Back Up - Recommended system.

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Geektastic

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#1288076 20-Apr-2015 20:23

Mark: 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 ?

I tend to delete the stuff that is useless for one reason or another or if there is genuine duplication.

However, designers often want a number of versions of what appears to be the same shot to the casual observer but which in fact has different head angles, facial expressions etc etc and it is not unknown for them to come back months or even years after the shoot and ask if you have more material. Likewise, as a professional it is part of the service I provide that I keep the client's work archived for at least a reasonable time.

Also I am often surprised at the number of shots I will dismiss when editing the first time then re-visit ages later and end up creating something good out of. Likewise, you get calls from clients and agencies "Have you got anything which features....."

So yes, any genuine rubbish is binned but I don't otherwise bin RAW files any more than I used to bin negatives.

Geektastic

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#1288082 20-Apr-2015 20:28

networkn: 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.

Yes that is true.

But if I have say a pair of 414's that have say 16Tb and are mirrored copies of each other (i.e. two RAID sets with the same data on as double failure protection) and I then want to put a copy of all that data on one drive I can take of site, how would I do that without disturbing the drives in the 414's?

Or is two 414's just a bit overkill?

Technofreak

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#1288093 20-Apr-2015 20:48

Geektastic:
Yes that is true.

But if I have say a pair of 414's that have say 16Tb and are mirrored copies of each other (i.e. two RAID sets with the same data on as double failure protection) and I then want to put a copy of all that data on one drive I can take of site, how would I do that without disturbing the drives in the 414's?

Or is two 414's just a bit overkill?

Why do you need RAID?

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JimmyH

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#1288110 20-Apr-2015 21:20

After having dealt with several drive failures, which are a total pain in the posterior even when you do have backups, I think RAID is a great idea, particularly for large data sets. Far easier to replace the failed drive and let it re-synch, and keep the use of the data array while it does. My setup is now RAID5, and will go to RAID6 shortly.

I am, however, also dealing with the issue of backup - although I only have around 8TB of material, not as much as many others here. I have had a couple of USB drives that have been on a shelf fail when I go to recover from them, so I have decided that is not a viable backup option.

I'm currently looking at two options:

BD-R, with 50GB disks able to be landed from the US for around $4 each (=$80/TB); and
tape, with refurbed LTO-4 Drives (800GB raw per tape, tapes around $45) going for circa $4-500.

Haven't made up my mind yet, but the Blu-Ray option will probably win. So I will have main copy on the NAS, immediate backups on USB hard drives, secondary backups offsite on optical disks.

@Geektastic - a single $4 BD-R disk should store around 1,300 of your raw photos, for what it's worth.

Geektastic

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#1288138 20-Apr-2015 22:24

JimmyH: After having dealt with several drive failures, which are a total pain in the posterior even when you do have backups, I think RAID is a great idea, particularly for large data sets. Far easier to replace the failed drive and let it re-synch, and keep the use of the data array while it does. My setup is now RAID5, and will go to RAID6 shortly.

I am, however, also dealing with the issue of backup - although I only have around 8TB of material, not as much as many others here. I have had a couple of USB drives that have been on a shelf fail when I go to recover from them, so I have decided that is not a viable backup option.

I'm currently looking at two options:

BD-R, with 50GB disks able to be landed from the US for around $4 each (=$80/TB); and
tape, with refurbed LTO-4 Drives (800GB raw per tape, tapes around $45) going for circa $4-500.

Haven't made up my mind yet, but the Blu-Ray option will probably win. So I will have main copy on the NAS, immediate backups on USB hard drives, secondary backups offsite on optical disks.

@Geektastic - a single $4 BD-R disk should store around 1,300 of your raw photos, for what it's worth.

Interesting; what is the archival life of the disks?

JimmyH

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#1288143 20-Apr-2015 22:52

Good question. I don't know, I'm still looking into it.

I suspect better for the single-layer 25GB disks than the dual-layer 50GB ones.

But if it's stuff I really care about (eg personal digital photos) I would likely make multiple copies to be safe - and store them in different places. For stuff that isn't die in a ditch (eg DVDs/CDs I own that I have ripped and encoded) if I lose it, I will likely only make one. I can still re-generate such material if necessary, albeit painfully for over 500 CDs.

Geektastic

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#1288277 21-Apr-2015 09:26

It's interesting that the 'revolution' of digital photography has not yet provided us with a method of keeping archive material that beats the glass plates of the Victorians unless you transfer the material to new drives every so often.

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networkn

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#1288287 21-Apr-2015 09:38

Geektastic:
networkn: 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.

Yes that is true.

But if I have say a pair of 414's that have say 16Tb and are mirrored copies of each other (i.e. two RAID sets with the same data on as double failure protection) and I then want to put a copy of all that data on one drive I can take of site, how would I do that without disturbing the drives in the 414's?

Or is two 414's just a bit overkill?

Personally for you I'd just go 1 x 414 and 2 x External HDD's. I'd put raid on the NAS.

I'd set it up so that the Ext HDD's get connected to the NAS and either depending on the make up of your data setup two backup jobs, a daily to the NAS, incremental or such, and 1 full backup to the external drives per week, if that fitted, or just daily to the NAS and Weekly from the NAS to Ext HDD's.

Geektastic

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#1288358 21-Apr-2015 11:27

networkn:
Geektastic:
networkn: 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.

Yes that is true.

But if I have say a pair of 414's that have say 16Tb and are mirrored copies of each other (i.e. two RAID sets with the same data on as double failure protection) and I then want to put a copy of all that data on one drive I can take of site, how would I do that without disturbing the drives in the 414's?

Or is two 414's just a bit overkill?

Personally for you I'd just go 1 x 414 and 2 x External HDD's. I'd put raid on the NAS.

I'd set it up so that the Ext HDD's get connected to the NAS and either depending on the make up of your data setup two backup jobs, a daily to the NAS, incremental or such, and 1 full backup to the external drives per week, if that fitted, or just daily to the NAS and Weekly from the NAS to Ext HDD's.

Can you get a decent standalone 16Tb hdd?

Yoban

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#1288364 21-Apr-2015 11:41

I have a similar setup as proposed with 2xreadynas 314 loaded at this stage with 3x4Tb raided.

One of them sits at my place within a rack setup and the other sits at a mates place in Rotorua and I sync (mirror) between them. The initial mirroring was done locally and then deployed the unit.

he is looking to replicate setup with his qnap NAS.

So I have a pseudo cloud/offsite storage with very little effort. Both of us have UFB and do not push a lot of data between the units.

I then send super critical stuff to the cloud as well.

networkn

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#1288366 21-Apr-2015 11:47

Geektastic:
networkn:
Geektastic:
networkn: 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.

Yes that is true.

But if I have say a pair of 414's that have say 16Tb and are mirrored copies of each other (i.e. two RAID sets with the same data on as double failure protection) and I then want to put a copy of all that data on one drive I can take of site, how would I do that without disturbing the drives in the 414's?

Or is two 414's just a bit overkill?

Personally for you I'd just go 1 x 414 and 2 x External HDD's. I'd put raid on the NAS.

I'd set it up so that the Ext HDD's get connected to the NAS and either depending on the make up of your data setup two backup jobs, a daily to the NAS, incremental or such, and 1 full backup to the external drives per week, if that fitted, or just daily to the NAS and Weekly from the NAS to Ext HDD's.

Can you get a decent standalone 16Tb hdd?

No, as I mentioned, in my setup, I have nominated specific data which is critical. If you have critical data which exceeds 6TB you will need a different solution, but you are already looking at pretty decent money and you can't cover every eventuality. You could get 2 NAS units and raid them both, but if the disaster is big enough, if they are on the same premise it's gone anyway. Mostly you are protecting against hardware failure or accidental deletion. Without a decent internet connection, you won't be able to do better for reasonable money.

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