Backup and storage

[LensBaby]

I know Jerry is going to scream at me! Just kidding! Here is a site that I did find though, and I thought it looked pretty cool for people that are interested in backup and storage of photos.You do have to read the way that they work really WELL though, because there are some crazy things on there as well.

http://services.connected.com/adobe/howitworks.asp

[dkippen]

Sue - even with my computer backup challenges - I'm still not sure about online storage. While I think my pictures are not worth hacking into, with all the other "secure" systems that have been hacked into or stolen, I'll sit back and watch.

And yes - I can't wait to see what Jerry has to say about this.

[jerryph]

Haha! No I won't yell at anyone, we're all free to make our own choices in location of backup. One thought, though... ANY form of backup is better than none at all.

I just burned 35 DVDs in the last few days in between study sessions... so between the DVDs and my local (SAN) secure drives here, it makes me feel pretty good.

[LensBaby]

That is what I need to find the time to do, or I am going to pay for it!

[jerryph]

I would not feel comfortable if I lost any of my pics. There are some that I would never post online or here, but that I value very highly.

[LensBaby]

yeah I know what you mean. I have some that EVERYBODY comments on when they come over to my house, and I will NOT put those anywhere online. Does our member gallery have a no right click option so people cannot steal our photos?

[admin]

yeah I know what you mean. I have some that EVERYBODY comments on when they come over to my house, and I will NOT put those anywhere online. Does our member gallery have a no right click option so people cannot steal our photos?


No, it does not. Even if it did, you cannot really stop people from using a "prinscreen" option and get your photo that way. But you can always protect your treasured photos with a password and only give it to the people you want.

[LensBaby]

Oh yeah thanks admin! I never thought about that, but that is all they would have to do.

[Snappers]

You can always put a copyright mark on your image to protect it a little more but the problem with that is that it does have to be placed in such a way which would make it very difficult to clone out.

As for backup options, Just a word of warning, if you use external backup hard drives, always make sure you have a second back up i.e. DVD etc, becasue if the hard disc fails you've still got a second backup to fall back on.

[runswithscissors]

I have 2 hard drives (main and secondary) in my computer with RAID so that I have live backup of anything I save to the main drive. I also have a 320GB EHD. When I save my photos I save them both to my C:/ drive and my EHD.

[jerryph]

I have 2 hard drives (main and secondary) in my computer with RAID so that I have live backup of anything I save to the main drive. I also have a 320GB EHD. When I save my photos I save them both to my C:/ drive and my EHD.

Be carefull about what level of RAID you are using. RAID 0 has no protection and indeed if you lose 1 drive, all the data on BOTH drives is forever gone.

RAID 1 is called mirroring when you attach 2 drives to the same controller or duplexing when you use 2 controllers and 2 hard drives. What is written to one hard disk is immediately copied to the 2nd drive.

Raid 5 requires 3 or more drives and cuts the data into 64k chunks and adds a CRC to the stripe-set. On Raid 5 the CRC is cyclicly and evenly placed on all 3 drives for best speed if one drive fails.

My SAN is a RAID 5+1 and is fiber-optic, and uses a ton of drives (38 active drives and 2 extra drives always on standby). What I like best about it is that it is quieter than my computer, even with 4 huge fans and 40 drives. Its the size of a small wall unit... lol !!

[runswithscissors]

This is the one that I have. Can you tell me what is what!! My brother better not have made me spend my $ unwisely. I'll hafta choke him!


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816132001

[jerryph]

Well, This is just a simple controller that can do both RAID 0 and RAID 1. It depends on how he configured it.

If it is configured in RAID 0... you opened yourself up to a potentially huge can of worms.

With RAID 1, you use 2 disks, but they have the space of only 1 of the disks becuase the other one mirrors the other.

You will have to ask him how he configured it, RAID 0 or 1. RAID 1 is the one you want to protect your data.

[LensBaby]

OK more on this raid please...I was looking at them before, but had no clue what they are. Will someone please explain it to me? Thanks

[jerryph]

In baby talk... lol
Let's assume you have a couple of hard drives that are all 100GB in size, fpr the sake of simplicity:

Raid 0 - is where you have 2 (or more) hard drives put together to make them look like one big drive. If I had two 100GB drives, I would have 200GB available to me. If one drive failes, becuase of how they are linked, you lose everything on BOTH drives. They have no fault tolerance.

RAID 1 - Mirroring. This is where I have two 100GB drives, but my total storage space is 100GB. Everytime something gets written on one drive, it is immediately copied to the 2nd drive. If one drive dies, you can break the mirror and access all info on the 2nd surviving drive. This system has fault tolerance.

Raid 5 - This one requires a minimum of 3 drives but can support many more. The data is broken down into 64k chunks and written across what is called a stripe set, and then you add a CRC. In the case of (again to make it easier), a single file that is 128k, its split into 2 chunks, each chunk written to one of the three disks and then a CRC is made that is created based on a mathematical calculation using the first 2 chunks.

If a drive that contains the CRC data dies, you still have the data on the other 2 hard disks. If one of the drives with one part of the file dies, the 1st half of the data exists, and the 2nd half can be recreated using the CRC data.

RAID 1 has a 50% effective storage ratio (two 100GB drives give you a maximum of 100GB of storage).

Raid 5 has a more effective ratio based on the number of disks. For example if it is three 100GB drives, you have 200GB of storage for a 66% effective storage rate, but if you use 4 drives, it goes up to 75%, 5 drives it goes up to 80% and so on. This system has the most effective fault tolerance (besides mixing RAID levels)

There are many other iterations of RAID, but this goes outside the realm of this post (RAID 10, or 10+0 or 5+1 and on and on).

The bottom line is you want a way to NOT lose data in the event that one hard drive fails. How you do it is based on budget, needs, operating system and hardware.

[LensBaby]

OK right now I am THANKFUL I never went into the computer field. haha :eek:

[coffee]

Here's a story for you. I am very anal about backing up. I have 2 750 gig internal HD's in Raid. I also have 2 large external HD's. I also have a thumb drive.

Once or twice a week I back up all my photo's, now up to 45,000 of them. Some of these are from old family photo's that I've been scannng off for years. I also back up all my movies, Office files, finacial programs, and everything else. So I have 4 copies of everything or more at any one time. And a fifth back up of my finances on the thumb.

One day I went to open my Quicken program,, which is my financial program of 7 years. It wouldn't open. The file was corrupt. This didn't set well, but no problem, I have backups. The second one failed as well, then the third, then the forth. By now I had a load in my pants the size of a small dog. I nervously pulled the thumb drive down off the desk and ask God for a little help.

I was saved. To this day I still don't know what happend. All I know is I must have been backiing up corrupt files. But because I have 5 copies, I found a good one. I now don't override every backup at the same time. I will save the last 5 weeks worth at anyone time in 5 different drives. I also use Genie soft back up program and have all of this done automatically.

One other shorter story. My friend hired me to balance his business books for the past 7 months because he needed to get his taxes done. After pulling my hair out for 3 weeks, I balanced a 7 month jumbled up piece of crap. He deals with millions of dollars a year. I asked him what his back up procedure was so I could finish up, and he said he didn't have one. I said you never back up 10 years worth of business Quickbooks files. He said no. I burned a backup to a disc, collected my money, wished him all the luck in the world, and left shaking my head. Unbelievable.

[LensBaby]

WOW your situation was just bad luck, and your friend...well he is crazy for not backing up his files, and that might come back to bite him in the A@$ one of these days.

[coffee]

Yep. And my friend. IT'S JUST ONE FILE!! All of that inofrmation is in ONE FILE. That's all. It isn't that hard to do. All well, I can't worry about. I said my peace to hime before I left and begged him to start backing up.

He also uses an old computer and never restarts it unless it crashes on him. Hehehehe Jeesssssss.

[jerryph]

Sorry about being so technical. I mean, I could have been worse... and I tried explaining it as simply as I could, but RAID can get very technical.

I have a good story about backups. When I was living in Texas, I had a lawyers firm as a client, they were not very good with backups so I taught them how to do it and I told them to place a weekly full backup in another location in case the place set on fire or exploded or whatever. One set of backups HAD to be off site. So, once a week, they took one backup set home.

Of course they said that this could NEVER happen becuase the building was an old bank and the original 1930's safe was their storage room. Time passed and the inevitable happened... their computer died. No problem, just restore from backup.

I took the first ones out... corrupted.
I took the secpmd ones out... corrupted.
I took the THIRD ones out... corrupted.

I was like WHAT THE HECK?

I ran out of the building and around the block to where the back of the safe was placed. I looked up and saw... an electrical transformer buzzing away.

The high voltage had literally erased or corrupted all backed up data!

I sent the guy home for his off-site backups and thankfully, he did not place them on his speakers or anything else that conducted electricity and they were fine.

Moral of the story? You cannot have enough backups and never place all your eggs in one basket.

I have all my pics and videos on DVD as well as my SAN. It's about as sure a way that I am good as I can afford. I know that the data on my DVDs is good, becuase I used them to copy the info to my SAN and I had no lost or corrupted files.

[LensBaby]

haha not funny, but it is the way you told it. Yes, I agree that you can never have too many backups.