Image storage
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PsiFox
Prefers Mac over PC any day
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Drives are so cheap I don't bother with RAID any more.
I have in my PC
System Drive
Applications Drive
Image Drive 1
Image Drive 2
Image 1 clones on a daily basis with Image 2
Image 1 is also cloned to EXT Backup1
Image 2 cloned to External Backup 2
1 and 2 are swapped offsite alternately.
When drive in PC is full. Both it and the appropriate backup are swapped out with new drives thus keeping backups intact.
Both External backups have their own sata to USB dock.
Sound compliacated but is really simple
Oh system disk is cloned to external backups as well on a weekly basis for prompt reconstruction if a failure occurs.
I have in my PC
System Drive
Applications Drive
Image Drive 1
Image Drive 2
Image 1 clones on a daily basis with Image 2
Image 1 is also cloned to EXT Backup1
Image 2 cloned to External Backup 2
1 and 2 are swapped offsite alternately.
When drive in PC is full. Both it and the appropriate backup are swapped out with new drives thus keeping backups intact.
Both External backups have their own sata to USB dock.
Sound compliacated but is really simple
Oh system disk is cloned to external backups as well on a weekly basis for prompt reconstruction if a failure occurs.
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- Peter Rushworth
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Depends how serious you are, heard lots of bad press about NAS, RAID type set-ups with lots of hard-disk failures depending on what brand of hard-disk you bought and these ain't cheap options, so opted for 2 external USB portable drives from Seagate as backup instead, just plug in and its automatically backups and new files once you done all the initial setting up.
Internal HDs....and external HDs......and DVD [2 copies]. All of them at the same time. When you've lost photos due to a HD catastrophe [twice now] and had CDs become unreadable [not DVDs yet though] you soon learn to take the necessary precautions.
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NAS and RAID are pretty much the standards in IT. In the company I work for who support BT, Orange, Vodafone etc, all use it in one form or another and I have NAS at home. I suppose, principally, as Marianne share a lot of files in the work we do - it's also a good, protected backup solution. I incorporated a UPS as well for good measure!
I think what Pete is alluding to is a particularly nasty piece of hardware marketed by Netgear which became a disk "toaster" - SC101 if I remember correctly. It really was bad. However Netgear, in an attempt to maintain it's market share bought a successful, small company (Infratran?) and now has a robust solution relying heavily upon industry standard software and standards. Bizarrely, you can still buy a Network Disk Toaster - go figure!
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just to be pedantic (what, me?) id suspect that those companies use SAN rather than NAS. also RAID is used primarily for hardware redundancy option for 24/7 systems. backups should be done in conjunction to running RAID.
correct-ish, netgear aquired "infrant" primarily for the readynas technology (as i found to my horror when i RMA'd my old readynas..) while the hardware is pretty good (not the best but for the price..) their support and warranty is rubbish.
You'll have good or bad luck with just about any HD. Luck of the draw. However, I can say with a reasonable amount of certainty [from experience] that you're almost guaranteed to have trouble with Maxtor. Unless they've improved in recent times. It's early days yet but Samsung may be nosing ahead in reliability stakes. I've got just two in a PC, one a couple of years old and another 9 months, both run several hours daily and good. Another is in a Tivo [tv recording device] which has been running 24/7 for getting on for 3 years now.
Dvd brands come and go and longevity assessment is a bit hit and miss. You could trawl the specialist dvd supplier sites [eg http://www.cdr-zone.com/articles/recordable_dvd_quality_page_1.html for advice, http://new.ukdvdr.co.uk/ and http://www.svp.co.uk/index.php http://www.dvd-and-media.com/ ] and look for archive quality brands. Verbatim are a long-standing manufacturer in this area.
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It's not the brands that are more or less reliable, it is the models within the brands. The first Samsung 1Tb F1 spinpoints were notoriously unreliable, as were the Seagate 500G (can't remember which one of the models, but it was the one I had - grrr). The newer Samsung F2 and F3s seem more reliable.
Generally though it's down to a combination of manufacturing plant, platter density and how many platters are in use and unless you're buying very old technology (i.e. <500Gbyte drives) you are probably too early in the product cycle to have any truly reliable information "out there".
That's based on 9+ drives on 24/7 for the last 3 years and probably 20+ (most on 24/7) in total over the last 10 years.
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Forget about DVD, they're slow, unreliable and it's a real pig trying to find a particular image when you've got a lot of them.
An external hard drive docking station (USB2 or, preferably, eSATA) allows you to buy bare drives (nice and cheap). So you can get two 1TB drives for around £80 (look for offers on sites like Scan Computers) and have duplicate HDD backups.
Again, that's debatable, and up to him to decide for himself. The point of a DVD backup is that it's the ultimate final solution, after backing up to HD. I have a backup HD under my desk here that no longer works. It has failed just sitting in a box, not connected, and unused for more than a year. It's not the first one I've had like that either.
And if they're slow - so what? Does it matter when all else has failed? Unreliable? Far better than CDs have been.
Finding a particular image? That's up to how well organised you are. I can go straight to the exact disc in seconds. And each disc has a printout of its contents tucked in to the sleeve, and a HTML file with thumbnails. But I'd only be looking at DVDs after both backup HDs had failed or had been stolen or burned, and then I'd be copying the whole disc across anyway.
The lengths one will go to in order to preserve one's images cannot be underestimated when one has lost them due to HD failure.
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the construction of dvd does make them prone to de-laminating.. what you want is blu-ray which doesnt suffer from that issue..
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well i never knew blu-ray didnt suffer from that as well..just a question is there any reason why not..or are the just manufactured better???
can someone also reccomend an external 1tb hdd
can someone also reccomend an external 1tb hdd
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the construction of dvd does make them prone to de-laminating.. what you want is blu-ray which doesnt suffer from that issue..
Yes, I know they're not infallible. In contrast to CD, where I've had many fail, my DVDs appear to be hanging in there. So if I have four HD failures, then find the DVDs have all turned to crap too - well - that's life!
I'll move to BR when the price has fallen significantly. Too much of my money has gone to these companies over the years by becoming an early adopter.
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I'd far rather have multiple HD backups than rely on DVDs. Not only is it easier having multiple HD backups, I'd consider it more reliable too (google DVD-R lifetime). I've had more CDs/DVDs fail than HDDs....
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Put them in separate enclosures. If they are all in the same PC, it is possible a power supply going bad will fry them all. Not wanting to scaremonger but I cross backup here...
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what program do you use to get them to back each other up (clone) or do you clone them yourself.
And that's where our experiences differ. I've had more HDs fail than DVDs.
Blu-ray and multiple hard drives - drives are easily swapped in a case like this: http://www.quietpc.com/gb-en-gbp/products/pc-cases/ms1000-hs2
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I use drive snapshot. http://www.drivesnapshot.de/en/ to a dedicated backup disk and then some scheduled jobs to run it periodically. Does just what it says on the tin - nothing more, nothing less
. I also backup my home space automatically at 20minute periods using rsync.Edit: I should also say I have a home server which I use as my backup destination and a main PC (as well as a few laptops around) which I use for day to day stuff.
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Acronis True Image works pretty well.
I highly doubt that.
CDs/DVDs constantly degrade from the time they are manufactured.
The reflective dye will eventually develop holes and cause unrecoverable read errors.
I just recently chucked over 200 dvds as they were no longer readable, I have never had a HDD fail catastrophically more than once and that must have been over 7 years ago.
DVDs are way too slow for my needs anyway, it takes on average 8 minutes to burn a 4.5GB dvd or I can dock a drive over esata and transfer at over 90MB/s.
I can transfer 1GB in under 15 seconds!
A 1TB drive cost around £45 now, you would need at least 222 DVDs to get the same amount of space; which costs around £30 for cheap stuff.
Now 222x8 minutes is 1776 minutes or just under 30 hours of burning back to back. (not counting the time to swap discs, label and store)
Why go through the trouble?
I know the state of my DVDs and that they are readable. I also know that I have a box of 15 dead or unuseable hard drives. I'd highly recommend that you don't come on to this forum and suggest that somebody is lying.
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andephotographic
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I use a 1tb external drive for time machine backups of what's on my imac hdd and have 2 1.5tb external drives for mirrored archiving so there's only ever 6months worth of images on my machine at any time.
DVDs and CDs will stop working by themselves after a certain number of years, so I rarely use them.
They're also slow, noisy and inconvenient.
Just use external hard drives, they're the best option by far - Quick, reliable, small, cheap.
I keep my pics on my computers and just use external drives for backups.
If you can warrant it, a networkable/RAIDable one accomplishes the same effect.
They're also slow, noisy and inconvenient.
Just use external hard drives, they're the best option by far - Quick, reliable, small, cheap.
I keep my pics on my computers and just use external drives for backups.
If you can warrant it, a networkable/RAIDable one accomplishes the same effect.
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completely different contruction and materials/dyes.
its not exactly pricey at the moment based on £/gb compared to DVD..
It's the hardware. Last time I looked burners were still well in to 3 figures. I still have my first CD burner which cost me £350, and DVD burner that was £250.
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I don't use DVD's for storing photographs, only video, but Taiyo Yuden discs, which are Japanese made, appear to be one of the most highly regarded discs. In saying that, they are also one of the most expensive. I have recordings going back several years which are fine, but don't honestly know how they compare to HDD storage.
Verbatim's are very good too, but they do have manufacturing bases in several countries. I have heard of problems within a short time scale with their discs made in China and India. However, the ones made in Taiwan appear to be good. You can occasionally come across a pack of 50 discs with 'made in Japan' written on the packaging and these are actually made by TY.
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cheapest on scan is £84
that must be fun burning at those speeds..
I'm not still using them! I paid so much for them I'm not going to throw the damned things out! The £350 CD is a 2x Ricoh scsi. The £250 DVD a Sony, maybe 2x. I bought it in Tokyo and at the time was much cheaper than could be had here. I also still have my first two CD-RWs. They cost £18 each.
The BR burner prices are looking much better.