The importance of backups.

Well, it finally happened. the hard drive in my main computer finally went "KABLOOEY" Friday night.
No warning, no nothing. All the tricks that I learned over the years, and nothing would bring it back. Luckily, I learned years ago - when I was in the computer business - that you can never have enough backups. I do a daily image backup to an external 1 TB, and I also save to a laptop and DVD. Went out and bought a new Seagate 2 TB drive, plugged in the external with the image file, and a few hours I was up and running again, with everything intact.
So if you don't backup, consider doing it NOW! The 1 TB external only cost $55.00. That's a small price to pay to retrieve over 30,000 photos, plus all my software. Not to mention all of my music files, videos, contacts, everything. It's all back in there, like nothing ever happened.

And the fun thing about these new SSD drives....nothing moves so there's no noise to let you know about an impending failure. Ask me how I know.

If it's not backed up in at least three places, it's not backed up.


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You can have as many copies as you like in your property, this is not backup it is redundancy. One offsite copy and a few copies in your property is backup. If the worse happens and you have a house fire/ burglary then you could loose all copies of your files, but you still haven't lost anything (data wise) as you have the offsite backup to rely on.

Mine started warning me with lockups and forced reboots.
Started backing up like crazy, and glad I did.
New system in place now and all is good with the world.

I am in the process of copying all of my images to an external drive. I need to do a system back-up, which is something I have never really done.

I am somewhat new to backing up to cloud services. Is that what everybody is doing now?

[MENTION=26505]Dawg Pics[/MENTION]
It's most likely much easier to to an image file full system backup. It's a snapshot of every single thing on your hard drive. The initial time to do a full backup can take a while, a few hours at best. Doing a scheduled backup every day takes very little time, as it will only save the changes that you have made. For restoring, just run the rescue disk, and computer will reload the image file from the external. No having to reload Windows operating system, or any of your software, your photos, drivers, anything. It will all be there.

Ouch, I only have one redundant copy that has most of my stuff on it(My (important) files are split over two drives, BTW) offsite backup is something I would like to get done eventually...

SteveL54 said:

Well, it finally happened. the hard drive in my main computer finally went "KABLOOEY" Friday night.
No warning, no nothing. All the tricks that I learned over the years, and nothing would bring it back.

Click to expand...

There are companies that recover data from dead/destroyed HDD's, But I believe it can be pricey.

This is what I've been using its abit pricey...but it saved my A$$ a few times from drives failing....pull out the drive replace and its back up again...


https://www.synology.com/en-global/products/DS415+

I have a Mac. It has some built-in features, like Time Machine, which is like a snapshot of files. At least that is how I understand it. I have never used it, though.

Yeah I have a 17 " MBP...also and I have time machine working on that too...to a 4 terabyte external which works great also...

That nas drive is on my network where all my family.. Have there own folders from there systems..which get backed up everyday...on that nas I have 8 terabyte.. Total..

Dawg Pics said:

I have a Mac. It has some built-in features, like Time Machine, which is like a snapshot of files. At least that is how I understand it. I have never used it, though.

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I use TimeMachine as one of my copies as well, but it still has to backup somewhere. I have an Apple TimeCapsule ... basically an Airport Extreme with a built in hard drive, that several of my laptops back up to via Time Machine. For my desktop, I have a dedicated external firewire drive that I use for Time Machine. I also use CrashPlan for off-site backups to the cloud. The 3rd tier for me is to manually copy images to a RAID protected NAS, which I also have automatically syncing with another NAS system off-site.

The flip side to multiple backup strategies ... make sure you do a restore periodically from each method you use, so you can catch any problems with the backup before you need to do a real restore.

MartinCornwall said:

You can have as many copies as you like in your property, this is not backup it is redundancy. One offsite copy and a few copies in your property is backup. If the worse happens and you have a house fire/ burglary then you could loose all copies of your files, but you still haven't lost anything (data wise) as you have the offsite backup to rely on.

Click to expand...

Dawg Pics said:

I am in the process of copying all of my images to an external drive. I need to do a system back-up, which is something I have never really done.

I am somewhat new to backing up to cloud services. Is that what everybody is doing now?

Click to expand...

How many times have I preached this subject LOL. Offsite backup it key to my backup plans as is a image file onsite. I call it Belt and Suspenders. (think about it)

I use Carbonite for offsite cloud storage. Their $99.99 a year plan gives you unlimited backup PLUS it lets you backup all your external drives. They also include in the plan a Image backup to your local External drive.

Again, the best of both worlds .

The first time you fire it up it will take forever to backup all your files to the cloud if you are like me and have A LOT of photos to backup. I save all my NEF files since I really have a hard time deleting any of them although I know I need to.

I keep all my photos on my MacBook. I make frequent backups on two independent external USB disks. I keep one at home and the other at work. This is an ultimate backup insurance, in case my home gets burgled or burned (touch wood!) and I lose both the laptop and the external disk.

PS. In addition to all this, I automatically upload all processed JPEGs to Flickr at full resolution. These are not RAW files, but still, gives me an independent cloud backup of my better photos.

Dawg Pics said:

I am somewhat new to backing up to cloud services. Is that what everybody is doing now?

Click to expand...

I'm not sure yet whether or not to trust a cloud service. There are two of them right now that I can back up everything to, included with my subscriptions, but I'm reluctant to pull the trigger yet. So for now, I stick with hard drives: one NEF-file backup drive and two other drives for my DNG files that have been converted in Lightroom.

For me I don't trust anything on the cloud or any cloud service...that's just me I rather have control of my stuff..

MartinCornwall said:

You can have as many copies as you like in your property, this is not backup it is redundancy. One offsite copy and a few copies in your property is backup. If the worse happens and you have a house fire/ burglary then you could loose all copies of your files, but you still haven't lost anything (data wise) as you have the offsite backup to rely on.

Click to expand...

Dawg Pics said:

I am in the process of copying all of my images to an external drive. I need to do a system back-up, which is something I have never really done.

I am somewhat new to backing up to cloud services. Is that what everybody is doing now?

Click to expand...

lostnomore said:

I'm not sure yet whether or not to trust a cloud service. There are two of them right now that I can back up everything to, included with my subscriptions, but I'm reluctant to pull the trigger yet. So for now, I stick with hard drives: one NEF-file backup drive and two other drives for my DNG files that have been converted in Lightroom.

Click to expand...

JohnM109R said:

For me I don't trust anything on the cloud or any cloud service...that's just me I rather have control of my stuff..

Click to expand...

Keep your local backups but add the cloud service. Theft, fire, lighting are all your enemies

Don Kuykendall said:

Keep your local backups but add the cloud service. Theft, fire, lighting are all your enemies

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I have experience with theft. Somebody kicked my door in and helped themselves to all of the electronics in the house. Horrible feeling.

Thanks for all of the information.

I went through this exercise a couple years ago and documented it all in this thread. I work and am certified in Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity so I'd better have a good process. :shame: Bottom line, I have an immediate local copy, local archival (via Time Machine), tertiary local copy to my NAS and then offsite via Backblaze.

Eduard said:

I went through this exercise a couple years ago and documented it all in this thread. I work and am certified in Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity so I'd better have a good process. :shame: Bottom line, I have an immediate local copy, local archival (via Time Machine), tertiary local copy to my NAS and then offsite via Backblaze.

Click to expand...

Alrighty then you guys just got me worried enuf i took a 2 yr subscription with BackBlaze...going to take less then a week to upload all my files and I'm set...thanks..
d