnected off site back up solution too
 
ajax_andy said:
I used Just Cloud for a year but then they tried to convert me from a personal to business account at a whopping £750 per year!!! In the end I opted for 2 external HD's and everything gets backed up to Zenfolio too (£100 per year).

My workflow involves getting home after a wedding, backing everything up to the 2 external drives, then converting the RAWs to high res JPEGS and uploading them to Zenfolio. Then once the wedding is processed I upload the edited JPEGS (high res) to Zenfolio. It's an unlimited space for the £100 per year so I never need to worry about uploading so much.
Click to expand...

So you have the RAWS on your 2 HDD and an initial uneditied version on Zenfolio. Then after PP you add the editied Jpegs verisons to Zenfolio as well?

I dont store my RAW / Imported files on an external HDD yet. Everything is contained on my mac. LR /CS6 catalogies, Raw files etc etc.
My workflow is
Import Raws to a folder set up for each wedding (via lightroom). File path wouldl look like 'MacHD / Weddings Business / RAW / ClientDDMMYY'
Edit in LR, including deletion of naff shots
Export Jpegs to different path 'MacHD / Clientedited / DDMMYYclient' ( with 2 subfolders one folder for hi res, one for optimised for social media)

So in future, if my Machd fills up i can simply move the Raw folder to en external HD and re point lightroom to it.

For the amount i shoot, a personal cloud stirage will last me for a while really i think. I cant see me maxing out 1tb for while...

For me, its about the simplest method. It would be great to perform the above workflow and at each stage hit a button that said backup and the backup fairies copy everything to somewhere! So if my machine went down, i could simply plug in a new one and restore. And then, if f forgot, a scheduled backup would kick in.

I like the cloud idea as it saves me rememebring to transfer HD's between locations...

thanks all, the help is greatly appreciated as im hoping to set this up once at the start and set it up right.
 
big soft moose said:
trouble with NAS as back up though is that its in the same house and on the same network so it only protects you from HDD failure, so if you get burgled or the house burns down you'll lose the nas as well, and if you get hit with a virus or cryptolocker etc theres a good chance the NAS will get trashed too.

don't get me wrong I like NAS as a principal storage - but you need some sort of unconnected off site back up solution too
Click to expand...


Oh yeah, you'll need something alongside the NAS. Just pointing out a NAS is a better option than the cloud for main use.

An ideal setup is SSD - NAS - Either cloud or offsite hard drives

SSD for the current files you are editing.
NAS for bulk storage of images.
Cloud or offsite for when everything goes kaput.
 
gpc1 said:
For me, its about the simplest method. It would be great to perform the above workflow and at each stage hit a button that said backup and the backup fairies copy everything to somewhere! So if my machine went down, i could simply plug in a new one and restore. And then, if f forgot, a scheduled backup would kick in.
Click to expand...

That's exactly what a NAS would do.
 
yep, its the getting out of the house bit im after...

If things pick up and im shooting a lot and need bigger storage then NAS / externall HDD will be the way to go.

Im looking at the moment for if everything goes bang / burns....
 
gpc1 said:
So you have the RAWS on your 2 HDD and an initial uneditied version on Zenfolio. Then after PP you add the editied Jpegs verisons to Zenfolio as well?

I dont store my RAW / Imported files on an external HDD yet. Everything is contained on my mac. LR /CS6 catalogies, Raw files etc etc.
My workflow is
Import Raws to a folder set up for each wedding (via lightroom). File path wouldl look like 'MacHD / Weddings Business / RAW / ClientDDMMYY'
Edit in LR, including deletion of naff shots
Export Jpegs to different path 'MacHD / Clientedited / DDMMYYclient' ( with 2 subfolders one folder for hi res, one for optimised for social media)

So in future, if my Machd fills up i can simply move the Raw folder to en external HD and re point lightroom to it.

For the amount i shoot, a personal cloud stirage will last me for a while really i think. I cant see me maxing out 1tb for while...

For me, its about the simplest method. It would be great to perform the above workflow and at each stage hit a button that said backup and the backup fairies copy everything to somewhere! So if my machine went down, i could simply plug in a new one and restore. And then, if f forgot, a scheduled backup would kick in.

I like the cloud idea as it saves me rememebring to transfer HD's between locations...

thanks all, the help is greatly appreciated as im hoping to set this up once at the start and set it up right.
Click to expand...

Yep that's right… it's pretty straight forward and ensures I will never loose a wedding even if my pc and external HD's are nicked I will still have something on Zenfolio to use be it unedited high res JPEGS or the edited versions should a client come back a year later and order an album.

If you have nothing other than your Mac you're asking for trouble so it's good you are asking for a way forward… an issue with you using cloud storage if your end that route however is the potential same one i had… 2TB of data on a personal account that took months to upload, then an nasty e-mail saying 'you are using a personal account for business, we will close your account in 1 month unless you upgrade to a business account at £750', which meant then downloading 2TB of data again and re-backing up elsewhere. Maybe think long term here as I didn't and it bit me on the bum.

Even backing up to cloud I would advise an external HD too… it takes ages to upload weddings so I would usually just backup a every time I've finished for the day to both external HD's and only back up the final fully edited wedding to Zenfolio (and again to both external HD's).
 
gpc1 said:
yep, its the getting out of the house bit im after...

If things pick up and im shooting a lot and need bigger storage then NAS / externall HDD will be the way to go.

Im looking at the moment for if everything goes bang / burns....
Click to expand...

theres always the DVD / USB stick option - I tend to burn a DVD of the raws of every wedding as a third back up - I know DVDs don't last for ever, but they are certainly good for a few years which is all I really need...
 
Why do you need to keep anything other than the full-size finished JPG files once the customer has their copies?
 
Last edited:
Serendipitous Sid said:
Why do you need to keep anything other than the full-size finished JPG files once the customer has their copies?
Click to expand...

you don't really - but I like to have a back up of the raws as soon as ive downloaded them, in case the computer goes pop during processing. Once the customer has their copies and I'm sure they aren't going to ask for anything else I tend to delete the raws off the primary storage, with the exception of any 'hero' images I may want to keep for marketing or self promotion
 
i suppose for £80 quid a 3tb WD external HD is a small price to pay really, its jus tthe back and forward of taking it offsite that im aiming to avoid.....although, i could tape it somewhere hidden so that in case of burglary its not easy to find. That way if the system crashes i still have it.
In case of fire this would be pointless obviously....so i still need to have it offsite.

im even contemplating building some kind of sealed unit and storing outside of the property with just a USB cable through the wall at the back of my desk. Water tight and wouldnt be impacted from fire or found by theives.....

I think ill get the External HD for now and try a cloud storage (possibly a free trial) and see how it goes..
 
I use live drive for cloud backup. Both for my Hdd and
my NAS. Cloud works well for me, I normally have a complete wedding backed up to the cloud over night after the event. Then changed files are backed up every hour(with versioning). But the initial backup is a pain, and it's only in the last couple of years broad band speeds have been fast enough to make it a realistic solution
 
gpc1 said:
i suppose for £80 quid a 3tb WD external HD is a small price to pay really, its jus tthe back and forward of taking it offsite that im aiming to avoid.....although, i could tape it somewhere hidden so that in case of burglary its not easy to find. That way if the system crashes i still have it.
In case of fire this would be pointless obviously....so i still need to have it offsite.

im even contemplating building some kind of sealed unit and storing outside of the property with just a USB cable through the wall at the back of my desk. Water tight and wouldnt be impacted from fire or found by theives.....

I think ill get the External HD for now and try a cloud storage (possibly a free trial) and see how it goes..
Click to expand...

Be careful moving external HD's about… I dropped one of mine and lost the first 12 months worth of my professional work, completely knackered the thing and I only dropped it from about hip height. I could have paid hundreds to get it possibly repaired but didn't need the stuff on there luckily, but yeah my external HD's now sit on a desk and never move :D
 
if its only a back up that won't be critical - if you do bork it, buy another one and back it up again
 
big soft moose said:
you don't really - but I like to have a back up of the raws as soon as ive downloaded them, in case the computer goes pop during processing. Once the customer has their copies and I'm sure they aren't going to ask for anything else I tend to delete the raws off the primary storage, with the exception of any 'hero' images I may want to keep for marketing or self promotion
Click to expand...

Pretty much what we did. Back from the gig with the RAWs on the CF cards and JPGs on the SDs, back up both straight away to external HDD. Six months after we received confirmation that the customer had their copies and they were OK, everything from that gig went off our system except, like you, for any full-size finished JPG files we might want to use ourselves in the future. Customers knew that they couldn't get copies from us once that six months had passed.
 
If your looking at backup to a hard drive on a mac I can recommend time machine and carbon copy cloner. Carbon copy cloner is a great app that once set up it does everything itself. I'm not a pro but have 3 backup hard drives, one onsite for time machine, one on site using ccc and one off site using ccc. Apart from the offsite hdd it's all automated. Even the off site one is a case of plug in and one click. Ccc can be used on a trial to see what you think of it before buying it.
 
Can't beat Synology replication for zero-subscription offsite backup, it does of course mean you need 2 synology's...
 
If you have the hardware and a friend, bittorrent sync backs up local storage to a drive located elsewhere. Not used it personally, but looked into it and it seems pretty good
 
I like the idea of using a friend with similar needs to do an offsite cross-over backup.

If you have several PCs in the household, a NAS is a really easy way to do on-site backups for every one. I like the idea of putting one in the dog kennel in the garden for offsite backup too! :)
I thought a NAS is fairly safe against viruses or cryptolocker though?
 
Last edited:
Cryptolocker will go for any mapped drive that it can access, so the NAS that is set up as the Z drive (for example) on your PC will be gotten into. I don't know if simple password protection will help against it. I don't have a NAS at the minute, all my backing up is onto a portable USB3 HDD that's disconnected when in use. I believe if you access the NAS via it's servershare name (\\mynetworkstorage\stuff) then cryptolocker can't get to it.
 
Thanks. I'm on Kubuntu so I don't think it's mapped. Not with a letter anyway. But on Windows you can probably allow access to certain users only.
 
You can get 50GB FREE cloud storage from Mega.
I've been using it for a few months and it's easy to use and the contents are encrypted as well.
Unlike OneDrive from Microsoft you can also upload complete folders - much easier!
 
Last edited:
Bit late to the conversation as I've not long been on the forum.
Had CrashPlan for 2.5 years now and very happy. £84 for 4 years for unlimited storage in the cloud. CrashPlan auto backs up from the NAS drive any changes overnight or I can force a back up. Only used just over 1Tb of storage, but know someone who has 4Tb, mainly photographs.
I believe they do a 1 month free trial
You can also set it to back up to a friends PC and vis versa
 
How much data do you have?

PS if you only need to access the data on the new desktop, a NAS may not be the most cost efficient way of accessing the data. A simple USB3 hard drive maybe sufficient.

What i do :- i backup the internal hard drive and attached hard drive to another external drive via time machine, rotating the time machine disk off site. I also back up everything to crashplan. The rotation of the disks off site is perhaps unnecessary, but redundancy is always useful when it comes to backups.

The initial backup is a little painful, averaging approx 3GB uploaded per hour. Took me approx 1 week for 500GB.

I did use ARQ, but it was a pain to use in all honesty, moving from my local machine to an attached drive caused the moved files to be backed up again, whereas crashplan recognises the moved files and updates their location. The headline cost of $0.011 per GB / month seems reasonable, but this figure can easily double or more when you add 'requests'. Heres one months bill:-

EU (Ireland) RegionUsage
Amazon Glacier EU-Requests-Tier1
$0.055 per 1,000 requests267,744 Requests$14.73
Total:$14.73
Amazon Glacier EU-TimedStorage-ByteHrs
$0.011 per GB / month - Storage471.046 GB-Mo$5.18
Total:$5.18
Region Total:$19.91
 
Last edited by a moderator:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top