Data back up - Saxperience

Ryan^p · 2nd December 2011, 18:29

Right I hammer alot of data with my work.
MY macs 1TB drive is pretty rammed and so is the 1tb back up.

I need to shift all my old data from the last 4 years externally with back up and then have space on my mac for current work.

So i am thinking mac + 2x2tb drives.

I need the drives to have all the old data + mirrored each other so if one fails + set up with the mac so that when I add new data it also backs up and mirrors again.

How do I do this on a respectable budget, 2x time capsules at £250+ each isnt my idea of well priced.

Penn · 2nd December 2011, 19:27

Wrong time to do this, hard drives are currently fucking extortionate due to the floods in Thailand.

If you can wait I would, production has just started again so prices should start to drop fairly soon.

Do they need to be USB? I'd personally go for some kind of NAS device that can run RAID 5/6 across 4 drives at least. Could go for 4 1TB drives giving you 2TB of NAS storage in addition to your 1TB mac drive.

As said earlier, certainly not going to be cheap at this point in time though unless you find a great deal.

Ryan^p · 2nd December 2011, 21:01

Yeah i know HD prices are sky high atm.

Im currently having to delete data on my drives to find space though. My image library can be worth potentially alot of money (1 photo can sell for hundreds-thousands depending on the spec what it is) so i want to protect it.

It just needs to be able to connect to my mac, and update whenever I update the mac + on a seperate partican also have back ups of my old data.

Its a bit of a pain but im going through 40gb a week in some cases.

Penn · 2nd December 2011, 22:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ryan

Yeah i know HD prices are sky high atm.

Im currently having to delete data on my drives to find space though. My image library can be worth potentially alot of money (1 photo can sell for hundreds-thousands depending on the spec what it is) so i want to protect it.

It just needs to be able to connect to my mac, and update whenever I update the mac + on a seperate partican also have back ups of my old data.

Its a bit of a pain but im going through 40gb a week in some cases.

I assumed it would be all of your pics so what i suggested has good resiliency should a drive fail. However, I'd strongly advise physical (or online cloud) backups that are properly stored safely. If your house was robbed or set on fire etc then all of your stuff is gone forever.

With the NAS device, you wouldn't save anything directly to your mac. It would sit on the array of drives connected via the network so that if one drive fails, you just replace it and you don't lose any data. This way, you don't have to worry about keeping 2 locations up to date and backed up.

It can be a lot of work if you want to do it properly but considering the value of your data, I think it's worth you doing it properly.

Manu · 3rd December 2011, 15:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by Penn

Wrong time to do this, hard drives are currently fucking extortionate due to the floods in Thailand.

Exactly this, wait if you can otherwise you will cough a few £££ up.

Is your current 1T backup setup as a time machine? If yes then it's fairly simple to change the HD in the mac then when you reinstall MacOS it will ask you if you want to reinstall all the data from that time machine.

Manu · 3rd December 2011, 15:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ryan

Yeah i know HD prices are sky high atm.

Im currently having to delete data on my drives to find space though. My image library can be worth potentially alot of money (1 photo can sell for hundreds-thousands depending on the spec what it is) so i want to protect it.

It just needs to be able to connect to my mac, and update whenever I update the mac + on a seperate partican also have back ups of my old data.

Its a bit of a pain but im going through 40gb a week in some cases.

I burn all my stuff on discs, always doubles so I have copies somewhere else as well. In your case that would mean merely 2 x blu ray discs per week.

Bound · 3rd December 2011, 16:11

Agree with Penn you want to look into cloud based backup aswell. For a small monthly or yearly fee you can get an automatic sync setup, encrypted/protected. Well worth it in your line of work imo.

Ryan^p · 3rd December 2011, 16:16

Online storage is something I've considered also, although as its something I don't know alot about thought storing tbs of data would be very costly.

I have a passport which I don't store where my mac is ATM I bck up every now and again.

Manu as said 1tb is not enough, my mac has 1tb the 1tb time machine backing it up is full too, hence the need to shift it onto a better set up. The mac + single back up has been ok for now but obviously I've now out grown the storage it can give me. I don't do computers so taking the iMac apart to install a bigger drive I can't do, and no doubt wouldn't be cost efficient compared to setting up a better long term solution.

Manu · 4th December 2011, 08:32

Depends on what you have, is it a mac pro or just the imac?

Ryan^p · 4th December 2011, 18:53

iMac..

So upgrading ram is a doodle but not on the hd front.

Manu · 5th December 2011, 14:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ryan

iMac..

So upgrading ram is a doodle but not on the hd front.

yeah, laptop technology :/

on the news front, WD is just about to resume production. Give it 10 days or so, then wait and see what happen in terms of prices and availability. I would not buy a hard drive what so ever right now, it would cost you an arm and a leg...

Ryan^p · 5th December 2011, 18:31

ive got a 1tb WD passport which for now will act as a secondary back up for my important work.

Just long term need to look into a proper solution as next year im already discussing some big things so want a decent system in place.