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RAID backup
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01-04-2010 8:58pm#1
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Hi Ballyman
What you're doing sounds fine to me. I would make just one change. In any backup system you've got think about any single points of failure. With your current system the failure point is the fact that you have both drives in the same location for such long periods. This increases the risk of losing the lot due to fire, theft, power surge or dare I say it earth quake, tsunami or volcanic eruption.
So the change i'd make is this. Add a third drive to your system. One stays off site at all times on a scheduled rotation system. Two drives synced on location every night. Then on a weekly basis swap drive A or B with drive C.
To protect against accidental deletions and or changes the preferred method is to use backup software that tracks these types of changes.0 -
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For those of us who are looking for a cheaper backup option. I think this is a good one. It's the Netgear Stora Home Network Storage. It's a 2 drive NAS. Comes with a single 1tb drive to start you off. Obviously you'll need to add a second drive for the raid function. It's available on komplett and Amazon.
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Now you're also showing the need for a rigid workflow that includes:
1.> Preserving the original file in unedited form. (easy with camera raw, but a lot of people will work directly on original scans off their scanner.) Marking the original as a read-only file is a good idea towards achieving this. I've always used -RAW.<extension[usually .tif]> to name scans. These files should be done within the highest available bit-depth of the original device. (most can do 42-bit nowadays, which is I think 14-bit per channel, so save it as a 16-bit per channel file.) This should also be in the largest available color space you have. (I use Kodak ProPhoto for storing raw scans, unless I have a color profile for the particular scanner that I made the scan on.. in that case I use the color profile for the scanner.)
2.> Versioning As you make revisions to the file.. preferably using non-destructive methods like layers and such, save new versions of the file when you get to "milestones".. such as.. if you get the color *JUST* right, or you *JUST* became happy with a cloning job that you did to get rid of some gunk etc.. and choose a set number of versions to keep, such as 2 or 3 versions that you rotate through... with name ending in something like -WORKING-A.<extension>, -WORKING-B.<extension> etc.. Working files should still be in the greatest bit-depth available from the source (from a camera RAW file, this is likely to still be 16-bit per channel.) This should be in the largest color space available to you again. I prefer Kodak ProPhoto. Many cameras now can shoot in Adobe 1998 RGB, although most encode in sRGB. sRGB is a very small color space (used often because it reproduces reasonably accurately on printers and screens, unlike something like Kodak ProPhoto which generally looks fantastic on screen, but won't print at all well.))
3.> Creating entirely separate output files optimised for whatever output device you wish to print or view on. Here you would generally resample your image down to 8-bits, for the print resolution of the printer/screen, and to a color-space like sRGB, or better, one specific for the output device to be used.
I suppose this includes color workflow at least as much as a workflow designed to minimise or eliminate the "loss" of previous versions of a file as much as possible.. I used to do a lot of photo restoration & custom large-format printing.. so it's well ingrained in my head to do the whole thing at the same time.
Some might ask why bother keeping the larger color-depths at all.. it's just to give yourselve the most leeway in editing etc.. the more different colors you have that aren't being "thrown away" by color management, the more fine detail you can coax out of the photo, and when you remap to the right color space later, you're creating something truly optimised for the media.. but if you get a different media later that has a better color gamut.. you're not limited to the color gamut of the original output device nor sRGB.
Your screen scan actually show you a LOT more colors than anything to printed paper (with no backlighting can. (a color slide or a really well-made transparency can actually come REALLY close.) Of course.. your LCD flat panel doesn't come close to what a really good old-fashioned CRT can either. (A plasma screen can come close.)
Again sorry if I wrote too much.. I tend to babble.bob the bob wrote: »But, crucially, it doesn't protect you against accidental file deletion\corruption etc.
Once a file is deleted\corrupted, you will want to go to last night's backup to get the last working version of the file. RAID can't help you there.
RAID+backups is nearly bulletproof. Ideally offsite backups.0 -
Really interesting discussion. I have been reviewing my own back up needs recently, so interesting to to read something similar.
Here are my conclusions, for what they are worth, and apologies in advance for long post - we are looking at a few different layers of protection:
1.Protecting against local hard drive failure - RAID 1. Chances are if your PC is anyway recent it will have RAID abilities built into the motherboard. Buy a second identically sized hard drive (and identical drive speed too, e.g. 7200rpm, no harm in matching cache size too, e.g. 16mb). Best to buy a different manufacturer's hard drive or at least one from a different batch. Physically it's not difficult to install. Installing operating system on RAID disk can be a bit trickier (but can be done), I took the lazy way out:
On my PC I have a single 80Gb hard drive which acts as my C: drive and contains applications etc. I have two 500Gb in RAID 1 as my
drive, to which I have moved all the MyDocuments stuff including Photos. I.e. all the stuff I can't re-install.
2.Back-up and protecting against small scale disaster
As said already RAID 1 won't protect you from accidentally deleting a file etc. Also if you had a power surge it could take out both RAID disks etc.
For this an external hard drive (ideally a good bit bigger than your internal drive) comes in handy. Beside backing up your MyDocuments, you can make a clone of your C: drive for easy re-install. For the former I use SyncBackSE (also have free version, but this paid for one is way quicker). For the latter I have been using Macrium Reflect (free edition). Some versions of Windows 7 include a reasonable backup program too.
Am interested to have a better 'versioning' back up option - ie if have different revisions of same file, would be nice to have back up of a few of them.
Would make sense to unplug the external drive (both from power and usb), to avoid power surges, but take away convenience of setting up scheduled back ups to run automatically.
3.Protecting against major local disaster
So fire/flood etc.
This is where off-site archiving comes in. So another external hard drive or two and rotate between home and work or relatives house etc.
On-line storage (maybe only for most precious files). Free options include flikr (but limited file types). Another interesting one is 25Gb off free storage on microsoft's skydrive service .
I am looking into some method of automating backup of 'precious' files to skydrive.
foot notes:
-NAS is especially useful if sharing files between multiple PCs and/or macs. You can use the NAS as your central repository and access your files from any device attached to your local network (also can open it up for access over the internet). Disadvantage is speed of access to files (usually much slower than USB direct attached drive, depending on your network and spec of the NAS). Many NAS have RAID options, but will need to back up NAS to external hard drive (or other PC on network or both) also.
-Backing up to DVDs/CDs(/BlueRays too I would guess) - have had bad experiences with this option, would only recommend in conjunction with external hard drive etc.
-Tape Drives - tend to be expensive as geared at business market, but depending on needs might be an option. Not as fragile as hard drives. Iomega Rev drive interesting, but cost/capacity not favourable compared to external hard drives.
-Mac Leopard and above - Time Machine a good option, along with other form of back up.0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgjrI4bVdHg
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