Photo backup and archiving

J

Jay12329

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I'm taking ever more photographs and this is showing holes in my current archiving system.

I've currently got a buffalo link station NAS which i dump stuff onto as and when i can be bothered/need the space on my mac book pro.

Although this has plenty of space, it has no backup system and it is very very slow to copy photographs across to.

What would the all knowing members of the forum suggest? Small budget for a home setup. I've been thinking some sort of raid system, Raid 1 would do it but I'd love a Raid 5 system but suspect thats mega money.

Thanks

J
 
to expand on my rushed reply..

in my experience/opinion RAID should never be used as a single point of storage for files. it is not invincible and is vunerable to file deletion, corruption, fire, theft and hardware failure. RAID1 whilst called mirroring again is vunerable to the above.

my opinion have at least 2 separate physical devices sync them using one of many free apps and if possible keep one of those drives off site.
 
Thanks for your input. I'm not a professional so protection against all eventualities isn't necessary. I just wanted to protect myself against the most common, IE hardware failure.
I'm after a fast easy archiving solution for home use, preferable with some redundancy/backup included. I think off site solutions are a little extreme not to mention expensive for my holiday snaps! So two mirrored drives look like the way forward. Any suggestions on good quality hardware that is quicker than my current solution?

thanks again

J
 
please dont store all of your data on one set of RAID1 mirrored drives as said previously mirroring will not protect your data. its meant for systems that need redundancy to stay running 24/7 not as a backup.. if anything get 2 desktop USB/FireWire/eSATA drives and keep 2 copies of your data that way.
 
neil_g said:
please dont store all of your data on one set of RAID1 mirrored drives as said previously mirroring will not protect your data. its meant for systems that need redundancy to stay running 24/7 not as a backup.. if anything get 2 desktop USB/FireWire/eSATA drives and keep 2 copies of your data that way.
Click to expand...

This is what I'm doing at the moment and it's providing very usefull. Only problem is that I want it to automatically copy my K://Lightroom folder onto M://Lightroom folder automatically as a mirror image copy.

Is there anyway I can do this? Because at the minute i'm just importing to lightroom, and once that's completed just C+P the library and also the newest dated folder in my K://Lightroom folder
 
J4MIE_P said:
This is what I'm doing at the moment and it's providing very usefull. Only problem is that I want it to automatically copy my K://Lightroom folder onto M://Lightroom folder automatically as a mirror image copy.

Is there anyway I can do this? Because at the minute i'm just importing to lightroom, and once that's completed just C+P the library and also the newest dated folder in my K://Lightroom folder
Click to expand...

allway sync
robocopy

to name a couple :)
 
Thank you very much, all free downloads from the t'interweb I take it?
Thanks for all the info I'll have to look into them, so do they definately just transfer the folders you tell it too? As I dont want EVERYTHING transferring
 
Would like to VERY MUCH thank you Neil!!!!!
Just downloaded AllSync and it's already doing exactly what I wanted :)
Great to know there's some very helpfull people out in the world! Thanks again!

Just one question though. Once I have Sync'd the files will it Auto Sync from then on? Say it'll just run in the background and update whenever there is a change?
 
J4MIE_P said:
Thank you very much, all free downloads from the t'interweb I take it?
Thanks for all the info I'll have to look into them, so do they definately just transfer the folders you tell it too? As I dont want EVERYTHING transferring
Click to expand...

i use allway sync, its free (you have to pay if youre transferring a LOT of data regularly) but you can tweek it to do whatever you want.
 
If anything it's going to be transferring a few GB (4-8) ish on a weekly or even monthly basis so nothing too strenuous.
 
I don't run a desktop computer at the moment, so would be looking at a network resource rather than usb or similar.
I'm starting to think I need to change my whole workflow and hardware set up :|
I currently pull straight off memory cards into lightroom, then when I'm finished with a set I pull the photos i want to keep out of lightroom and drop them onto my NAS for safe keeping, then delete everything off my laptop.
Gah. Day in the office tomorrow, will do some more reading on process.

J
 
I have everything in folders named after the event. They are all held on a 400GB External HD. Dont keep anything on my desktop HD. Once a month I back up on 2, 500gb external HD`s. One I have locked up in a safe and the other I keep in my locker at work. This is just incase the house burns down (touch wood). Maybe a bit obsessive but cant be too careful!!!!
 
mightymaiden said:
I have everything in folders named after the event. They are all held on a 400GB External HD. Dont keep anything on my desktop HD. Once a month I back up on 2, 500gb external HD`s. One I have locked up in a safe and the other I keep in my locker at work. This is just incase the house burns down (touch wood). Maybe a bit obsessive but cant be too careful!!!!
Click to expand...

Completely agree with this set-up!
I'm very similar but WITHOUT an off-site back-up. Which is something I will definately look into!

At the moment thanks to Neil above :) I import all my photos into Lightroom (onto my 500GB external HD), and then AllwaySync to make a mirrored copy of that first external hard drive onto my 1TB EXHD.

Works well for me at the moment :) but hopefully i'll doo all the same above but then get another HD to make another copy of the 1TB HD.
 
I was looking into my backup solution too, and have just come across this thread.

At the moment, i have 2 external HDD's, to which it is very difficult to figure out which folders have been updated since the last copy.

Hopefully, the above mentioned software packages should do the job nicely.....

Good thinking on the offsite storage too!! :thumbs:
 
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