sonicbuffalo_RIP
Senior Member
I am using Seagate, a 1 TB external hard drive for backups, but it seems to have lost some of my photos. What are you currently using and why? I am thinking I might just need a regular hard drive.
What Type of Hardware Do You Use For Backups?
- Thread starter sonicbuffalo_RIP
- Start date
External hard drives are usually not much different then internal ones, though some may have lower rotational speeds to cut costs or power draw (depending on whether you have a portable 2.5" or desktop 3.5" one)
Lost pics from a HDD either lean towards failing drive, though I would imagine more data corruption than just a few photos, or the possibility that your backups are not completing correctly/fully.
How much space are your current photos taking up?
As a rule I say, you need backup storage of at least what you have now, plus capacity to grow and hold at least the following year's worth of growth.
So if you have 500GB now, and plan to take another 500GB of pics this year, you need at least a 1TB drive to fit that in, plus capacity for more, so at the very least 1.5x what you need.
Add on top of that 500GB more every year, and for the next 3 years you now need a 1.5TB drive + 500GB current = 2TB, add your capacity planning, and a 3TB drive for a 3year stretch is what you need!!!
Now here comes the redundancy bit - double up the costs if you want a duplicate of all that data, or for the same price double up capacity and split your work over the 2 drives
Lost pics from a HDD either lean towards failing drive, though I would imagine more data corruption than just a few photos, or the possibility that your backups are not completing correctly/fully.
How much space are your current photos taking up?
As a rule I say, you need backup storage of at least what you have now, plus capacity to grow and hold at least the following year's worth of growth.
So if you have 500GB now, and plan to take another 500GB of pics this year, you need at least a 1TB drive to fit that in, plus capacity for more, so at the very least 1.5x what you need.
Add on top of that 500GB more every year, and for the next 3 years you now need a 1.5TB drive + 500GB current = 2TB, add your capacity planning, and a 3TB drive for a 3year stretch is what you need!!!
Now here comes the redundancy bit - double up the costs if you want a duplicate of all that data, or for the same price double up capacity and split your work over the 2 drives
sonicbuffalo_RIP
Senior Member
maybe the answer is not what brand, but whether to back up my photos onto a DVD.....which I've done in the past.
I have a few WD 1TB mypassport drives kicking around. I keep one plugged in the computer full time. Running Genie Timeline Free backup software. I did not have good luck with the WD backup software that came with the drive. I spot checked a few times and I found files that it missed. Not cool. Genie is working great for me. I have it monitor my user directory in windows. So that picks up My Documents, desktop, my email files, firefox profile. It gets a lot of other junk too, but its not worth figuring what I need, so I copy my whole user directory.
WhiteLight
Senior Member
The life of a disc (DVD, CD etc) is far less than a hard disk.
Unless of course you have a blue ray writer
i have had a number of issues with Seagate.. both internal & external.
the only series that was ever so slightly better was the Barracuda series..
but i did make a move to WD & love it.
Not crashed even once (touch wood) and i currently have 3 external WD HDDs
Alternately you can go the route of today's crowd = cloud.
wouldn't advice it, but still an option
Unless of course you have a blue ray writer
i have had a number of issues with Seagate.. both internal & external.
the only series that was ever so slightly better was the Barracuda series..
but i did make a move to WD & love it.
Not crashed even once (touch wood) and i currently have 3 external WD HDDs
Alternately you can go the route of today's crowd = cloud.
wouldn't advice it, but still an option
Horoscope Fish
Senior Member
I have an internal slave-drive that I keep *ALL* my data on. I copy the contents of the slave-drive to a third, external hard drive, every month and I typically have three monthly copies.
In my opinion, your primary concern should be keeping your data OFF the hard drive that contains the operating system in whatever fashion you wish to accomplish this. I've heard a lot of people say, "My hard drive crashed..." when what really happened is their operating system crashed. These are two very different things. The drive, physically, is typically fine but any and all data that drive may have contained is now going to be wiped out of existence when the drive is reformatted as part of reinstalling the operating system.
If I had to suggest a particular brand name of hard drive I'd say Western Digital. Full stop. I'm NOT saying other makes aren't good drives... I'm saying if you asked me, I'd say Western Dig. Every day of the week and twice on Sunday.
...
In my opinion, your primary concern should be keeping your data OFF the hard drive that contains the operating system in whatever fashion you wish to accomplish this. I've heard a lot of people say, "My hard drive crashed..." when what really happened is their operating system crashed. These are two very different things. The drive, physically, is typically fine but any and all data that drive may have contained is now going to be wiped out of existence when the drive is reformatted as part of reinstalling the operating system.
If I had to suggest a particular brand name of hard drive I'd say Western Digital. Full stop. I'm NOT saying other makes aren't good drives... I'm saying if you asked me, I'd say Western Dig. Every day of the week and twice on Sunday.
...
Don Kuykendall_RIP
RIP :(
I use NAS drives for constant backup of all user files. I also have Carbonite running. Personally I love the cloud backups. I can access my files from anywhere anytime. Besides the very long time it took to upload the files the first time it is very quick at updating my files on a daily basis.
Cloud backup just makes sense. In case you have a lighting strike and it wipes out your electronics you could lose all your files. A fire in your house could wipe everything out that you have worked so hard on for years. $60 a year is cheap insurance.
Cloud backup just makes sense. In case you have a lighting strike and it wipes out your electronics you could lose all your files. A fire in your house could wipe everything out that you have worked so hard on for years. $60 a year is cheap insurance.
I have two NAS set ups. One is 2tb and the other one is 32tb. First one one has raid5 and the second (I built it myself with Freenas OS) has raidz3. I'll be moving all my photo/video library to the NAS unit soon when I come back from vacation. I plan to build another 32tb NAS and the plan is to have two back ups. Eventually I want a total of 3 back ups. The third one will be off site. Hope all this makes sense 