Online Backup

I use an external hard drive with a built-in software package that
automatically writes anything new to its HD. It sits on my desk next to the
computer and silently does it's thing without any effort at all on my
part.....The only thing I have to do is take it with me if I leave the house
in case there is a fire while I am gone that wipes out everything.....this
can be a PIA, but I don't know any other way to be sure that my stuff is
safe.....

On 2009-04-03 13:06:48 -0700, "Bill Graham" said:

I use an external hard drive with a built-in software package that
automatically writes anything new to its HD. It sits on my desk next to
the computer and silently does it's thing without any effort at all on
my part.....The only thing I have to do is take it with me if I leave
the house in case there is a fire while I am gone that wipes out
everything.....this can be a PIA, but I don't know any other way to be
sure that my stuff is safe.....

Do the same as you are doing now, but use a 2 dock RAID 1 & 3 drives,
or if you don't want to go the dock route use 3 external drives with
RAID 1 mirror. Don't use RAID 0, that provides data striping only, not
redundancy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_RAID_levels

Swap out one drive to move to your off site location. This leaves you
with an archive on-site, an archive in-transit(in your vehicle or bag)
and an archive off site. This way one of the three will provide you a
reasonable chance of data recovery.
--
Regards,
Savageduck

"Bill Graham" wrote:
I use an external hard drive with a built-in software package that
automatically writes anything new to its HD. It sits on my desk next to the
computer and silently does it's thing without any effort at all on my
part.

That is not what people are talking about when they say "online backup".
Online backujp means backing up your data via the Internet to some
service provider.

Your method has the big disadvantage to not protecting you in case of
e.g. a virus, because if a virus is going erase the data on your
computer, then that HD next to the computer will be erased, too.

jue

Eric Miller wrote:
Is anyone using an online backup service to store images? I have been
looking at the Carbonite service and thinking about giving it a try. Tales
of good or bad experiences and recommendations for alternate providers would
be appreciated.

Eric Miller
www.dyesscreek.com


My feeling is that your first line of defense should be frequent
complete backups of all your active drives to local (probably external)
drives. I personally do complete drive images every night (baseline +
14 incrementals). All is scheduled, and just happens while I'm asleep.
Over the years, I've had a couple of drives tank, and it's so nice to
be able to just run a complete drive image onto a new drive, in just an
hour or so, and be done. Nothing to reinstall, reconfigure, etc. Looks
just like it did before the failure.

Having said that, and having lived through a house fire many years ago,
I worry about fire, theft, tree falling on the house, you name it. So a
few years ago I set out looking for reasonably priced offsite storage.
Everything I could find was *very* expensive. Then I read a review by
Walter Mossberg, the tech guy for the Wall Street Journal. He was
pretty impressed with an outfit called Mozy. They are a subsidiary of
EMC, the big data storage company, and offer up to 2GB of storage free.
For free, I thought I'd give them a try. Everything worked out great,
and I was soon up against the 2GB limit, so I opted to try their 'pay
me' service. It's $4.95 a month, with a free month if you pay annually,
for *unlimited* storage.

I've been using it for something over 2 years now, and they really seem
to mean unlimited. I currently have around 35GB, and before I decided
that I really didn't need to save all of my original photoshop files, I
had over 80GB. It has it's own scheduler, so it also 'just happens'
each night. You configure which folders and/or files you want to be
included. It's intended to be for important data files, and not program
files. The upload speeds are pretty slow, but that's a function of your
ISP. I get 550-750 megabits/sec., a mere fraction of my download speeds.

I've recovered a couple of files from them, just to test that it worked
OK, which it did.

There are different opinions about whether to use your own key or their
public key. The point they make is that if you use their key, they can
always get your data back for you, no matter what. If you use your own
key, and it gets lost, they simply can't do anything for you, It's all
lost forever. They offer the choice of yours or theirs, so you can do
whatever you're comfortable with.

Based on my experience, I can recommend Mozy without hesitation. You
can find them at Mozy.com

I'm not familiar with Carbonite, but having just quickly looked at their
website, they seem to be a very similar operation to Mozy. I have no
basis for recommending one over the other. I do, however, endorse using
such an offsite backup service.

Mike.G. wrote:
Eric Miller wrote:
Is anyone using an online backup service to store images? I have been
looking at the Carbonite service and thinking about giving it a try.
Tales of good or bad experiences and recommendations for alternate
providers would be appreciated.

Eric Miller
www.dyesscreek.com

My feeling is that your first line of defense should be frequent
complete backups of all your active drives to local (probably external)
drives. I personally do complete drive images every night (baseline +
14 incrementals). All is scheduled, and just happens while I'm asleep.
Over the years, I've had a couple of drives tank, and it's so nice to
be able to just run a complete drive image onto a new drive, in just an
hour or so, and be done. Nothing to reinstall, reconfigure, etc. Looks
just like it did before the failure.

Having said that, and having lived through a house fire many years ago,
I worry about fire, theft, tree falling on the house, you name it. So a
few years ago I set out looking for reasonably priced offsite storage.
Everything I could find was *very* expensive. Then I read a review by
Walter Mossberg, the tech guy for the Wall Street Journal. He was
pretty impressed with an outfit called Mozy. They are a subsidiary of
EMC, the big data storage company, and offer up to 2GB of storage free.
For free, I thought I'd give them a try. Everything worked out great,
and I was soon up against the 2GB limit, so I opted to try their 'pay
me' service. It's $4.95 a month, with a free month if you pay annually,
for *unlimited* storage.

I've been using it for something over 2 years now, and they really seem
to mean unlimited. I currently have around 35GB, and before I decided
that I really didn't need to save all of my original photoshop files, I
had over 80GB. It has it's own scheduler, so it also 'just happens'
each night. You configure which folders and/or files you want to be
included. It's intended to be for important data files, and not program
files. The upload speeds are pretty slow, but that's a function of your
ISP. I get 550-750 megabits/sec., a mere fraction of my download speeds.

I've recovered a couple of files from them, just to test that it worked
OK, which it did.

There are different opinions about whether to use your own key or their
public key. The point they make is that if you use their key, they can
always get your data back for you, no matter what. If you use your own
key, and it gets lost, they simply can't do anything for you, It's all
lost forever. They offer the choice of yours or theirs, so you can do
whatever you're comfortable with.

Based on my experience, I can recommend Mozy without hesitation. You
can find them at Mozy.com

I'm not familiar with Carbonite, but having just quickly looked at their
website, they seem to be a very similar operation to Mozy. I have no
basis for recommending one over the other. I do, however, endorse using
such an offsite backup service.

This was my general idea. I alreay have a RAID 1 to cover disk failure,
optical backups and use an external drive for additional "grab and go"
back up, but realize that it is just too much of a PITA to constantly
ferry external drives offsite. Bandwidth isn't much of a concern and I
plan to only backup the important parts of my current image library and
future selected files. The price of 50-60 per year with unlimited
storage seems like a good value and worth the price of not having to do
my own offsite backup with external drives.

Eric Miller
www.dyesscreek.com

"Savageduck" wrote in message
news:2009040313480970933-savageduck@savagenet...
On 2009-04-03 13:06:48 -0700, "Bill Graham" said:

I use an external hard drive with a built-in software package that
automatically writes anything new to its HD. It sits on my desk next to
the computer and silently does it's thing without any effort at all on my
part.....The only thing I have to do is take it with me if I leave the
house in case there is a fire while I am gone that wipes out
everything.....this can be a PIA, but I don't know any other way to be
sure that my stuff is safe.....

Do the same as you are doing now, but use a 2 dock RAID 1 & 3 drives, or
if you don't want to go the dock route use 3 external drives with RAID 1
mirror. Don't use RAID 0, that provides data striping only, not
redundancy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_RAID_levels

Swap out one drive to move to your off site location. This leaves you with
an archive on-site, an archive in-transit(in your vehicle or bag) and an
archive off site. This way one of the three will provide you a reasonable
chance of data recovery.
--
Regards,
Savageduck

Yes......All the above is a good idea. - I also have a good friend on the
other side of town. I could just get another external HD, and swap it with
one I keep at his house every couple of weeks.....If I were a pro, I would
worry about it more, but the chances are that when I die, no one will ever
give a damn about my photos anyway.....

On 2009-04-03 22:46:58 -0700, "Bill Graham" said:


"Savageduck" wrote in message
news:2009040313480970933-savageduck@savagenet...
On 2009-04-03 13:06:48 -0700, "Bill Graham" said:

I use an external hard drive with a built-in software package that
automatically writes anything new to its HD. It sits on my desk next to
the computer and silently does it's thing without any effort at all on
my part.....The only thing I have to do is take it with me if I leave
the house in case there is a fire while I am gone that wipes out
everything.....this can be a PIA, but I don't know any other way to be
sure that my stuff is safe.....

Do the same as you are doing now, but use a 2 dock RAID 1 & 3 drives,
or if you don't want to go the dock route use 3 external drives with
RAID 1 mirror. Don't use RAID 0, that provides data striping only, not
redundancy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_RAID_levels

Swap out one drive to move to your off site location. This leaves you
with an archive on-site, an archive in-transit(in your vehicle or bag)
and an archive off site. This way one of the three will provide you a
reasonable chance of data recovery.
--
Regards,
Savageduck

Yes......All the above is a good idea. - I also have a good friend on
the other side of town. I could just get another external HD, and swap
it with one I keep at his house every couple of weeks.....If I were a
pro, I would worry about it more, but the chances are that when I die,
no one will ever give a damn about my photos anyway.....

I pretty much figured that out.
For the most part my photography is for me. When I go they will
probably back a dumpster up to the door and just trash everything they
don't understand. A pile of FW drives and such would probably be at the
top of that list.

As far as my RAW files go I feel like one of those strange pack-rat
recluses they find, with the house stracked from floor to ceiling with
newspapers and National Geographic magazines.

They will probably find me slumped over a keyboard, bricked in by a
wall of hard drives, CD's, DVD's and 30 year old computers, along with
a brand new Nikon/Canon Dxxx/xxD.

--
Regards,
Savageduck

Eric Miller wrote:
Is anyone using an online backup service to store images? I have been
looking at the Carbonite service and thinking about giving it a try. Tales
of good or bad experiences and recommendations for alternate providers would
be appreciated.

The backup that works best is the backup that you will use regularly.
It's it's too much of a PITA then it won't get used.

That said, everything has risks. The goal to to reduce risk appropriately.

If you can set up an external disk with automatic software to make
VERSIONED backups then that takes care of most computer failures.

If you make a copy of that backup disk regularly and then keep that
copy outside of your home (office, safe, bank, etc.) then that will
take care of most of that bad things that can happen to your house.

If you make two copies then you improve security against disk failure.
If you buy a new disk every few years that has the latest technology
then you protect yourself against obsolescence.

An online backup service has the advantage of being highly secure
against most physical catastrophies, but is weak against economic
problems (the company can fail). It also costs more.

Optical backup protects against overwriting valuable data, but because
it's not dynamic you run the risk of having it go bad/unreadable and
not knowing that it's gone bad.

So, how valuable are your data?

And that reminds me - time to update my 2nd backup.

--
Ray Fischer

"Jürgen Exner" wrote in message
...
"Bill Graham" wrote:
I use an external hard drive with a built-in software package that
automatically writes anything new to its HD. It sits on my desk next to
the
computer and silently does it's thing without any effort at all on my
part.

That is not what people are talking about when they say "online backup".
Online backujp means backing up your data via the Internet to some
service provider.

Your method has the big disadvantage to not protecting you in case of
e.g. a virus, because if a virus is going erase the data on your
computer, then that HD next to the computer will be erased, too.

jue

Yes, but what protects the "on line" computer from the viruses? Or, to put
it another way, why don't the viruses infect the people who are handling
your backup files? If I have two external hard drives (which is easy and
cheap to do) then I can only keep one of them plugged into my computer at a
time, (while the other one is in a closet at my friends house on the other
side of town) and then, if a virus wipes me out, I can retrieve my files
from the other HD in my friends house at some later date, after I have
replaced my infected computer with another one that is virus free.......

"Bill Graham" wrote:
"Jürgen Exner" wrote in message
Your method has the big disadvantage to not protecting you in case of
e.g. a virus, because if a virus is going erase the data on your
computer, then that HD next to the computer will be erased, too.

Yes, but what protects the "on line" computer from the viruses? Or, to put
it another way, why don't the viruses infect the people who are handling
your backup files?

Good question. The answer is that hopefully(!) your computer and the
backup storage server are not infected at the same time. Besides, for
decend backup the online backup server itself would need to be backed up
regularly to an offline medium.

If I have two external hard drives (which is easy and
cheap to do) then I can only keep one of them plugged into my computer at a
time, (while the other one is in a closet at my friends house on the other
side of town)

That is definitely a very smart way to go.

jue