External hard drive Back up devices

LeoB

I have quite a few photos on my P.C and have no back up except for a few on my laptop.

Tomorrow I am going to buy a back up device and would welcome any recommendations. I have about 4 - 5,000 photos to back up.

Thanks
LeoB

Prenderb

I have a thing called a Netgear Stora, which has space for 2 hdds. It can synchronise with certain user-spec'ed folders over the wifi at home, and the point about the 2 hdds is that it will mirror the first onto the 2nd in case one of them fails aswell.

I have found it to be a little irritating to use though, but maybe you'll have an easier time with one.

Another suggestion is a plain ol' HDD from somewhere, and just schedule a manual connection and backup from time to time (weekly, say, or whatever suits)

Hugh_C

Read's of Nassau Street have 1TB drives for €75, could be other better or equivalent offers around elsewhere.

pixbyjohn

I have this and find it great.
http://www.superwarehouse.com/Verbatim_2TB_USB,_eSATA_Desktop_Hard_Drive_Array/96742/p/1552521
Amazon uk link http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Verbatim+2TB+USB%2C+eSATA+Desktop+Hard+Drive+Array&x=16&y=24

magicbastarder

i suspect that's overkill for someone with several thousand photos.

buy a portable HD and sync it with your photos folder using something like ice mirror (free app for managing 'mirror' folders), and best bet is to store it off site. not much point in having a backup if it's sitting beside the primary.

-Chris-

Peats have a 2TB external hard drive for €99 at the mo. Exceptional value.

Keep in mind that larger hard drives generally have a higher failure rate.

I've got 1TB's that work grand, but if it's only going to be used for photos, then I'd go with something smaller. 250GB or 320GB should be enough. Also, keep in mind about pricing. If you see 1TB for €99, but also a 500GB for €50, you'd almost be better off getting two 500GB drives, as that way you can have another backup.


My photography folder is 18.8GB. Unless you're shooting non-stop, in RAW+JPeg for a long time, i'd say a 320GB drive would do you grand.


Also, keep in mind, the size on the box isn't the size you get. For 1TB you get about 940GB, i think, usable space.


A friend bought a 3220GB drive in Harveys a few weeks ago for €35, and it's grand. Think that may have been a 'special offer' price though.

LeoB

magicbastarder wrote: »

i suspect that's overkill for someone with several thousand photos.

buy a portable HD and sync it with your photos folder using something like ice mirror (free app for managing 'mirror' folders), and best bet is to store it off site. not much point in having a backup if it's sitting beside the primary.

Eh Overkill? Help. Quite a few people have told me I should back up my photos and some documents. I basically just want certain folders backed up plus a few documents. I dont run a business but will keep my external storage most likely on site. My primary reason for having back up is in case something happens to my P.C or Laptop. 90% of my photos are personel type, family portraits, holidays, family events/parties and football/Hurling. But 2011 will see me concentrate on photography instead og G.A.A and on landscape photography in particular

Deleted User wrote: »

Keep in mind that larger hard drives generally have a higher failure rate.

I've got 1TB's that work grand, but if it's only going to be used for photos, then I'd go with something smaller. 250GB or 320GB should be enough. Also, keep in mind about pricing. If you see 1TB for €99, but also a 500GB for €50, you'd almost be better off getting two 500GB drives, as that way you can have another backup.

My photography folder is 18.8GB. Unless you're shooting non-stop, in RAW+JPeg for a long time, i'd say a 320GB drive would do you grand.

A friend bought a 3220GB drive in Harveys a few weeks ago for €35, and it's grand. Think that may have been a 'special offer' price though.

Jeasus I have 43.6GB space of images which equates to 23,506 images. I usually only shoot in jpeg. I will be deleting some folders so I think a 320 or 500 will be fine for me. that 320 sounds good to me so think I will pop into Harveys tomorrow, 1 for photos and 1 for documents.

Nforce

I've a few of these around the house for backup purposes....

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Western-Digital-Elements-Desktop-External/dp/B002E7HEVU/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1293408235&sr=8-3

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Western-Digital-Elements-External-Desktop/dp/B003IPC21Y/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1293408235&sr=8-1

Quiet and dependable.

LeoB

Prenderb wrote: »

I have a thing called a Netgear Stora, which has space for 2 hdds. It can synchronise with certain user-spec'ed folders over the wifi at home, and the point about the 2 hdds is that it will mirror the first onto the 2nd in case one of them fails aswell.

I have found it to be a little irritating to use though, but maybe you'll have an easier time with one.

Another suggestion is a plain ol' HDD from somewhere, and just schedule a manual connection and backup from time to time (weekly, say, or whatever suits)

Me and the technical side of life dont see eye to eye;)

PCPhoto

at the moment I think I have about 8TB of images stored on external hard drives....mainly 1TB but a couple of 500GB Hard drives.

Everything in chronilogical order.... must sit down sometime and try go through some of the older stuff and move it on to newer hard drives (they only have a life expectancy of about 5yrs)

magicbastarder

LeoB wrote: »

Eh Overkill? Help. Quite a few people have told me I should back up my photos and some documents.

i was referring to the post previous to mine. you don't need a 2TB raid system.

LeoB

PCPhoto wrote: »

at the moment I think I have about 8TB of images stored on external hard drives....mainly 1TB but a couple of 500GB Hard drives.

Everything in chronilogical order.... must sit down sometime and try go through some of the older stuff and move it on to newer hard drives (they only have a life expectancy of about 5yrs)

So I buy a hard drive and have to replace it a few years? So wold discs be a better option?

LeoB

LeoB wrote: »

So I buy a hard drive and have to replace it a few years? So wold discs be a better option?

Which is why you should always have a back-up of a back-up, in my opinion (I have 5 external drives. each one has copies of my photos... not that I'm saying buy 5 hard drives. I just happen to have bought five over time, and always made sure to stick my photos on them).


Putting photos on DVDs is probably safer long-term, but from my recollection of the last time I had photos on DVD, it took me forever to look through them all or transfer them back to the PC. Loading and transfer times seem to slow down a lot when using DVD (or at least that's how I remember it).


In the grand scheme of things, hard drives are quite unreliable, yeah. But the chances of two failing at the very same time is slim. So you can always replace one, and then transfer the photos to the new one using the other back-up, if you see what I mean?


It's also worth putting the receipt in the box, and storing the box and all internal packaging away in the even of the Drive dying whilst still under warranty. I do this with all my HDDs.

Nforce

Another decent external hdd for a great price.... http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B003SHJW42

It's USB 3.0 so it'll be faster to transfer files if you've a compatible motherboard or USB 3.0 PCi card in your desktop.

LeoB

Deleted User wrote: »

Which is why you should always have a back-up of a back-up, in my opinion (I have 5 external drives. each one has copies of my photos... not that I'm saying buy 5 hard drives. I just happen to have bought five over time, and always made sure to stick my photos on them).


Putting photos on DVDs is probably safer long-term, but from my recollection of the last time I had photos on DVD, it took me forever to look through them all or transfer them back to the PC. Loading and transfer times seem to slow down a lot when using DVD (or at least that's how I remember it).


In the grand scheme of things, hard drives are quite unreliable, yeah. But the chances of two failing at the very same time is slim. So you can always replace one, and then transfer the photos to the new one using the other back-up, if you see what I mean?


It's also worth putting the receipt in the box, and storing the box and all internal packaging away in the even of the Drive dying whilst still under warranty. I do this with all my HDDs.

So a bit of balance between discs and drives looks the way to go. I have some photos which would be of huge sentimental value to me so the more back up the better..

Thank you all very much for the advice and tips
LeoB

nilhg

LeoB wrote: »

So a bit of balance between discs and drives looks the way to go. I have some photos which would be of huge sentimental value to me so the more back up the better..

Thank you all very much for the advice and tips
LeoB

For the really important stuff, whether that's business or personal, offsite backup is a must, for a start (if you're on Vista or Win7) have a look at live mesh, there loads of other options out there as well though.

LeoB

magicbastarder wrote: »

i was referring to the post previous to mine. you don't need a 2TB raid system.

Thanks magicbastarder I didnt know what you meant by storing them off site..

Deleted User wrote: »

Which is why you should always have a back-up of a back-up, in my opinion (I have 5 external drives. each one has copies of my photos... not that I'm saying buy 5 hard drives. I just happen to have bought five over time, and always made sure to stick my photos on them).

Putting photos on DVDs is probably safer long-term, but from my recollection of the last time I had photos on DVD, it took me forever to look through them all or transfer them back to the PC. Loading and transfer times seem to slow down a lot when using DVD (or at least that's how I remember it).

In the grand scheme of things, hard drives are quite unreliable, yeah. But the chances of two failing at the very same time is slim. So you can always replace one, and then transfer the photos to the new one using the other back-up, if you see what I mean?
QUOTE]

Me thinks I need to get a lot more organised;) Making sense now. Do you date lable each hard drive to keep track of where your at with each of them?

nilhg wrote: »

For the really important stuff, whether that's business or personal, offsite backup is a must, for a start (if you're on Vista or Win7) have a look at live mesh, there loads of other options out there as well though.

Going to have a good look at this tomorrow. M e and this technical stuff are sworn enemies but Im getting there, sloooowley

Gambler

If you are only talking about that much space then I'd recommend this drive:

http://www.pcworld.ie/Product/WESTERN-DIGITAL-My-Passport-Essential-Portbl-Hard-Drive-500GB-Blue/299898/326

Comes with software on the drive that will automatically sync your data and back it up as your files change that works really well for basic PC backup (you can even keep the last 5 versions of a document)

Again that's based on the fact your are currently talking about 18-19 GB of photos.. Personally I use TB Hard disks for backup but if you can't see yourself talking a lot more photos in the future then that drive won't see you wrong

Gambler

nilhg wrote: »

For the really important stuff, whether that's business or personal, offsite backup is a must, for a start (if you're on Vista or Win7) have a look at live mesh, there loads of other options out there as well though.

Can't agree with this enough, I setup a SugarSync account so I have an online backup of my source code and documents but it's only 5GB for free and I'm not in a situation where my photography is worth paying the sort of money I'd need to pay for an online backup with enough storage as well as my external HD backups..

LeoB

LeoB wrote: »

Me thinks I need to get a lot more organised;) Making sense now. Do you date lable each hard drive to keep track of where your at with each of them?

Not really. I've only got about 20GB or so of photos, so every hard drive has the 20GBs worth.

My computer, or the hard drive in it, is the one that'd get updated most. I just keep my folders easy to understand.


Every couple of days or weeks, or after i've taken a fair few photos, I'll delete my photography folder off one hard drive and then replace it with the newer, updated photography folder.

I repeat this until all 5 have been updated. I usually add to the name of the back up folders, the date they were transferred. For example, "Photography 01/12/10" if i transferred it at the start of December.

That way, if i don't get around to transferring all five, or i get bored with it, i know where I stopped for next time.


When people say "store off site", they mean put a back up somewhere else. Give a hard drive to a friend to mind or such. Doesn't matter if you've 100 backups, if you house goes on fire, or other such event, you still lose everything.

stcstc

some photo cataloging apps allow the creation of offline backups

for example acdcee, it will create a dvd or something of images that it knows are offline, but keep thumbnails etc

this way you can manage smaller amounts of data on your live storage with the rest kept offline

as the main issue with using drives for backups is that generally people run them all the time, just like the computer. this is just adding wear and tear to the drive

Nforce

Another option is to burn the files to BluRay...25GB or 50GB media. Very handy as a supplementary form of backup to external HDD's.

Hugh_C

Or if you're packing serious coin you could always look at Amazon's off-site storage products.

magicbastarder

Deleted User wrote: »

Every couple of days or weeks, or after i've taken a fair few photos, I'll delete my photography folder off one hard drive and then replace it with the newer, updated photography folder.

you should use mirroring software. much faster, and it will achieve the same end.

5uspect

If you're after a RAID system or similar QNAP and Drobo do nice but pricey boxes.

Anyone using a Mac should have a look at rsync and cron. Since OS X is POSIX compliant you can set up a cron job to run rsync at a specified time to back up and new files. No third party software required. The same obviously applies to Linux.

apsley

I have 3 HDD each 1TB but they do fail and I lost photos years ago. So now I back up in 2 places on 2 separate hard disks and also on DVD too. Dont just use 1 external device if that goes . your snookered. Reads are great value and Peats. I have iOmega which are great and well known robust device.