Storage Back up

[Mole]

We have a couple of old lap tops with photos and videos on that I want to back up..

 

For some old stuff I already have a couple of cheap back up drives - Sumvision - that have done the job

 

Generally use Google free storage for all my current photos..

 

I want to buy another drive for the old photos etc.. shall I just buy a couple of cheap ones like I already have for £25 or £30... 

 

Or should I be splashing out and buying something else a bit more expensive... does it need to be solid state..

 

Bearing in mind I want to be able to get the photos in ten or 20 years and not to find out that the bl**** thing doesn't work..

 

Should I use a cloud - at the moment I want hard drive or both...

 

How much have I got to store - I have no idea.. but i guess in technical terms 'not a lot'!!

 

But that does remind me I do have some stuff backed up on an omega drive!!

 

Thanks

 

[TAFKARM]

Did you post twice because you’re backing up your thread?

[Mole]

Haha.. No just losing the plot!

[Andy Malone - Editor]

You can't really have too many backups, and ideally you want them in different formats, versions and locations.

 

Something to bear in mind is all drives are not infallible so I would never just assume that one is going to last forever, I've had some quite expensive drives fail quite quickly and equally a cheap as chips one last literally over a decade. Generally I go to the known brands - e.g. Seagate, Western Digital, etc... as you know their QC processes will generally be a more more refined than cheaper alternatives, but I'm not sure paying mega money will get you much more reliability wise.

 

That said however my setup nowadays largely relies on cloud solutions to decentralise my stuff. For completeness this is my setup (caveat: I'm Mac based so some Apple stuff here won't work across all platforms)...

 

My phone photos are backed up into Apple's iCloud and are automatically downloaded on my Mac Mini in my office alongside my other photos and files. That Mac has two drives plugged into it, one is a 'Time Machine' (Apple's proprietary backup solution) that takes a copy of the entire machine including apps and everything, and another SSD drive I use for extra storage space (and duplicates of really important stuff). I also have a Backblaze account (https://www.backblaze.com) which is an unlimited cloud based solution which then syncs up both my Mac, and both those external drives in full to cloud storage. It only costs about a fiver a month.

 

Essentially with that I end up with everything in at least two places (including a backup of the backup as far as Time Machine is concerned), and sometimes three or four. I feel pretty comfortable with it as it would take several points of failure for me to lose everything (like a huge solar flare or something in which case I'll be worrying about other things). 

 

With the Apple ecosystem it is probably a little easier to set something up like this, however I know there are comparable Windows based solutions out there.

 

If you do end up with a drive solution (and depending on budget) maybe look at some network storage that has RAID (which means there are multiple drives all keeping copies of the files for redundancy - and it will want you when one fails so you can replace it). We use one of these on our server in the office at work (a 6 drive variant) and in the 4 years I've worked there I've changed 2 of them due to failure so they do break.

[Blatman]

I agree with everything the new Ed (welcome, by the way) says. The short answer is if it absolutely has to be as safe and secure as possible then back it up to a cloud provider of some sort. I'm an Android/Windows user so it's good old Google for me and it's just as straight forwards as Apple. And if more space is required Google are very reasonably priced. I also use Western Digital "My Passport" portable HDD's as a back-up storage venue AND I have a second HDD within my desktop.

The WDD portable HDD's include back-up software that might well come in very handy. Yes I should set up a RAID in the desktop but I'm quite meticulous with backups so I wouldn't ever lose more than a few days worth of "stuff".

Google Drive, if payed annually is £15.00 or £1.59 a month for 100GB.

2TB Western Digital My Passport HDD with free backup software.

 

 

[Mole]

Thanks for the info gents.. it makes sense...

[corsechris]

One thing I’ll say about cloud based solutions....don’t rely on them. Check the Ts & Cs and see exactly what they will guarantee. If it really matters to you, don’t rely on someone else to look after it for you as you might be disappointed.  

 

And on backups in general, not only do you need a backup plan, but until you’ve also got a restore plan they are useless. By which I mean, you should routinely check your backups are actually working and that you can restore from them. I often had folk coming to me with an external disk drive in hand and a hangdog expression. “I’ve been doing backups on here for years but now it won’t work”.

 

I second the advice about having separate backup solutions and locations. Diversity gives redundancy.

[Stuart]

I have a 2 disk NAS in Raid for music, video and photos with another backup 2 disk NAS in Raid for the music on the first one. Music, video, photos and documents all further backed up in 2 different locations. Storage is so cheap these days I don't feel the need to pay for someone to store it in shed in Warrington for me

[Mole]

thanks Stuart