Need help with backup solution

[zdobson]

What I want to do:
Archive my photos and back up my computer.

Considerations:
I'm a professional photographer and at some point I will get a server, but for now I can do without it. I need two exact copies of each drive containing photos. One will remain in the office while the other will be in a secondary location. Separately, I'd like to have a backup boot drive so if my main computer drive fails, I can insert the new one and go.

What I currently have:
Mac Pro 2.8 octo w/ stock 320GB HDD.
500GB drive in external enclosure (1/2 full)
500GB Maxtor external drive (full)
250GB drive in external enclosure (full)

I feel like every option I come up with is too complex. Maybe someone can think of sometime simple.

 

[moez]

For the 500GB and 250GB hard drive that are full, I doubt you would be changing them a lot so burn them on backup disks. If you can afford bluray burner and disk then that would be great otherwise plan old dvd's should suffice though you would need alot of them 750GB / 4.7GB = 160 Disks. for the remaining two, buy an external harddisk with 1 or 1.5tb and use time machine.
OR
On a simpler note, buy an enclosure which has the ability to use 2 hardrives. Put 2x1.5TB in and backup all 4 using Time Machine. You are set to go in under $300.

Good Luck

 

[michael.lauden]

you might want to skimp on bluray now... being that is so expensive right now.

i'd say, even though it may be sacrilegious - to check out skydrive from windows live.

http://skydrive.live.com/?mkt=en-us

25GB of free storage sounds like a good deal to me.

string together a few accounts and you have a lot of free storage.

also doing some spring cleaning wouldn't work - photos older than say.. 2 years, you could burn twice to 10-25 DVD's over a weekend and store those in a safe place and have backups.

and then sky drive photos a year old etc.

im sure you can think of a management system.

i have had a few jobs having to deal with freeing a lot of space for local companies running networks (last job had 12 computers and was was a total of 20.35 TB i freed down to 14.75 TB)

just map out a few concepts. sky drive is very cool, for being free atleast... and convenient.

 

[zdobson]

Both good suggestions. I just have a couple reservations.

1) With DVDs, it's going to take me FOREVER to burn the 1TB of photos I have already. Also, if I have a drive failure, then it's going to take FOREVER to load all 198 DVDs back onto the hard drive.

2) I like the idea of having online storage, but I'm shooting an increasing number of jobs that take up 15GB apiece. Add to that the fact that I'm going to be doubling that when I buy my new cameras, that's more bandwidth than I have available.

I'm leaning towards having 2 1.5TB drives that are identical copies and keeping one at the office and the other at a secondary location. Then I'll use one of the 500GB drives as a system backup with Time Machine. Eventually I'll get a server and keep all the office archives in there.

 

[Eddyisgreat]

Just grab 2 western digital My Book Studio Edition II dual drive externals and one mybook passport studio 320 gb drive (for example).

Have your passport mounted all the time and and let something like superduper do nightly incremental bootable backups.

You can do the same for all of your external drives, or one nightly backup with the local backup you have, and a weekend backup (or something to that effect) for the one that will be kept off site. All this can be scheduled via SD.