Backups.

[Skywise]

2 TB.
TWO FRIGGIN TERRABYTES.

Being the family IT guy who keeps the digital family history (and a prolific photographer/video guy) and along with all my MP3s and iTunes digital copies of video - I've now managed to accrue just under 2 TB (1.745 to be exact) of music, pictures and video.

Currently I'm backing up about twice a year to a spare 2TB hard drive (I've got 3 in rotation right now) using Acronis True Image. Although I'll probably abandon it and just go for a straight copy or norton ghost in the future...
I'm already sketching out plans for my next PC which will have a 4TB drive and I've just upgraded to a full frame camera (larger pics) so this problem is only going to get worse.

Cloud storage is obviously right out (By the time I upload my 2TB to the server using my DSL connection it'll be time to upload the next backup!)


What's everyone else doing? Striped NAS?

 

[SkaGoat]

What's everyone else doing? Striped NAS?

I have an old Dell Desktop running Ubuntu Server, I just filled it with hard drives, I backup over my network to it. I also use Apple Aperture's vault function once a week and store it in the safe at work in case something happens at home I still have my photos.

 

[WilsonFlyer]

I'm a network engineer and I have a full-fledged 2012 domain in my house complete with Exchange 2013, Sharepoint and the whole nine yards. I keep all my photos and videos on a share on a RAID 6 fileserver. Approaching 1.7 TB. That's my "masters."

I backup to external HDs using Acronis for bare-bones restores. I upload ALL my photos to SmugMug and keep it all in-sync with SnugUp on a scheduler, and I use two WD Live! drives that I mirror to as well with RichCopy and Sync Toy for access outside the house. Backups are stored off-site weekly.

You asked.

 

[handicap18]

I have an iMac. For backups I have a 2TB hard drive for TimeMachine. I also have a separate 1TB drive that I only backup my RAW files. And everything is backed up to carbonite.com. In addition to that I regularly back up my photos to DVD's.

I've had to use TimeMachine once and that is by far the best back up program there is. When I got a new hard drive it took TimeMachine to restore everything in about 4 hours (files and programs), right down to the last web site I had opened in Safari.

I've also had to use carbonite.com once. That only backs up files and takes a looong time.

 

[handicap18]

Oh yeah. I also use smugmug, but not all my photos go there. Most do though. I think right now I have around 10,000 pics there.

 

[SkaGoat]

I have an iMac. For backups I have a 2TB hard drive for TimeMachine. I also have a separate 1TB drive that I only backup my RAW files. And everything is backed up to carbonite.com. In addition to that I regularly back up my photos to DVD's.

I've had to use TimeMachine once and that is by far the best back up program there is. When I got a new hard drive it took TimeMachine to restore everything in about 4 hours (files and programs), right down to the last web site I had opened in Safari.

I've also had to use carbonite.com once. That only backs up files and takes a looong time.

I use Time Machine with my Mac, but it's sooo slow to restore a full machine from. If I close using Carbon Copy Cloner to an external drive, and can restore it in 1/4 the time it takes to restore from a Time Machine backup.

 

[photo_chick]

I use Time Machine just because it's easy to keep a current backup (my music library and current year's images are on my iMac). A couple of times a year I burn all the new files to disc (was using CD, then moved to DVD and now using blu-ray). Those get stored away in a fire safe place and checked yearly for rot. I've got another drive I keep off site that I don't update as often as I should. And then there's my external working drive that has my entire photo library on it, that one I take from computer to computer.