2021 backup Questine?

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  • nb

    I have a 2+ TBs of photographs. Up until now, I store everything like this:

    4TB external drive that holds all raw photographs, film scans, edits. Everything. The full lightroom library.

    The faves which get edited are stored in Google Photos, but this is a few small selection. Maybe 200 photos. Very few.

    1. What's the best way to keep a second copy of that 4TB drive?

    2. I don't love cloud storage as primary backup (privacy, trust issues) but I'm willing to listen to people tell me I'm wrong.

  • sted3

    80 Blu-ray discs heh, it's going to take a few days to write it out, but trust me you're going to look at it in 20 years and say: fuck, those are still working.

    • nobody can touch it without u knowing, can't hack it and its solar storm safe :Dsted
    • This is a joke, right? I'm skeptical that it will be easy to find a bluray drive to read those discs in 20 years. Who even has an optical drive now?nb
    • it's backwards compatible, and until the movie industry is using it you will find everything to read/write those.sted
    • Lol Most hardware has either removed or will be removing optical drives in next 5 years. 20yrs???futurefood
    • Who knows, in 20years, pointless nostalgia will bring the optical drive back.futurefood
    • I wouldn’t worry about the solar storm thing either. The Earth’s magnetic field takes care of that. Unless your drive is in orbit...futurefood
    • Remember floppy disks? Man weve come a long wayGuyFawkes
    • If a solar storm takes out all digital backups, we'll have worse to worry about than data loss.e-wo
    • My second best idea was punch-cards but i was too lazy to do the calculation for that 4Tb+ :D Hard disks, and encrypted cloud backup packages are just fine.sted
    • Just get a polaroid and take pics of all your pics, done.GuyFawkes
  • nb0

    The Useless Thread

    • Delete the photos you don't like and save yourself a lot of hassles.boobs
  • elahon0

    Have all of your photos printed out and put into albums. =)

  • face_melter1

    Just buy 40,000+ 50MB thumb drives and individually back up each image. That way you have almost perfect protection against losing everything.

    • Or whatever the fucking math is, I don't know, it's Monday morning.face_melter
  • i_was-2

    SSD

  • grafician2

    Pretty sure Google Photos will be discontinued or at least will only keep small-res versions of your photos

    Also keeping your photos in a Lightroom library is again alarming as they will not support latest versions and generally fuck adobe!

    So your only reasonable solutions is simply to keep your working files/photos on an external SSD 512-1TB (costs about 150-200) then the rest of old files on a normal external 4-8TB drive.

    Good luck.

  • Gnash1

    In your situation it seems that the easiest solution would be a 2nd 4tb that is synced to the 1st.

  • akiersky0

    I'd get some kind of RAID setup, single drives can fail, but RAID would provide some backup if one or more drives were to fail. Plus they end up being quite a bit faster than a single drive since you're writing to multiple drives at once. It's been a while since I've looked into them, but a RAID5 would be a good balance of redundancy, speed, and cost.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RA…

    A network attached raid gives the benefit of being able to access the data from anywhere, but could have some risks being online. usually they also have alternate connections that you could just use too.
    Here's some recent reviews:
    https://www.pcmag.com/picks/the-…

    • You can write SSDs over USB3 at pretty much the full speed of the drive so no speed advantage to ext. RAID1kingsteven
    • I'd be worried using SSD for long term storage. if they are powered off too long, you can get data loss.akiersky
    • And when linking to a Lightroom library, it's going to create lots of read/writes that will degrade the drive.akiersky
    • yeah i agree, good response. soz, just nit picking the faster data transfer rate than a single drivekingsteven
  • showpony0

    Man, I've been debating the various options on my end as well. Here's what I've landed on.

    - small drive for time machine — there just for current projects and protects against crashes etc.

    - once a project is done, I archive it to a 4tb external drive.

    - I then create a duplicate the project on my google drive... the professional tier gives you unlimited storage.

    I'm always looking to optimize this, so am also interested in where you land.

  • Gnash1

    Mg33 has a killer set-up. He’s posted before but I couldn’t find the link

    • Meant this to be a side-note, sorryGnash
    • yeah where is Mg?sted
  • monNom0

    Bluray likely won't last past 5 years if anything like writable DVDs. They use an ink layer to encode data and it degrades pretty quickly. Also not that cheap per GB.

    Ssds rely on static charge and dissipate within a year or so if not connected to power. Not cheap per GB.

    Best option is old-school spinning magnetic HD or better yet tape (expensive to get into).

    Find a good deal on a large external drive. Maye 6tb+ to give you room to grow, then buy two. Copy everything to both drives to create a mirrored pair. Ideally you have 3 copies. One on desktop, one on external, on site, one on external, off-site (safe deposit box?). Don't rely on raid or a NAS. The controller board can fail and leave you pouched. Better to just do nothing fancy mirror pairs.

    You'll need some software to synchronize data. I like MS synctoy, but there might be a better option these days to track changes and promote edits to your destination drive.

    • lol my 23 years old cds are still working... so do the 1st gen Bluray discs i have...+ have an RW what was bought in 2017 and i'm still writing out things on itsted
    • carboncopyclonershapesalad
    • 23yo _burned_ CDs? You are braver than I!
      I think all mine have died of bitrot. Probably has a lot to do with the environment they are stored in.
      monNom
    • Nothing special, they are all stored in their own case. I had around ~500 movie dvd-s in 2 250pc cases what i was collecting since dvd writers are available.sted
    • Gave those away 3 years ago, so idk if they're still playable. And yeah the first CD I burned back in 1997 still works.sted