How do you manage your backups?

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Matt.

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I am in the process of trying out Arq (an automated tool for OSX that backs up to Amazon S3+Glacier). I also use Time Machine for local backups to external HDDs.

I'm interested to hear what you all do? I can't imagine it being good to lose many hundreds of GB of photos!
 
All my images are on a separate hard drive in my main editing machine. This drive is then backed up to a RAID5 server under my desk. The RAID5 server is then mirrored to a second RAID server in my garage to mitigate against theft or fire.
 
QNAP NAS configured in RAID5. I then do a nightly redundant backup (via rsync) to a RAID0. I have had lots of experience with HDD and they are usually the device most prone to failure.

Ideally, I'd like to upload it into the cloud but i have too much data :(
 
I have

  • Original data (machine 1)
  • Copy of original data backed up every 20 mins onto another machine (machine 2)
  • Copy backup on machine 2 to machine 1 overnight but on a separate drive to the original data
  • Backup of everything to the cloud every night

I now think I'm fairly well protected - 1 day is the worst I lose...
 
nomad_traveller said:
QNAP NAS configured in RAID5. I then do a nightly redundant backup (via rsync) to a RAID0. I have had lots of experience with HDD and they are usually the device most prone to failure.

Ideally, I'd like to upload it into the cloud but i have too much data :(
Click to expand...

How can RAID0 be a redundant back up? RAID0 has no redundancy.. a single drive failure will just hose the entire array. Or did you mean this back up itself is redundancy because the RAID5 back up had redundancy built in?

Your RAID5 NAS box:.... is that where your images are stored? If so, you don't have a very good back up solution at all. RAID is not back up. Your only back up is therefore on a striped array (RAID0). RAID5 offers redundancy, but not back up. Can still be stolen, or deleted.

If you have your data on something else, THEN back it up to RAID5, and THEN mirror that to RAID0, then yes, that will be safer, but if your images are actually stored on the RAID5 server, and not backed up to it, your only back up is on a striped array.. which is scary.
 
Least its two separate arrays, chances of both failing at the same time are slim providing they're separate devices with separate controllers etc (although I'd get a ups on those fast in case of power outage, plus it's missing an off site like you say in case of fire/theft)
 
Last edited:
I do.

Everything I'm working on locally. Its also backed up to a NAS every 20 minutes or so. The NAS also serves as my longer term storage.Hard drives and NAS are backed up every hour to cloud based storage.
 
Pookeyhead said:
How can RAID0 be a redundant back up? RAID0 has no redundancy.. a single drive failure will just hose the entire array. Or did you mean this back up itself is redundancy because the RAID5 back up had redundancy built in?

Your RAID5 NAS box:.... is that where your images are stored? If so, you don't have a very good back up solution at all. RAID is not back up. Your only back up is therefore on a striped array (RAID0). RAID5 offers redundancy, but not back up. Can still be stolen, or deleted.

If you have your data on something else, THEN back it up to RAID5, and THEN mirror that to RAID0, then yes, that will be safer, but if your images are actually stored on the RAID5 server, and not backed up to it, your only back up is on a striped array.. which is scary.
Click to expand...

Yes, the RAID 0 is a redundant backup because of the redundancy in RAID5.

My data is live on the RAID5. I then replicate the data from the RAID5 to RAID0 on a nightly basis. The copy on RAID0 is purely if I lose TWO disks on my RAID5.

So, if I lose one disk on my RAID5, I am still okay. I would then go and replace the disk. If however, I lose a second hard disk on my RAID5 then I still have a copy on my RAID0. Only if I lose a disk on my RAID0 have I lost everything.

So to lose all my data, I would lose two DISKS on my RAID5 as well as one disk on my RAID0 all at the same time.

The reason I had to do the RAID0 was just to get an increase in storage space.
 
boyfalldown said:
I do.

Everything I'm working on locally. Its also backed up to a NAS every 20 minutes or so. The NAS also serves as my longer term storage.Hard drives and NAS are backed up every hour to cloud based storage.
Click to expand...

boyfalldown, what cloud based storage do you use out of interest and what is the data size you're talking about?

I have Four x 3TB in RAID5 which equates to 9TB so you can imagine my difficulties of getting this into the cloud. Obviously not all of it are photos but a significant amount are.
 
nomad_traveller said:
boyfalldown, what cloud based storage do you use out of interest and what is the data size you're talking about?

I have Four x 3TB in RAID5 which equates to 9TB so you can imagine my difficulties of getting this into the cloud. Obviously not all of it are photos but a significant amount are.
Click to expand...

I use live drive - I have 1.2tb up there at the moment, and the initial upload is painful, but now its there it works well. One thing I noticed while looking for a supplier, most were unable to handle a single volume greater then 2tb although the total storage was unlimited. May be worth paying attention to
 
I have two NAS drives at home - one is a RAID set up.

My other backups are two external drives - one kept at homebut not plugged into anything and the ohter kept at work and backed-up every month then brought back to work :)

My next step is to get Time Machine running on my Mac and use this as the back up tool (currently back up from Windows as I'm a recent convert [and still converting] to Mac!)
 
don't bother with raid or anything, but backup to portable drives kept elsewhere every few months and have every photo taken automatically sent to flickr.

The original uploading to flickr took ages via a lightroom plugin, about 50,000 photos, but now they are there any new ones just upload without you noticing.
 
My photos initially go onto a RAID1 NAS, from there it backs up through a Mac Mini acting as a server up to Crashplan in the cloud.

My library of finished, keyworded, catalogued shots is backed up to my Macbook Pro, and a pair of external portable drives which are kept off site (one at my mum's house, one at my dad's).

Finished shots are also downloadable as jpegs from my website as a last line of defence.
 
tim_uk said:
don't bother with raid or anything, but backup to portable drives kept elsewhere every few months and have every photo taken automatically sent to flickr.
Click to expand...

The benefit of RAID (assuming it is not RAID0) is that there is no data loss when one drive fails. As soon as one drive fails, just go out and immediately replace the drive and carry on as per normal. No data restoration is required.

If you don't have RAID, then you will lose the data between backups and would have to start a data restore from backups.

I would still recommend backing up to portable drives even with RAID.
 
boyfalldown said:
I use live drive - I have 1.2tb up there at the moment, and the initial upload is painful, but now its there it works well. One thing I noticed while looking for a supplier, most were unable to handle a single volume greater then 2tb although the total storage was unlimited. May be worth paying attention to
Click to expand...

okay... thanks for the tips.
 
nomad_traveller said:
Yes, the RAID 0 is a redundant backup because of the redundancy in RAID5.

My data is live on the RAID5. I then replicate the data from the RAID5 to RAID0 on a nightly basis. The copy on RAID0 is purely if I lose TWO disks on my RAID5.
Click to expand...


But you are doing it the wrong way around. The array with the highest risk of failure is being relied upon for back up. Your RAID5 server has redundancy, yes, but that in itself isn't back up. It can still be accidentally deleted, or corrupted should a RAID controller error occur. RAID is not back up... it's redundancy. So should that happen, your only remaining copy of data is on the system with the statistically highest risk of failure.
 
Pookeyhead said:
But you are doing it the wrong way around. The array with the highest risk of failure is being relied upon for back up. Your RAID5 server has redundancy, yes, but that in itself isn't back up. It can still be accidentally deleted, or corrupted should a RAID controller error occur. RAID is not back up... it's redundancy. So should that happen, your only remaining copy of data is on the system with the statistically highest risk of failure.
Click to expand...

I do agree with you. I guess my main purpose is more mitigating the risk of disk failures over data deletion or corruption.
 
Matt. said:
I am in the process of trying out Arq (an automated tool for OSX that backs up to Amazon S3+Glacier). I also use Time Machine for local backups to external HDDs.

I'm interested to hear what you all do? I can't imagine it being good to lose many hundreds of GB of photos!
Click to expand...

Hi Matt, ive got a similar setup to you.

I have a 2 time machine backups, one in my flat one at my girlfriends. I then use Arq just for my photographs in case of a fire that will take out a time machine backup and laptop.

One thing to be aware of is if you are using amazon glacier, you may need to wait 4 hours for your backup to become available, download speed is very quick once it has become available. This sint an issue though as the need to access your online backup will hopefully be rare / never.
 
nomad_traveller said:
boyfalldown, what cloud based storage do you use out of interest and what is the data size you're talking about?

I have Four x 3TB in RAID5 which equates to 9TB so you can imagine my difficulties of getting this into the cloud. Obviously not all of it are photos but a significant amount are.
Click to expand...

I believe you can send drives to amazon

http://aws.amazon.com/importexport/

But do you need all your data in the cloud. Maybe have an archive off site for older data, and just back up current projects to cloud?
 
I copy everything to both my internal drive and a Raid NAS, then backup any changes to the local copy daily. Once a month I backup the Raid drive to a portable and clear down the local drive.
 
boyfalldown said:
I thought amazon only provided that service in the us. There are several companies allow seeded backup over there, but when I looked non in the uk
Click to expand...


Q. What locations does AWS accept shipping from?
For imports into and exports from US Standard, US West (Oregon), US West (Northern California), and Asia Pacific (Singapore) Region buckets, AWS accepts packages from all countries, except those that are listed as under embargo by the US or countries not serviced by DHL, our international return shipping carrier in the US and Singapore. For imports into and exports from EU (Ireland) Region buckets, AWS accepts packages from all countries within the European Union.
Click to expand...

Haven't used the service though, i had about 250gb so upload was fine for me.
 
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