Computer back ups, really, just do it!

[Smashie]

So I lost two hard drives this last weekend, they had years of photo's on them, family videos, my entire music collection, you get the picture?

But because of something that was told to me ages ago 3-2-1, I got new hard drives and I have lost nothing!

3-2-1

3 copies of the files, in my case, computer, NAS and offsite
2 different storage media, computer and NAS
1 off-site, I use the service that is named after the substance Han Solo was encased in, but the big American River sounding company also do backups at a very good price.

Yes it was inconvenient, no I will never buy HDD's from Seagate ever again, have I lost anything? NO 

[Steinar]

 

[DaveK]

As I intimated on another thread, I had a very similar experience recently and was very lucky to get all my data back! I will not be buying Seagate HDs again either!

I have a slightly different setup, but pretty much follows your formula:

- Main NAS (QNAP TS-453A) (4 x 3 TB WD Red HDDs)

is replicated to

- Old Seagate NAS which now has 4 x 3TB WD Red HDDs

The QNAP is backed up to the cloud.

I don't have have much data store don my PC but what there is is backed up oin a schedule to the QNAP (so it also finds its way up to the cloud and is replicated to the Seagate NAS).

I'm not taking chances any more!

[kkokkolis]

"Nås is a locality situated in Vansbro Municipality, Dalarna County, Sweden with 417 inhabitants in 2010."

That didn't help at all.

It happened to me during Xmas. I was lucky since a guru restored my disk and now I have another external HDD for back up (and you reminded me I should back up soon).
Some files are dropped in a box, my music is also stored in my Archos, my work files at work, Only my documentary movies have just two copies.

Mine was (still is as I replaced it under warranty) a WD, the Seagate I had before worked fine for years, as my first WD Passport still works fine after 12 years (used as a TV add-on).

[enki_ck]

Never had problems with Seagate HDDs,  have a few old ones that still work great. But I learned the hard way how important backups are. A 640GB Hitachi HDD died in me without warning and I lost photos of loads of trips, family ones, work stuff I spent years on, music, videos, you name it. They are now owned by WD if I remember correctly.

I now store the more important stuff on the box where you drop stuff (why are we using codes BTW?) and also on Mega cloud hosting site. For some reason they are not as popular as the box although they offer 50gb of free storage.

[Kev D]

You posting about your failed drives in the what do you have on the way thread prompted me to do my full acronis image backups 

[Whoey]

Although I understand many people are anti Google, you can have unlimited photo storage on Google photos. The trick is to change the Google photo storage from "original" to "high quality". "Original" counts against your account maximum storage (along with drive and your gmail) whereas the "High Quality" actually only limits to 16MP (which is above what most phones/cameras put out anyways, and even if you do upload something over 16MP it automatically converts them down to 16 (My Nikon DSLR actually does 16.4MP)

It might not be a perfect solution, but it's at least some worthy photo storage so you don't lose any.

This isn't an alternative to backup, it's just an additional bonus.

[Smashie]

As I intimated on another thread, I had a very similar experience recently and was very lucky to get all my data back! I will not be buying Seagate HDs again either!

I have a slightly different setup, but pretty much follows your formula:

- Main NAS (QNAP TS-453A) (4 x 3 TB WD Red HDDs)

is replicated to

- Old Seagate NAS which now has 4 x 3TB WD Red HDDs

The QNAP is backed up to the cloud.

I don't have have much data store don my PC but what there is is backed up oin a schedule to the QNAP (so it also finds its way up to the cloud and is replicated to the Seagate NAS).

I'm not taking chances any more!

I'd still go for an off-site, or cloud backup Dave. Heaven forbid burglary, fire or flood, you still have your data 

Francis Ford Coppola had his laptop and his backup stolen back in 2007 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7019644.stm

[Steinar]

Speaking of companies with varying amounts of goodwill, Flickr gives you 1TB for free.

[DaveK]

I'd still go for an off-site, or cloud backup Dave. Heaven forbid burglary, fire or flood, you still have your data 

I do mate! Everything on the QNAP NAS is backed up to the cloud. As I had the "not to be totally trusted" Seagate NAS however, I also replicate it to that as retrieval would be quicker in the event of say, a disk failure - but its all in the cloud too.

I say that - its about 83% in the cloud so far as there's over 2 TB and it takes a while to upload lol. About 6 weeks so far....

It's the video that takes up the space.

[Whoey]

Speaking of companies with varying amounts of goodwill, Flickr gives you 1TB for free.

Did not know that, but after a bit of digging, they convert any unsupported format to JPEG. Also some pretty annoying video limitations.

Google leaves my NEF files alone. I don't recall there being the any (1gb) video restrictions.

[powernoodle]

I'd still go for an off-site, or cloud backup . . .  . Heaven forbid burglary, fire or flood, you still have your data 

If Fukushima Daiichi can go belly up, Greece can become insolvent and the Roman Empire can disappear, so can a server farm.  So while I do use cloud storage as one of my multiple backups, I don't consider it any more reliable than an external hard drive.  I rely primarily on multiple, redundant hard drives, some of which are stored off site.  I bought another terabyte yesterday for $59, so its not that spendy to have 3 or 4 redundant hard drives, plus the cloud.  The key is to have multiple redundant backups stored in many places.  It can be a pain, but not as painful as losing all the pics of your children growing up.