Storage: 8TB WD DuoBook RAID set up.

After shooting more than 1,000 pics in RAW on a D800 last week, I realized I needed better storage and backup. I bought an 8 Terrabyte Western Digital "DuoBook" external hard drive set for $350 on Amazon. It has two 4 TB hard drives built in. It seems to work great.

First I configured it to work in RAID configuration, which means both drives mirror each other. That way if one crashes you get a chance to save all your data into another backup from the drive that still works. That means my effective storage is only 4 TB instead of 8 TB.

Second, it has built in software that let me program when to back up my other internal drives. After the initial backups (all done over USB 3.0), the system now automatically backs up any new photos or video every night at 3 a.m.

Third, I can still use it as a normal separate hard drive in Windows Explorer.

This stuff will only get cheaper with time, but I'm glad I finally made the move.

What is your tertiary plan if something happens to that disk? You might want to consider one of the cloud storage vendors (e.g. Crashplan, Backblaze, etc.) for offsite.

backups are good :encouragement:

that's using your noodle

I just bought the WD My Cloud a few days ago. Similar device, but plugs into my router. I got the 4TB (2TB X 2) model. I only have about 180gb total stuff on my computer. My wife and daughter, maybe 50gb each. So by time I need more storage, drives will be cheaper or maybe I'll get a whole new device. I didn't do a lot of homework, I think this thing does a lot more than I need, but I got tired researching. I like to play and learn anyway. I'm pretty happy with it so far. I have a spare copy of my stuff and now we can easier share files between all of our computers here. It is a step up from the external drive that has been hanging off my computer for the past couple years. I'll probably still dump my important stuff to an external drive and keep it somewhere else. Enjoy.

I have Carbonite right now and it also has a service that does a Mirror image backup on a separate disk every day. All my photos are now off the computer and on a USB drive with nothing other than photos and Light Room catalogs. I will be needing additional drives soon since the 3GB drive I have now will be full soon. Do I need a Raid drive in mirror mode or possibly in RAID 0 where it just goes across all drives and gives me more speed. Not sure if I need more speed since it really is only photo storage. The files are brought over to the main computer when in use.

We use Carbonite for work, and one thing I discovered is that if you accidentally delete something on your physical drive, it will also be deleted from Carbonite after 30 days. That bothers me because we might not realize a file or folder is even missing for longer than that. We still use Carbonite (which is great for remote access of work files), but I also do a manual backup every 30 days to an external drive, and keep it. I don't over-write that backup thirty days later, we're trying to keep a snapshot of how the drive looked exactly just in case something got deleted months ago.

The DuoBook is also configured to work with DropBox if you use that.

Other than saving favorite pics and videos to Flickr and Youtube, I don't have any other cloud back up.

Blade Canyon said:

We use Carbonite for work, and one thing I discovered is that if you accidentally delete something on your physical drive, it will also be deleted from Carbonite after 30 days. That bothers me because we might not realize a file or folder is even missing for longer than that. We still use Carbonite (which is great for remote access of work files), but I also do a manual backup every 30 days to an external drive, and keep it. I don't over-write that backup thirty days later, we're trying to keep a snapshot of how the drive looked exactly just in case something got deleted months ago.

The DuoBook is also configured to work with DropBox if you use that.

Other than saving favorite pics and videos to Flickr and Youtube, I don't have any other cloud back up.

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I noticed that about Carbonite. I wish it would keep those files a little longer. But nothing I do is mission critical so not a big deal. My backup on Carbonite is standing at 403,046 files now a whopping 1.4TB. Now that I am using Lightroom and saving a full size TIFF of all the finished photos I get the feeling it is going to get out of control pretty fast.

Don Kuykendall said:

I noticed that about Carbonite. I wish it would keep those files a little longer. But nothing I do is mission critical so not a big deal. My backup on Carbonite is standing at 403,046 files now a whopping 1.4TB. Now that I am using Lightroom and saving a full size TIFF of all the finished photos I get the feeling it is going to get out of control pretty fast.

Click to expand...

Come to think of it, I better check the auto-update function with the DuoBook to make sure it doesn't delete files it thinks I no longer want. I want to be able to move files permanently to the DuoBook so I can clear up space on my HD. Better to do that by moving the files manually than as part of an auto-backup.

Eduard said:

What is your tertiary plan if something happens to that disk? You might want to consider one of the cloud storage vendors (e.g. Crashplan, Backblaze, etc.) for offsite.

Click to expand...

Technically, the DuoBook is my secondary and tertiary backup because it's two mirrored discs.

But if it's destroyed by fire or something? Many of my favorite pics are generally on Flickr or have been shared with friends some other means. Some are on Dropbox. I also have ANOTHER external hard drive that has everything on it, though its backups are not automatic.

Blade Canyon said:

Technically, the DuoBook is my secondary and tertiary backup because it's two mirrored discs.

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Actually ... if the disk controller fails, it'll corrupt both your mirrored disks just as fast it it would one drive.

I asked a techie about that last night, and he said the data could still be recovered. Either way, I hope we never have to find out.

That's what backups are all about... insurance you hope you never have to use.

For those that have mentioned Carbonite, I'm curious to know the specs of the plans. I use Crashplan for my cloudbased backup. It's $75 a year for unlimited data on 10 computers. I've been pleased with it thus far. It keeps deleted files "indefinitely". The only time it would remove a deleted file is if you deselect that particular file/folder from being backed up. Or you keep your setting to "Remove Deleted Files" set to never. Apparently you can set Crashplan to keep "unlimited versions" as well. So for instance if a file you have changes 5 times over the course of a year, provided Crashplan has enough time in between each major version change then you should have all 5 versions available for recovery.

I'm just curious, I like Crashplan but I'm not married to it.

I have Carbonite for my office server. It was $225 for three years, I think. The problem is that Carbonite is simply a mirror of our existing drive. If a file or folder gets accidentally deleted, it also gets deleted from Carbonite after 30 days. There is no option to save deleted files or older versions of files. That's got me wanting to switch at the end of this contract to something like Crashplan. The whole reason we got Carbonite to back up our RAID server in the first place was because we thought an employee accidentally deleted a huge folder and nobody noticed for awhile. Turns out she did not delete the folder, she accidentally dragged it into another folder.

Blade Canyon said:

I have Carbonite for my office server. It was $225 for three years, I think. The problem is that Carbonite is simply a mirror of our existing drive. If a file or folder gets accidentally deleted, it also gets deleted from Carbonite after 30 days. There is no option to save deleted files or older versions of files. That's got me wanting to switch at the end of this contract to something like Crashplan. The whole reason we got Carbonite to back up our RAID server in the first place was because we thought an employee accidentally deleted a huge folder and nobody noticed for awhile. Turns out she did not delete the folder, she accidentally dragged it into another folder.

Click to expand...

Crashplan is what I use to back up my local computers, the RAID NAS, and the external drives.