Backup/Hard disk config advice sought....please?

[AdvocateUK]

Hi all,

Whilst emailing a friend tonight I was explaining/moaning that because I now have 4TB of hard disk space, it was going to cost me a fortune to buy another 4TB for backup purposes.

Anyway, I was listing what drives I have on what's on each when it dawned on me that I actually have under 2TB of actual data on my drives that I want to backup.

Try as I might however I can't figure out the best way to configure it all and was hoping you'd all help me

Here's what I have

Internal:
2 x 1TB sata HDD's
2 x 500GB sata HDD's

External:
1 x 500GB Lacie (I think it's actually 2 x 250GB PATA drives in a RAID enclosure) via FW800
1 x 500GB via esata

So, total of 4TB hdd space with a shade under 2TB (actually 1700GB) of total data to backup.

Data is split as follows.

1 x 500GB internal sata as my OS drive - total space used = 285.19 GB
1 x 1TB internal sata drive holding my photos - total space used = 338.57 GB
1 x 1TB internal sata drive as iTunes library - total space used = 661.11 GB
1 x 500GB internal sata as time machine drive for main OS drive

1 x external 500GB hard drive as photo backup
1 x external 500GB hard drive with original high def movies on (want to keep for when iTunes and the AppleTV finally support 1080p) - total space used = 380.42 GB

Those figures are from using "Get Info", Geektool reports higher disk usage.


So basically I can temporarily wipe the two backup drives to enable me to shuffle things about and (hopefully) have a complete backup of all my data.

But how do I do it? What's the best way to organise it all? I don't think Time Machine allows for backing up across multiple drives so suggestions as for other methods will be just as appreciated.

Thanks in advance everyone

Alistair

 

[Gleadr]

What exactly do you need soo much space for? does your "job" require tons of huge files? because right now i dont see how someone can fill up that much space. I have a computer with an 80 gig hard drive and it took me 3 years to fill it up. (didnt used to be mine xD)

 

[AdvocateUK]

I don't suppose using software RAID would do me any good would it?

Setup the two 1TB drives as a RAID 1 striped and the rest of the drives as JBOD and use Time Machine to back the striped set to the JBOD?

Would that work?

 

[AdvocateUK]

What exactly do you need soo much space for? does your "job" require tons of huge files? because right now i dont see how someone can fill up that much space. I have a computer with an 80 gig hard drive and it took me 3 years to fill it up. (didnt used to be mine xD)

Well I have a photography business (strictly part time) which as you can see above uses over 300GB of space. The other large use is my iTunes library for syncing to my AppleTV. All explained above really.

And yeah, it used to take me ages to fill hard drives as well :s

 

[pprior]

If indeed you're a professional photographer, you are way behind the curve.

I have 4 separate backups of my 400GB photo database.

Drive space is dirt cheap compared with the other costs of doing business, if indeed you are a professional.

 

[AdvocateUK]

If indeed you're a professional photographer, you are way behind the curve.

I have 4 separate backups of my 400GB photo database.

Drive space is dirt cheap compared with the other costs of doing business, if indeed you are a professional.

Just out of curiosity, why the attitude and accusatory tone? I never said I was a professional photographer I said

I have a photography business (strictly part time)

I don't see from what I've said, if indeed you can read, you could possibly misconstrue me as saying that I am a professional photographer, if indeed you can read, and I find your tone offensive to say the least.

If you have anything to say then be a man and come out and say it, otherwise don't try and insinuate things.

Yes I am well behind the curve and know it, my original intention to have an offsite backup as well as my local backup has yet to come to fruition and I know I'm tempting fate.

Other than that I have specifically said that my largest use is my iTunes library.

You seem to have made a post just to cast aspersions on me, without offering any advice whatsoever, and I honestly have no idea why.

Although it loathes me to do it, my (admittedly amateur) website for my part-time business is here

 

[pprior]

Just out of curiosity, why the attitude and accusatory tone? I never said I was a professional photographer I said



I don't see from what I've said, if indeed you can read, you could possibly misconstrue me as saying that I am a professional photographer, if indeed you can read, and I find your tone offensive to say the least.

If you have anything to say then be a man and come out and say it, otherwise don't try and insinuate things.

Yes I am well behind the curve and know it, my original intention to have an offsite backup as well as my local backup has yet to come to fruition and I know I'm tempting fate.

Other than that I have specifically said that my largest use is my iTunes library.

You seem to have made a post just to cast aspersions on me, without offering any advice whatsoever, and I honestly have no idea why.

Although it loathes me to do it, my (admittedly amateur) website for my part-time business is here

Ouch - sorry if I came across that way - was not the intention!

what I was trying to say is that if you are accepting money for photography, then you have an obligation to safely back up your work, which represents other people's investments. I wasn't meaning to diss you personally - there are MANY professionals who don't back up as they should.

Anyway, I don't remember a budget you mentioned. As you can get a 1.5-2 TB drive now, that would be a simple investment for a time machine drive and then buy a couple 1TB drives and a hot swap case and swap them in and out for just your photos backup and keep them off site. total investment for all that stuff will be maybe $600, which is small in the scheme of things if you're taking a run at a business.

If you can't swing that, then buy a 1.5 TB drive, time machine it, and buy a single external 1TB drive for the photos and back it up and unplug it whenever you can and hope your house never burns down.

Mozy is not a bad investment, but it's dog slow to upload the original batch - plan on the better part of a month for photos to upload.

 

[AdvocateUK]

pprior apology gladly accepted , sorry if I responded too harshly

thanks for your suggestions, I'll have a look

[EDIT]My original post though was around the realisation that I actually currently have enough storage space to house not only my OS and data but also a complete backup of it all. I just don't know how to achieve it :s [/EDIT]

 

[sidewinder]

AdvocateUK,

You tell us what you have, but you don't really tell us where you want to end up. What is your goal? How much storage headroom do you want? How much redundancy and resiliency do you want? What kind of speed do you want? What kind of off site backups will you have? What is your budget?

S-

 

[AdvocateUK]

Hi,

Thanks for replying.

My immediate goal is just to have one complete copy of my data and one complete backup. All onsite. Utilising the hard drives I currently have. I'm happy enough with the speed for now and any offsite backups will be for the photographs, for which an extra 500GB drive would be more than sufficient (for now).

Thanks once again

 

[AdvocateUK]

I think I've decided on a mixture of Manual Backups and Time Machine, once I spend a bit (as per usual, eurgh!)

For now my prime concern is my photo library so I'll be backing that up as follows.

Master Files and Libraries (Aperture and iPhoto) stored and used on one of the 1TB internal HDD's, with an onsite backup to the 500GB Lacie FW800 External (which is a bit long in the tooth now tbh), a second backup will go on the other external 500GB esata drive which will be kept offsite.

Future plans include buying 1TB - 1.5TB of USB2 based storage to connect to my Airport Extreme for use with Time Machine to backup my OS HD and iTunes library.

How does that sound?

Can anyone point me to some cheap external USB2 storage in the UK?



Oh and pprior, I honestly can't apologise enough for the awful and short tempered way I reacted to your post yesterday. Reading it again I don't know why I got so upset, please accept a very sincere sorry from me

 

[dogbait]

I have a very similar hard drive setup to you, although I rely on a NAS to help offload some of my files from the Mac.

To backup I use the cheapest 1TB USB disks I can get my hands on. Right now Amazon are selling Buffalo's 1TB USB drives for £80 all inc. Nice pictures on your site btw. Looks like you're all having fun (and using some very nice Canon primes to boot

 

[AdvocateUK]

I have a very similar hard drive setup to you, although I rely on a NAS to help offload some of my files from the Mac.

To backup I use the cheapest 1TB USB disks I can get my hands on. Right now Amazon are selling Buffalo's 1TB USB drives for £80 all inc. Nice pictures on your site btw. Looks like you're all having fun (and using some very nice Canon primes to boot

I've been looking around at some of the cheap USB hard drives and will probably pick a couple of TB drives soon. I just need to learn how to write a script then to back everything up while I'm asleep

Thanks for the compliment , and yeah I Love Canon lenses

 

[dagomike]

I do HD with P2 cards and have a whole heap of data that I need both online and backed up. The approach I take is to split between operations and data. Basically I take an external USB 2.0 drive to back that my boot, documents, and apps via Time Machine. Best to buy a case and then buy a high-end server drive. Keep it running 24/7.

Then for data, figure out how much you really need to have online vs archives. If you use HDD, you really need two copies of it and keep those drives powered. Likely, you'll need to cycle in new drives as the years go on. A mirrored RAID setup would work, either in an external box or attached storage. With photos, I'll assume speed isn't nearly the factor as video, so network transfer would work fine.

You can look at optical like DL DVD or Blu-ray. I bit the bullet and got LTO-4 tape. No way I want to go through the trouble of splitting up projects across multiple disks.