what are you doing for backup?

[babybluetx23]

What are you doing for backup?
I am looking at buying a dell poweredge 6650 server with Raid 5 capabilities so I can turn it into a file server with possible tape back up or redundancy. We have a TON of media like Movies, Tivo media, MP3s, and then all the photos I take for clients, business and personal that I would like in a central location. I didn’t know if I was doing overkill and I want to see what others are doing for Backup.

[Daniel Bates]

I don't think there is such a thing as "overkill" in media backup...

[engstrom]

Cynthia, I have a RAID 5 array and use external USB drives for backup. It works well for me.

[The Loft Studios]

I created Dual 2-Terabite Raid 5 Array Hard Drive Stations plus 4-500 Gig (also 2-Terabites) built-into my Mac Pro. So, I'm good to go.....

[janetg]

are any of you doing offsite storage? if so, what are you doing?

[boxofrocks]

Originally Posted by janetg

are any of you doing offsite storage? if so, what are you doing?

I am--sorta. Many (not all, though) of my jpegs are uploaded to smugmug in their original, unedited state (you can't upload raw files). Smugmug has no time limit on how long you can keep images in a gallery, and they'll send you a CD of images from a specific gallery for a reasonable charge.

I had to do that last year when I accidentally deleted an entire football game that was only on one drive.

[zeroendless]

My images are just small part of my backup... most of my stuffs are movie dvd and hdvd soon will take place.

Working Drives> Raid 5 2TB Backup server (media storage)>Raid 5 1.6TB Backup's backup file server>Remote location external drives.

The only benefit i can see with dedicated backup server is faster transfer rate and the easier and fastest rate to recover disaster when that happened, other than that, i recommend buy one single drive and tons of them instead of using R5. With R5, you still need to back it up for safety, lost 1/3 drive capacity and a hw version to match single drive performance.

[djonesii]

Dear forum guys ......

The poor mans way two external USB drives, drag and drop, one kept at the office.

One drive 320 gig, the other 500. At the time, they were both sub 200, now the should be around 175 or so.

Dave

[arunap]

I completely agree with Daniel; there is no such thing as overkill when it comes to storage. I usually store multiple copies of my precious data in DVDs and check them every 2 years. If I find one damaged; I re-burn them and create additional copies. This may sound unconventional; but helps me preserve data for long. I don’t trust media; they can fail anytime.

[kenw]

Originally Posted by arunap

I completely agree with Daniel; there is no such thing as overkill when it comes to storage. I usually store multiple copies of my precious data in DVDs and check them every 2 years. If I find one damaged; I re-burn them and create additional copies. This may sound unconventional; but helps me preserve data for long. I don’t trust media; they can fail anytime.

excellent move, and the key here is MULTIPLE copies in separate locations.

[Gordon]

I wish some sort of conclusion would happen in the Blu-ray HD-DVD thing.

I want a good 50Gb archival storage option that isn't hard drives. I've never had good experiences with tape storage. DVDs are too small to keep up with (I can easily shoot a DVD or two's worth of images per event). Double backup, would be 4 DVDs a week, 200 DVDs a year. I don't know about you but I just don't find myself able to find the time for that.

I have a RAID system on my main machine with the images on it, and they are all backed up at import time to another 1 Tb NAS server.

But I rarely go the extra step of off-line storage and I feel exposed as a result.
'Important' images or shoots get archived to DVD as well, but not as often as I'd like.

A couple of 50Gb disks would be awesome. Any other options out there instead of waiting on Blu-Ray/ HD-DVD wars to be over ?

[boxofrocks]

DVDs worry me, because when they do go bad (and I've heard varying reports of how long that takes), they are virtually unrecoverable. Having sad that, I usually make 2 DVDs of important events for backup until I find a better (cost effective) solution.