Hard Drive - Backing Up (Varoommm!)

[Sealizard]

I've been stalling about setting up a backup system for my hard drive. Now, I'm at the point that I have to do something.

Options are:

1) Start from scratch and get a new computer with a larger hard drive. I could use the old system for backup.

2) Add an external drive and use it as a primary drive for photo and document files and keep the existing system for running applications.

3) Add an external drive and use it to back up my data files to, but I might still have to increase my hard drive size.

4) Get really fancy and buy a system with mirrored images on different drives.

I've been around the block with this many times and haven't been able to settle on an answer that is both practical and cost effective. Anyone have any experience with this that would keep me from looking like "The Scream" everytime I think about the topic? :eek:

[Jonathan Bird]

I'm a big fan of external firewire drives. They are huge, cheap and portable. That being said, it's not expensive to add another drive to your desktop, assuming you have another slot available for it.

Jonathan

[Sealizard]

Thanks for the encouragement Jonathan.

I added an internal hard drive - moved my data files to it. This took some time due to uncertainty about cables and jumpers and weird symbols that appeared on the folders in my ACDSee folders. The guy I connected with at ACDSee was pretty useless -"uninstall and re-install your hardware" - I'm still cranky with him and finally with the help of a Nikonian was able to resolve the problem.

I then plugged in a Maxtor One - Touch backup drive which was a no-brainer.
Plug it in, flip the switch. A wee bit of a learning curve on the variations for storing files, but pretty good documentation.

These two drives should keep me for a while, although I was having *drive envy* seeing the Terabyte drives available now. Yikes! Made me stop and figure how many 1GB cards of data I could dump on a 300 GB drive. Doesn't seem like very many *rolls of film* when you look at it that way. :rolleyes:

[Bodie]

When it comes to backing up you can never have too many copies. I have an external 180GB that I do a complete image on of my internal 100 every couple months. Problem is, both drives sit on the same desk; what if the ceiling starts leaking water from a pipe? (Not that unlikely for where I live). I reccomend burning some of your really important stuff onto a couple of DVD's and throwing them in a safe or somewhere completely removed. This way even if a laptop/desktop gets stollen or a house fire your still -relatively- ok.

That said, hopefully I'll be getting a 500GB-1TB drive in the next couple of months and then the 180 will likely make its way into the safe to live out its days.
(I'm still in college so security is more of an issue then usual)

[Jonathan Bird]

Keep in mind that DVDs are not very good in the long run. I have burned DVDs that were unable to be read only a month later. Not sure why, but CDs, particularly the Verbatim brand archival CDs hold up much longer if you need to keep information safe.

For my digital images, I keep a copy on a large internal drive of the "imaging" computer in my office, a copy on a firewire backup drive, and a third copy on an archival CD stored "off site" (at my parents house). That means I have three copies, and at least one copy that is protected from fire/flood in my home office. Can't do that with film!

Jonathan

[Warren_L]

External drives are great - easy to install and portable. I use a 400 GB Seagate external I bought last year. Considering getting another one as the prices have really come down on a per GB basis.

[Daniel]

I've been stalling about setting up a backup system for my hard drive. Now, I'm at the point that I have to do something.

Options are:

1) Start from scratch and get a new computer with a larger hard drive. I could use the old system for backup.

2) Add an external drive and use it as a primary drive for photo and document files and keep the existing system for running applications.

3) Add an external drive and use it to back up my data files to, but I might still have to increase my hard drive size.

4) Get really fancy and buy a system with mirrored images on different drives.

I've been around the block with this many times and haven't been able to settle on an answer that is both practical and cost effective. Anyone have any experience with this that would keep me from looking like "The Scream" everytime I think about the topic? :eek:


The first 3 solutions really don't address the problem. Any drive can fail, and it happens more frequently than you'd think.

Note: these suggestions apply to Desktop systems. Some aspects may be used with laptops.

The best solution you proposed was disk mirroring (RAID 1). If you computer system isn't too old, it should support up to 4 hard drives. You can add additional controllers to add more drives if you like.

I keep my Operating System (OS) on one drive (drive C:\). I do not load anything other than is required by the operating systems or applications (e.g. drivers, dll files etc.).

The next two drives are DVD/CD burner and a separate CD player that reads and writes at higher speeds (drives D: and E).

Drive F: (320GB) in my system is where applications are installed.

Drive G: in my system are my mirrored drives (2x200GB) for data and anything else I want protected. Cost of drives are relatively low now-a-days. I wouldn't recommend mirroring drives larger than 400GB. You'll likely notice a slow down in write speeds. Besides, you'll want to burn your data to CD and store either off site or store in a media vault (safe).

If money isn't a big issue, write data off site. :rolleyes:

Do youselve's all a favour and purchase a UPS. One large enough to support your system. Brown outs and sags are an electronics worst nightmare, and happens frequently. We just don't notice it most of the time. In the long run it will minmize hardware failure plus all the other features these devices provide.

Cheers!
Daniel :)