[Stu Pitt]

I have a 4tb drive connected to my desktop, which has a copy of EVERYTHING. I have a 1tb drive dedicated to music, and another 1tb drive dedicated to pictures. Music and pics go to the 4tb drive, and are subsequently copied to the individual drives.

My 1tb photo drive is at about 750gb, so I’m running out of space. I just ordered a 4tb drive for pics, and it got me thinking... should I limit the capacity on backup drives? Ie use my 1tb photo drive as a backup, then get another 1tb drive when I’m near 2tb, and so on?

I would’ve just bough another 1tb drive and started all new on that one, but I like having everything in front of me. My Lightroom running computer is my laptop, not my desktop, so that 4tb drive doesn’t get used for this purpose.

Should I limit the size of my backup drives, or does it just make more sense to buy the largest drive (for the budget anyway)? I just feel like four 1tb backups would be better than one 4tb backup because if one of those fails, at least I only lose 25% of my stuff vs all of it on a single 4tb backup.

What do you guys do? I’m in unchartered waters here as I’m just about to fill up my first tb.

Edit: I started backing up to DVDs a while back. Not happening again. Way too many DVDs, way too much time.

Edit 2: I only shoot RAW, hence filling up drives faster than JPEGs.

[toocool4]

Why don’t you just run a RAID NAS drive? I run a RAID 5 NAS drive on my network, I lose nothing if a drive fails. I have been running this NAS for over 10 years now, not so long ago a drive failed after 10 years of it being on Twenty Four Seven. No big deal, I just popped out the failed drive replaced it with a new one and the whole thing rebuild itself with no downtime.

[drewm]

I'm not sure it's worth trying to juggle things when 10TB drives are this cheap (wait for the next slickdeal on them)
https://slickdeals.net/f/12630787-10tb-wd-easystore-external-usb-3-0-hard-drive-32gb-usb-flash-drive-180-free-shipping?src=SiteSearch

Also remember, would you want your data preserved if your house burns down? I have a drive I keep at work which is brought back once a month to sync to my local backup.

Also as a Systems Administrator, I must say that a raid5 is not a substitution for a backup. I've lost 3 raid5s in my lifetime. There's also the "oops I accidentally deleted that" or the "my filesystem is corrupted beyond repair" which raid cannot protect you from.

[toocool4]

drewm i have a second RAID 5 connected to my workstation so I am covered and if I "oops I accidentally deleted that" then I deserve what I get for being an idiot.
 

[SET Man]

Hey!
 
    Depend how much you shoot, but I wouldn't buy a 10TB HDD right now because of the price. Right now 4-6TB are very reasonable priced.

   Anyway, my back up scheme is 2 external HDDs, preferable 2 different brands with identical files on them. And I'm using my HDD in my Mac PowerBook Pro as a working HDD with Lightroom. Of course I also use both of my external HDDs as back ups for my MAC using the Time Machine. Currently my 2 external HDDs are 2TB and they are filling up soon with digital file and film scans. I'm planing to buy two 4 or 6TB to replace them. And I might get a third one as another back up drive. Also, I usually get worry when HDD start to hit 5 years mark.

    I shoot both digital and film and I will be honest, I am worry about loosing my digital photo files sometime. But with film I just put them in plastic binder box and forget about it. As drewm mentioned about fire, that's what I'm worry the most... knock on wood here. Yes, now you can store your digital photo files on the of site "cloud" service, but still I don't know how I feel about that yet.

Take care,
Buddy

[Stu Pitt]

Thanks everyone. Excellent points by all. Especially the offsite storage. My sister in law lost everything in a fire a few years ago, and remembering what she went through with important documents (and pictures), and it’s best to be safe. This motivates me to scan some important stuff that she lost - license, social security cards, birth certificates, etc.

I’ll keep the one that’s just about filled up at my father’s house (with documents scanned). He’s got a good safe. I’ll probably keep backups there because I’ll have everything here too. I’ve probably got a year or closer to two before I have another full terabyte, so I’ll see what costs what and exactly how long it’ll take me to shoot another terabyte’s worth of pics. If it’s really quick, I’ll go bigger; if not I’ll go smaller. If I buy a big drive and plan on bringing it back and forth, I know it’ll stop happening after once or twice.

Stupid question... would solid state be better for long-term storage than HDD? No moving parts seems safer now that I think about it. Once they’re offsite, I doubt they’ll get much use. It’ll be like an old box of negatives

I’m not very trusting of cloud storage. I know I’m being paranoid and I honestly don’t have anything incriminating nor shameful (other than some 7th grade mullet pics ), but I just don’t want them anywhere I don’t have an eye on. My daughters in the tub when they were under a year old pics aren’t something for anyone but my family. Just writing that creeps me out on a few levels.

[SET Man]

....
Stupid question... would solid state be better for long-term storage than HDD? No moving parts seems safer now that I think about it. Once they’re offsite, I doubt they’ll get much use. It’ll be like an old box of negatives
...

Hey!

  Not a computer expert here but technically yes, but it is still very expensive.

   Anyway, another thing that I do is that my Sony A7II use SD card. So, in a pass few years when I went on a trip I will load up my A7II with a 16GB or 32GB card, usually Sandisk V30 type and use it through out the trip along with my film cameras and when I get home I load them up on to my Mac and back up HDDs. AND instead of reusing the SD card, I keep them on file along with my negative films I shot from the trip. SD card are not that expensive these days so why not!

   There's anther problem I see with digital storage is the future compatibility. I think that 20-25 years or even shorter from now there will be a problem reading those SD cards. Who knows 25 years from know there might be a new storage system and not backward compatibility.

  In theory digital photo files can live forever without any degradation. But I am actually worry more about loosing my digital photo files than photos taken on film. Well, as long as you can get a scanner in the future or just use macro lens with digital camera in the future I can still scan my films in the future.

Take care,
Buddy

[WGH]

Stupid question... would solid state be better for long-term storage than HDD?

I did some research on longevity not too long ago.

https://www.pcworld.com/article/2984597/storage/hard-core-data-preservation-the-best-media-and-methods-for-archiving-your-data.html
"...there are optical discs that are unquestionably the hardiest, handiest archival media available to consumers. Write-once BD-R HTL (High To Low) can last for 100 to 150 years given a relatively mild environment—i.e., not on your dashboard in Phoenix. Milleniatta’s M-Disc BD-R and DVD+R write-once discs use an even more stable data layer that is rated for 10,000 years. Only its polycarbonate outer layers reduce that to a mere 1,000 years."

SSDs can lose data in as little as 7 days without power
https://www.extremetech.com/computing/205382-ssds-can-lose-data-in-as-little-as-7-days-without-power
Tip: Keep your SSD cool.

Data storage lifespans: How long will media really last?
https://blog.storagecraft.com/data-storage-lifespan/

Media                                Estimated Lifespan
Magnetic data (tapes)          Up to 10 years
Nintendo cartridge                10-20 years
Floppy disk                            10-20 years
CDs and DVDs                       5-10 unrecorded, 2-5 recorded
Blu-Ray                                  Not certain, probably over 2-5 recorded
M-Disc                                   1,000 years (theoretically)
Hard disk                               3-5 years - SSD is only 1-2 years unplugged
Flash storage                        5-10 years or more (depends on write cycles)

[Stu Pitt]

I did some research on longevity not too long ago.

https://www.pcworld.com/article/2984597/storage/hard-core-data-preservation-the-best-media-and-methods-for-archiving-your-data.html
"...there are optical discs that are unquestionably the hardiest, handiest archival media available to consumers. Write-once BD-R HTL (High To Low) can last for 100 to 150 years given a relatively mild environment—i.e., not on your dashboard in Phoenix. Milleniatta’s M-Disc BD-R and DVD+R write-once discs use an even more stable data layer that is rated for 10,000 years. Only its polycarbonate outer layers reduce that to a mere 1,000 years."

SSDs can lose data in as little as 7 days without power
https://www.extremetech.com/computing/205382-ssds-can-lose-data-in-as-little-as-7-days-without-power
Tip: Keep your SSD cool.

Data storage lifespans: How long will media really last?
https://blog.storagecraft.com/data-storage-lifespan/

Media                                Estimated Lifespan
Magnetic data (tapes)          Up to 10 years
Nintendo cartridge                10-20 years
Floppy disk                            10-20 years
CDs and DVDs                       5-10 unrecorded, 2-5 recorded
Blu-Ray                                  Not certain, probably over 2-5 recorded
M-Disc                                   1,000 years (theoretically)
Hard disk                               3-5 years - SSD is only 1-2 years unplugged
Flash storage                        5-10 years or more (depends on write cycles)

Interesting numbers. I have quite a few Nintendo cartridges that work without any issues. And many are well over 30 years old. Maybe I’ll look into storing my pictures on those

As far as CDs (I’m assuming they’re citing CD-Rs, not pressed CDs) I still have some from their early days when I was in college. I graduated in 2001 and many were made a few years before that (Napster era) and all of them I’ve played still work.

These guys have most likely done their due diligence on research, but my anecdotal experience tells me otherwise.

[Stu Pitt]

Hey!

  Not a computer expert here but technically yes, but it is still very expensive.

   Anyway, another thing that I do is that my Sony A7II use SD card. So, in a pass few years when I went on a trip I will load up my A7II with a 16GB or 32GB card, usually Sandisk V30 type and use it through out the trip along with my film cameras and when I get home I load them up on to my Mac and back up HDDs. AND instead of reusing the SD card, I keep them on file along with my negative films I shot from the trip. SD card are not that expensive these days so why not!

   There's anther problem I see with digital storage is the future compatibility. I think that 20-25 years or even shorter from now there will be a problem reading those SD cards. Who knows 25 years from know there might be a new storage system and not backward compatibility.

  In theory digital photo files can live forever without any degradation. But I am actually worry more about loosing my digital photo files than photos taken on film. Well, as long as you can get a scanner in the future or just use macro lens with digital camera in the future I can still scan my films in the future.

Take care,
Buddy

I also wonder about compatibility in the future, but that’s always going to be an issue with everything. But I’m sure there’s going to be some way to extract 1 and 0 for quite some time. I don’t think binary code is going anywhere any time soon.

[drewm]

I did some research on longevity not too long ago.

https://www.pcworld.com/article/2984597/storage/hard-core-data-preservation-the-best-media-and-methods-for-archiving-your-data.html
"...there are optical discs that are unquestionably the hardiest, handiest archival media available to consumers. Write-once BD-R HTL (High To Low) can last for 100 to 150 years given a relatively mild environment—i.e., not on your dashboard in Phoenix. Milleniatta’s M-Disc BD-R and DVD+R write-once discs use an even more stable data layer that is rated for 10,000 years. Only its polycarbonate outer layers reduce that to a mere 1,000 years."

SSDs can lose data in as little as 7 days without power
https://www.extremetech.com/computing/205382-ssds-can-lose-data-in-as-little-as-7-days-without-power
Tip: Keep your SSD cool.

Data storage lifespans: How long will media really last?
https://blog.storagecraft.com/data-storage-lifespan/

Media                                Estimated Lifespan
Magnetic data (tapes)          Up to 10 years
Nintendo cartridge                10-20 years
Floppy disk                            10-20 years
CDs and DVDs                       5-10 unrecorded, 2-5 recorded
Blu-Ray                                  Not certain, probably over 2-5 recorded
M-Disc                                   1,000 years (theoretically)
Hard disk                               3-5 years - SSD is only 1-2 years unplugged
Flash storage                        5-10 years or more (depends on write cycles)

I'm scratching my head at where they came up with this data. All my hundreds of CDs and tens of hard drives from the mid 90s up until today still work fine. At work we have thousands of hard drives, of which most are older than 3-5 years. I'd be more inclined to listen to companies that actually publish their raw data proving their stats than one just throwing stats out of thin air. Like this for example:
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/2018-hard-drive-failure-rates/

[charmerci]

I'm scratching my head at where they came up with this data. All my hundreds of CDs and tens of hard drives from the mid 90s up until today still work fine. At work we have thousands of hard drives, of which most are older than 3-5 years. I'd be more inclined to listen to companies that actually publish their raw data proving their stats than one just throwing stats out of thin air. Like this for example:
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/2018-hard-drive-failure-rates/

I think that they are just covering the basics in order for you to protect your data to be safe. It doesn't mean that your particular HD will fail in 3-5 years, it just means that based on statistics, it most likely will. It could fail earlier too.

[toocool4]

I think another way you can do your external backup with regards to fire ect is, If you have a good internet connection and have friend or someone else you trust with good internet connection. If you both have say a big ish NAS server / Drives, you can store data at each other’s houses. If both your drives are connect to the router hence the internet, you can use a cheap simple program like Chronosync. You can just set when you want the sync to happen i.e. weekly, monthly ect this way any changes you make on your drive will be sync’d automatically. Basically you’ve created your own private cloud backup for the price of the software. All of this can be encrypted as well some no one can snoop in on your data. Cheap and simple.