TableLeg Posted April 8, 2015 Share Posted April 8, 2015 I have just had what appears to be a hard drive failure. At this moment in time that doesn't seem to be all the issues I am having however the most concerning thing is the drive had all of our family photos. I may or may not be able to get access to the drive and recover any data but in the meantime I would like some advice to future protect my family photos. What would you suggest for a method of backing up data? I am sure that the more money you put into it the better the product however I don't want to spend a 'Cars' worth of upgrades on it. Can anybody please suggest any suitable devices for what I would like to achieve. I have a very basic knowledge of NAS and Raid if you think that might be an option. Thanks in advance. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stuart Posted April 8, 2015 Share Posted April 8, 2015 Don't necessarily need a NAS for such backup. Just need stuff on 2 different drives cos it's highly unlikely both will fail simultaneously. On your PC and also on a USB hard drive should cover this. Or 2 hard drives if you want belt and braces - they're cheap enough these days Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SootySport Posted April 8, 2015 Share Posted April 8, 2015 Plenty of external storage devices available, buy one of them. Try taking your old hard drive to a computer repairer, they are usually good at recovering data from it, nothing to loose now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Reid Posted April 9, 2015 Share Posted April 9, 2015 I share your issue (see my thread in stuff section). I had a NAS box with 2 disks, one failed but the box reset so all my data is gone. Currently I'm trying recovery software before sending the disks off to Kroll OnTrack who are very very good but also very expensive. I might sell my trailer to pay to get the data back as it's priceless family photos. In future I plan to have at leased 2 separate hard disks (1 NAS box and 1 usb) I will also put the most important stuff on DVDs and leave them at my parents house. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Williams (Panda) - Joint Manchester AO Posted April 9, 2015 Share Posted April 9, 2015 I use Dropbox... And it's offsite, it keeps my PCs in sync, and also savesphotos fo IT automatically Don't backup my music or videos because I can always download It again.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John K Posted April 9, 2015 Share Posted April 9, 2015 Deffo agree with all the folk who say you can do this cheaply. And like Panda said, you can use a cloud on the tinterweb. But you might want to keep it local, if so read on... Yes, you can have NAS devices replicating between themselves, if you are mental and rich you can get a SAN, but that is mainly for what we call "high availability". I used to be an IT infrastructure Project Manager and spent my time deploying "vanity backup solutions", that never got tested or used properly... So I know how easy it is to over engineer a solution. All this High Availability (HA) guff means you can lose one storage area and the other is immediately available. Whilst this is good for oil companies etc, do your Westie pics need that level of availability..? Simple rule is, same data, on two different storage mechanisms, in two different places. The only thing about doing it old skool is you will need to remember to manually refresh your back up copy. As previously stated, keep all your pics on your PC and once a week plug in a USB drive and run a backup from PC to ext USB. Then remember to unplug and relocate to shed or elsewhere that wont burn down if your house does... I have an excellent free software app that does differential backups (only the changes) that I can recommend, when I get home as Ive forgotten the name... Also I have four Western Digital 500mb external USB drives (ones that look like they would sit on a book shelf) that are Free to a good home. They are old and slow USB 2 and 500mb is not big by todays standards, but if it saves anybody cash, I will ship them over. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lyonspride Posted April 9, 2015 Share Posted April 9, 2015 I would advise buying a 2.5" hard drive and a caddy for it, total cost won't be much more than buying a ready made solution (about £60), BUT you'll know the quality of the parts your using. Even the branded external drives, sometimes contain a HDD not made by the supposed manufacturer, which is why I always build my own from parts. 2.5" is the way to go, as they're designed for use laptops, they're usually tougher than a 3.5" desktop HDD, they can handle being dropped/etc. On top of that, i'd consider cloud storage as a secondary backup, but be careful, some companies who offer this basically their terms and conditions make your files their property, to do with and use as they please. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rhett Turner - Black Country AO Posted April 9, 2015 Share Posted April 9, 2015 I've got a fairly simple NAS that also allows a couple of external USB drives to be attached. I don't use any form of RAID though as this just adds complication and makes it slow, (I would certainly never use raid 0/striping as this just increases the chance of data loss). I have some backup software (Acronis True Image) that takes daily backups of the hard drives, plus I also have some synchronization software (SyncBack) that makes a second copy of my photo directories. The backups and synchronizations go to different drives. The important thing is that is all scheduled so I don't have to remember to do anything. You do have to check it periodically because I have had drive failures in the NAS, but because i don't use any form of RAID the failure only effected one disk which could be replaced and though I have lost my backups all I had to do was reconfigure a new drive and the backups were running again. I also know it works because I have had failures and the mast end as well and have successfully recovered. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TableLeg Posted April 9, 2015 Author Share Posted April 9, 2015 Thanks to all. Some good advice. I'll definitely double up at least with 2x new drives and probably use some USB sticks too. Going to try and recover if I can the data on my knackered drive. I can get access and see my data with Testdisk but as yet cannot copy it off to another drive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lyonspride Posted April 9, 2015 Share Posted April 9, 2015 ^^ If you can see your data, then it doesn't sound like a HDD failure, more likely a corrupt MFT (master file table) and if so, then the important thing is do not try to write ANYTHING to that disk. As long as you do that, then it should be recoverable. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wackydo Posted April 9, 2015 Share Posted April 9, 2015 One of the other things to think about backing up are emails. I use Outlook as my email client and use pop3 still as its the only way with outlook to merge multiple email accounts to receive into a single inbox. As all of the emails are downloaded into the local PST files physically on the PC, you need to remember to back these up somewhere. As I run my small business from home and have personal and business email arriving into the same inbox (its easier for me!) I need to have email backed up, most people may well not need this at all. It's also necessary to backup sent email as well as that received. I use a tool called safe pst backup for this. Which backs up from my pc to one of the NAS drives. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rusty Nuts Posted April 9, 2015 Share Posted April 9, 2015 One free option is One Drive you can get it with a hotmail account I believe it is quite substantial (30GB) free. It has the added advantage of giving you access over the net, I think Google do something similar as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BudSlater Posted April 10, 2015 Share Posted April 10, 2015 Check out Zoolz if you have good bandwidth! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TableLeg Posted April 10, 2015 Author Share Posted April 10, 2015 Thanks again all. Sadly I'm getting nowhere with recovering any data. Access to the disk is now hit and miss with more misses than hits. Shows briefly sometimes then disappears. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stuart Posted April 10, 2015 Share Posted April 10, 2015 I have an excellent free software app that does differential backups (only the changes) that I can recommend, when I get home as Ive forgotten the name... Also I have four Western Digital 500mb external USB drives (ones that look like they would sit on a book shelf) that are Free to a good home. They are old and slow USB 2 and 500mb is not big by todays standards, but if it saves anybody cash, I will ship them over. John, would you mind posting the name of that software please? I have a couple of terabytes manually backed up and it's a sod keeping track of it all. Didn't know you could differentially backup but sounds like just what I need. I'll take one of those WD drives off you as well if that's OK? I'm in Worcester so could have a drive over in the Westy and pick it up perhaps. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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