Storage and backup

[legenddc]

Let me preface this by saying that I don't create woodworking content or any youtube content. My 'content' is all pictures and videos of the kids. After seeing April Wilkerson loose a lot of video with her workshop/airport hanger build, I'm curious how all of you content creators store and backup your work.

[Chestnut]

This i a bit overkill for most but it details a professional photographers backup strategy. Hobby video probably isn't any more data demanding than what he deals with as a pro photographer.

The big takeaway that I do for all my digital content is the original and 2 backups 1 onsite 1 offsite. The onsite backup is for drive failure and the offsite backup is for theft and fire protection.

 

[Immortan D]

If you're a Mac user, you can relay on Time Machine to take care of your backups. I used it for more than a decade, it does the job well. Additionally, you can use Carboncopy or similar software to clone your hard disk to an external USB hard disk, and store it in a secure location. I do that routinely just in case.

[pkinneb]

51 minutes ago, Chestnut said:

The big takeaway that I do for all my digital content is the original and 2 backups 1 onsite 1 offsite. The onsite backup is for drive failure and the offsite backup is for theft and fire protection.

So would you consider off site to be a separate unattached structure on the same property? Thinking I should store a 2nd back up in my shop but maybe totally offsite would be better.

[ben_r_]

Pick up some WD 8TB external USB HDDs from Best Buy when they drop to $160-170, backup to those and store them in a fire safe or off site. I do that in addition to a 48TB NAS.

[Immortan D]

You can have off site backups without complicating your life by using cloud backup services. Or if you don't trust the cloud, you can have a computer in another location, setup a VPN and backup to that computer.

Just do not store your backups near your BLO rags

[pkinneb]

2 minutes ago, Immortan D said:

You can have off site backups without complicating your life by using cloud backup services. Or if you don't trust the cloud, you can have a computer in another location, setup a VPN and backup to that computer.

Just do not store your backups near your BLO rags

So not the most computer savvy person here but if I understand you correctly if I already have a separate computer in the shop (which I do) I could back up to that? Can you point me in the direction where to look for info so that I can see that computer on the network? I have internet access on it but when I open the network icon from my homeoffice computer I see that computer, modem, printers, scanners, and directv boxes but not the shop computer. Any help would be much appreciated. 

[legenddc]

1 hour ago, Chestnut said:

This i a bit overkill for most but it details a professional photographers backup strategy. Hobby video probably isn't any more data demanding than what he deals with as a pro photographer.

The big takeaway that I do for all my digital content is the original and 2 backups 1 onsite 1 offsite. The onsite backup is for drive failure and the offsite backup is for theft and fire protection.

 

Thanks for the link, I'll read it later.

I do have a Mac. My process so far is similar to yours Chestnut. 1 Time Machine backup constantly plugged in. Another one that I bring back and forth to work every month or two. More often if there's a lot going on, but I don't delete the SD card until it's backed up in 2 spots and the pictures are uploaded to Snapfish or Shutterfly.

I think if my livelihood was producing content I would have a clone drive at home and offsite.

[Immortan D]

1 minute ago, pkinneb said:

So not the most computer savvy person here but if I understand you correctly if I already have a separate computer in the shop (which I do) I could back up to that? Can you point me in the direction where to look for info so that I can see that computer on the network? I have internet access on it but when I open the network icon from my homeoffice computer I see that computer, modem, printers, scanners, and directv boxes but not the shop computer. Any help would be much appreciated. 

A backup to a shop computer will not be considered off site. Thieves may "visit" both places during the same night. Fire in one building may extend to the other building.

Try turning on file sharing on your shop computer and share at least one folder. If your shop and home are in the same network, you should be able to see it. Unless you have a firewall active in your shop router/access point, or you have a bad setup and your shop computer is behind a double NAT.... there are lots or variables that will make file sharing fail.

[Chestnut]

1 hour ago, pkinneb said:

So would you consider off site to be a separate unattached structure on the same property? Thinking I should store a 2nd back up in my shop but maybe totally offsite would be better.

I guess it depends if you have a place to lock it up in the shop and use an external drive the likely hood of it being stolen is still there but offers fire protection. It's more risky than say keeping your offsite at a bank safe deposit box but also a heck of a lot easier to manage.

A water tight container buried in the garden would suffice i suppose if you really wanted to go that route.

39 minutes ago, legenddc said:

Thanks for the link, I'll read it later.

I do have a Mac. My process so far is similar to yours Chestnut. 1 Time Machine backup constantly plugged in. Another one that I bring back and forth to work every month or two. More often if there's a lot going on, but I don't delete the SD card until it's backed up in 2 spots and the pictures are uploaded to Snapfish or Shutterfly.

I think if my livelihood was producing content I would have a clone drive at home and offsite.

I don' t know what this time machine is but i don't trust software for backup. It just adds another variable to a process that in my opinion needs to be simple. I just do a simple drag and drop and don't over write files.

If you use programs that have catalogs or systems settings it's helpful to back those up as well. I am curious what April lost and how but am too lazy to dig to find it.

[Immortan D]

3 minutes ago, Chestnut said:

I don' t know what this time machine is but i don't trust software for backup. It just adds another variable to a process that in my opinion needs to be simple. I just do a simple drag and drop and don't over write files.

If you use programs that have catalogs or systems settings it's helpful to back those up as well. I am curious what April lost and how but am too lazy to dig to find it.

Time Machine backups everything (unless you exclude files or folders) and keeps all the versions of your files. You can boot your Mac from a Time Machine backup in the event of total failure. And it's completely automated, you don't need to remember to drag and drop anything. It's part of Mac OS and it's been out there for a long time.

[Chestnut]

Just now, Immortan D said:

Time Machine backups everything (unless you exclude files or folders) and keeps all the versions of your files. You can boot your Mac from a Time Machine backup in the event of total failure. And it's completely automated, you don't need to remember to drag and drop anything. It's part of Mac OS and it's been out there for a long time.

Ahh so like a windows restore that actually works. Yeah i'd still do the file migration the manual way, saves drive space by not backing up unnecessary files.

[Immortan D]

1 minute ago, Chestnut said:

Ahh so like a windows restore that actually works. Yeah i'd still do the file migration the manual way, saves drive space by not backing up unnecessary files.

Yeah, pretty much that. It will optimize backups when your backup media is running out of space, or even consolidate old backups, according to user configurations. It has a pretty sleek user interface, you can navigate back in time using a time machine paradigm.

[legenddc]

1 hour ago, Chestnut said:

I am curious what April lost and how but am too lazy to dig to find it.

She lost hours of footage from multiple cameras and a drone for a big part of the build. I think it was the framing or rafter part. Had it all on one external, which broke, and then spent quite a bit of time trying to recover it, have it recovered and recover some files from the SD cards. All that and what was recovered caused issues with editing.

Looking back, I'm sure she's kicking herself for not having better backups.

I can't imagine what Marc does with 10+ years of footage and some of it in 4k.

[Chestnut]

1 minute ago, legenddc said:

She lost hours of footage from multiple cameras and a drone for a big part of the build. I think it was the framing or rafter part. Had it all on one external, which broke, and then spent quite a bit of time trying to recover it, have it recovered and recover some files from the SD cards. All that and what was recovered caused issues with editing.

Looking back, I'm sure she's kicking herself for not having better backups.

I can't imagine what Marc does with 10+ years of footage and some of it in 4k.

Ouch, Yeah I'd love to move away form spinning rust altogether drive failure on solid state is a lot less frequent. I have a 1TB SSD on my main rig but #$(& that thing was $500 when i bought it. So it'll be a while till prices come down but the world will be a better place once they do.

[Immortan D]

14 minutes ago, legenddc said:

I can't imagine what Marc does with 10+ years of footage and some of it in 4k.

Marc prolly owns a ton of LaCie stuff for his backups

[legenddc]

@Chestnut Just finished that article. Hybrid woodworking and hybrid file organization? I think you might be addicted to hybrid things...

[Chestnut]

@legenddc I really don't like hybrid vehicles, i think they are silly complicated things that don't offer any benefit over a regular gas engine.

1 hour ago, legenddc said:

I can't imagine what Marc does with 10+ years of footage and some of it in 4k.

He has an Instagram post of a box full of tapes he shot on his camcorder.

His stuff seems tame compared to a friend of mine that goes over the top with everything. He keeps all unedited footage he has ever shot by tossing the data on WD red drives writing on the front what they are for and keeping them in an offsite safe. I think he's close to filling a large gun safe with drives.

[thatCharlieDude]

So I feel like I have some experience in this field (notice I didn't say expertise lol). I started recording podcast back in 2006 and after some success decided to stop, I just didn't have the time. I still record, I record all my lectures for student use, but I don't publish them publicly. I'm also a computer science professor, I try to keep current with technology, I lecture over it, and I love gadgets. 

With that said everybody who has data they want to protect, from production content to family photos should practice the 3, 2, 1 rule: 3 copies, 2 local but on different devices and 1 off-site.  I have heard so many horror stories of people who have lost irreplaceable data, it would keep you up at night. 

Currently, Amazon has a pretty cheap backup with their AWS service if you just want to have deep storage, not something you frequently access.  A 4 tb hard drive is also cheap, under $100, which will hold quite a bit of data. There are lots of options these days.

Backblaze, a cloud storage company, has an article about the 321 strategy: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/the-3-2-1-backup-strategy/

6 hours ago, Chestnut said:

This i a bit overkill for most but it details a professional photographers backup strategy. Hobby video probably isn't any more data demanding than what he deals with as a pro photographer.

The big takeaway that I do for all my digital content is the original and 2 backups 1 onsite 1 offsite. The onsite backup is for drive failure and the offsite backup is for theft and fire protection.

 

LOL I should have read your post first. you basically said everything I did.

[wtnhighlander]

For stuff I consider fairly important, I copy it to every hard disk in the house. And maybe a USB stick or two. I use an external disk to hold large data files (read that as video footage), but once it goes to Youtube, I don't worry much about the raw footage.

One thing I know - you can't trust electronic media to be a permanent static backup. Keep rotating through whatever storage media you choose, because as sure as you stash one away for long-term, THAT will be the one that fails or becomes obsolete. How many of you have family photos burned to DVD and stashed in a "safe place"? And now have a new computer that has no optical drive? 

[Chestnut]

13 hours ago, thatCharlieDude said:

LOL I should have read your post first. you basically said everything I did.

I didn't write the article but yeah the 321 method is what i do and it really only works a swell as the guy that is doing it. The big thing is to keep up with what ever strategy you use.

I think i might start taking advantage of amazon's unlimited photo storage offer.

[thatCharlieDude]

50 minutes ago, Chestnut said:

I think i might start taking advantage of amazon's unlimited photo storage offer.

Ahh! This looks like a Google Photo competitor.

I just logged into my account and I have almost 1000 photos there from two years ago. I don't remember putting them there, but I have an Amazon sponsored phone so I'm wondering if the phone backed them up from my camera/gallery app?

[thatCharlieDude]

12 hours ago, wtnhighlander said:

One thing I know - you can't trust electronic media to be a permanent static backup. Keep rotating through whatever storage media you choose, because as sure as you stash one away for long-term, THAT will be the one that fails or becomes obsolete. How many of you have family photos burned to DVD and stashed in a "safe place"? And now have a new computer that has no optical drive? 

Even though DVDs and CDs degrade over time (so do HHD) they are still considered the best long term storage. And, yes obsolete media is a problem,. Anybody remember Zip disks and drives? DVDs is a good bet atm since blu-ray players can read DVDs and CDs. There's some talk about what's next after blu-ray but not solid so I think they (blu-ray) will be around for a while still. What might kill blu-ray is cloud storage and streaming video. External dvd and blu-ray players are cheap enough that you can buy one and store it for later. We still have a working VHS. 

Article about storage mediums: https://www.pcworld.com/article/2984597/storage/hard-core-data-preservation-the-best-media-and-methods-for-archiving-your-data.html

[Chestnut]

2 hours ago, thatCharlieDude said:

Ahh! This looks like a Google Photo competitor.

I just logged into my account and I have almost 1000 photos there from two years ago. I don't remember putting them there, but I have an Amazon sponsored phone so I'm wondering if the phone backed them up from my camera/gallery app?

Maybe all of these online offerings are ok for a backup as long as they aren't trying to sell my pictures ect. The trouble with them is their organization sucks and you can kind of change it but there is no way to set the defaults. I want it to sort using my folder structure but alas they can't do that for some reason. It does in the drive but not the photo area.

If you think websites won't try and use your data to make money your probably wrong. If they are offering a free service, you are the product, and your data will be used to make them money.

[thatCharlieDude]

8 hours ago, Chestnut said:

If you think websites won't try and use your data to make money your probably wrong. If they are offering a free service, you are the product, and your data will be used to make them money.

Oh, I'm sure they're using it, why else is it free? For the pay accounts like AWS or Dropbox they better not use my data if I'm paying them for storage. 

With cloud storage sites like AWS you can set up the file structure the way you want it. It's basically just a remote drive you can access.  BTW, I try to encrypt everything I store remotely then only I can use it.