Back Up - Recommended system.

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Geektastic

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#171443 18-Apr-2015 13:12

I have 2 Mac desk tops, a Macbook Pro and 2 iPhones.

Attached at the moment is about 10Tb of disk storage made up from Drobo, Iosafe fireproof and other stand alone drives.

The image library and the computers are backed up online to Backblaze. This takes a long time, especially with RAW files from a 36Mp camera that can run to hundreds of files per shoot or thousands after an extended overseas trip.

I am hoping to move shortly and the internet speed at the address we hope to buy is 5Mbps. No indication when that might improve.

That speed is not fast enough to be of any use for on line backups so I will probably be forced to abandon that.

What is the best regime/equipment setup for doing my own backups in the studio at home?

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Hammered
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#1287163 19-Apr-2015 12:56

Probably some kind of NAS, but there may be something better for Apples (don't own any myself). Ultimately would depend on budget I guess?

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#1287175 19-Apr-2015 13:20

I run a QNAP NAS and back that up onto a USB portable drive. I have 2 which I swap regularly and keep one off site (glove compartment of my car). However I'm not looking at the amount of data you seem to be storing. 1TB does me. For the files not located on the NAS I back up the laptops etc onto the NAS.

I'd be looking at having just one NAS and a couple of 10 TB external drives that you can back up onto and swap. Otherwise you could back up each of your NAS onto their own external drives. This won't be as cheap (at least short term) as using the cloud but is a good option in my opinion. It certainly gets round any internet speeds and or data caps.

You probably know this, Back up and RAID are different, just in case someone suggests a RAID setup to solve your problems. I mention this because a lot of people think because they have a RAID set up they also have a Backup.

RAID is not a back up system, it is a continuity of service system. If you get data corruption on one part of the RAID that corruption will be replicated on the other part, or if the RAID is stolen or damaged by fire you won't have a copy of your data.

For the average home owner there is very little benefit from RAID, however a Back Up is very important for anyone.

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afe66

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#1287209 19-Apr-2015 14:17

My Synology NAS has a cloud client where files are backed up to the cloud in the background.
ie save the photos etc to the NAS when when nothing else is happening it copies the files to google drive, one drive etc.

I also backup the NAS to a couple of 3 Tb drives, one lives in the garage, the other my locker at work.

Internet speed wont make much difference in uploading unless you've got VSDL or fibre.

A.

Geektastic

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#1287456 19-Apr-2015 22:27

afe66: My Synology NAS has a cloud client where files are backed up to the cloud in the background.
ie save the photos etc to the NAS when when nothing else is happening it copies the files to google drive, one drive etc.

I also backup the NAS to a couple of 3 Tb drives, one lives in the garage, the other my locker at work.

Internet speed wont make much difference in uploading unless you've got VSDL or fibre.

A.

I have VDSL now but as you can see from my signature, the upload is pretty slow.

This may work. Do all Synology units do this?

tdgeek

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#1287486 20-Apr-2015 07:52

afe66: My Synology NAS has a cloud client where files are backed up to the cloud in the background.
ie save the photos etc to the NAS when when nothing else is happening it copies the files to google drive, one drive etc.

I also backup the NAS to a couple of 3 Tb drives, one lives in the garage, the other my locker at work.

Internet speed wont make much difference in uploading unless you've got VSDL or fibre.

A.

I second this. Father, Grandfather, Great Grandfather regime. Old, but fast and reliable, store one at home, one in garage if garage is suitably separated/protected from fire and offsite. CarbonCopyCloner and SuperDuper are the main backups of choice in the Apple world, they do incremental after first backup.

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#1287557 20-Apr-2015 09:59

"back that up onto a USB portable drive. I have 2 which I swap regularly and keep one off site (glove compartment of my car)"

Your external USB drive is rated for 50 degrees Celcius, even non-operating?
Between solar gain if the car is parked outside in the sunny shine, and heat soak from the engine compartment, I'd have thought a car glove box was way too harsh an environment for a HDD.
A locker / locked desk drawer at work, or a family member's home, or maybe even a lock-up where you keep all that essential stuff that SWMBO won't let you keep in the garage, would be much better IMHO.
Or if you're self-employed, maybe your accountant will do it for a few dollars a month?

Geektastic

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#1287571 20-Apr-2015 10:20

tdgeek:
afe66: My Synology NAS has a cloud client where files are backed up to the cloud in the background.
ie save the photos etc to the NAS when when nothing else is happening it copies the files to google drive, one drive etc.

I also backup the NAS to a couple of 3 Tb drives, one lives in the garage, the other my locker at work.

Internet speed wont make much difference in uploading unless you've got VSDL or fibre.

A.

I second this. Father, Grandfather, Great Grandfather regime. Old, but fast and reliable, store one at home, one in garage if garage is suitably separated/protected from fire and offsite. CarbonCopyCloner and SuperDuper are the main backups of choice in the Apple world, they do incremental after first backup.

I have ChronoSync. Would that be suitable?

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#1287618 20-Apr-2015 10:36

+1 with Synology. Have them at work and home. The biggest unit at work is around 70TB and a small one being around 25TB. The sinology stuff is going and you can download app's to run extra network services like LDAP, VPN, DNS, DHCP and even use them as a NVR.

Geektastic

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#1287679 20-Apr-2015 12:44

So, if I had a Synology (their website suggested a 414) that could take up to 16Tb of drives.

You could have two of those running (I think) which would provide two separate RAID protected sets of your data.

If you end up with 16Tb of data, what drive could you fit that on which could easily be taken to and from site?

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#1287720 20-Apr-2015 13:31

This suggestion might be a bit controversial in the modern digital hoarding world we live in ...

Ever thought about deleting stuff ? :-)

If you are doing a thousand shots in a shoot you are not seriously going to keep them all are you ? What's your workflow for dealing with them ? Are you sorting them out before you get them uploaded to Backblaze ?

networkn

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#1287749 20-Apr-2015 13:57

Synology units will actually take the 6TB and 8TB Drives I believe.

We don't have Mac, but I have a 414 and 2 external drives. Our Inlaws have the same setup, and when they come over for Rugby we swap drives so we have 1 backup offsite always and so do they.

Whilst I have about 8TB of data backed up, We care about 2TB of stuff really, and this covers that.

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#1287785 20-Apr-2015 14:34

networkn: Synology units will actually take the 6TB and 8TB Drives I believe.

I can conform this.

I have 6TB WD reds in three Synology NAS units, and they all work perfectly.

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jaymz

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#1287797 20-Apr-2015 15:01

You could also setup TimeMachine backups from your Mac OS devices to the Synology. It is simply a case of creating a shared folder and targeting the Synology to use that for Time Machine backups. Then on your Mac setup time machine. It is a constant incremental backup which is fast if you have lots to backup each time.

CYaBro

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#1287823 20-Apr-2015 15:59

jaymz: You could also setup TimeMachine backups from your Mac OS devices to the Synology. It is simply a case of creating a shared folder and targeting the Synology to use that for Time Machine backups. Then on your Mac setup time machine. It is a constant incremental backup which is fast if you have lots to backup each time.

That's great for local backups but what about offsite?
Time Machine backups can't be backed up to the cloud, due to the way it uses hard links.
The cloud backup software thinks all the files need to be backed up again so you use a lot of bandwidth and a lot of storage.

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#1287837 20-Apr-2015 16:23

you could do online backup, but just seed the initial backup over a fast connection if you can get access to one?

crashplan has a backup seeding option, and I run my daily backup over a 7mbps adsl connection (only photos, home movies, and a few documents ~ 1TB)

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