Long Term Backup- family files

Good evening everyone. I'm sure there are many of you out there who have seen this issue before so I wanted to get some advice and see if there was some other ideas for this.

My family's photos and Video just cracked the 60gb mark and will only be increasing with the advent of Super hi-res photos and the addition later this year of a Hi-def camcorder.

I figure the size of files will grow another 40gb this year and then 80-100gb per year after that.

Currently for my backups I copy all the family files to all THREE computers in the house. I have large enough HD's in all of them.

Second: I have 1.5TB of extra HD's on my main rig

third: I backup to 4.7gb Taiyo Yuden professional DVD media and then store these DVD's offsite in a fire proof safe. I have some 8.5 Gb verbatims made in Singapore but have not used them yet.

I don't want to spend the extra money on online backups unless there is something affordable since the files with eclipse 200gb in a couple years. not to mention what if they go out of business.

Blue ray DVD's seem like the wave of the future with 25gb space but I'm unsure as of yet on the long term storage capabilities, plus at $200+ for the burner and $15 for media--YIKES!!! perhaps in a year or 2 this will be more reasonable.

Was thinking of an external USB hard drive to be stored offsite but it won't fit in the offsite safe unless it was 2.5 size.

Thoughts

Well now that the price of 1 TB hard drives is at $200 (I think) it wouldn't be a bad idea to start building a small server. For around $500 - $600 you could build a great little server of 2 TB or 1 TB with backup. Also you could schedule the server to automaticly turn itself on and off for backups easily enough (making it better than USB hard drives )

I have done this as well. I made a 715GB RAID5 array on my fileserver, and both desktops back up to this every night. I also keep versions for a week, so if something gets deleted form the desktop or documents folders then we just have to look in another day in the week's folder to grab it back. After 7 days, older backups are deleted, so it rotates nightly like that.

Since array controllers CAN bug out, there is a 750GB drive on the way next week, and that will be an online backup of the backup, done once a month. I do not have offline backups yet, but tape or a 750-1TB usb drive would work nicely, stored in the fire safe downstairs.

DVD media has a lifespan, and I don't know what that is. CD media was/is ~10 years and I don't know if that has changed or not with blue ray. That is something to consider as well. I assume a sealed hard drive would last longer in static-free isolation (bag sealed, not folded over), but that's just a guess.

Kind of off topic but fireproof safes probably won't help you in case of a fire. I know somebody who's house burnt down and everything plastic and even some coins inside the safe melted and in turn ruined everything in the safe.

Well yeah, that is a concern I agree. Mine is in a crawlspace, which I may fortify some later this year, OR rent a safe deposit box. One or the other. I like the crawlspace for me because it borders on the outside wall and can be made fire resistant easily. In Hugh's case, that may be different.

Two of the concerns I had were fire OR water and theft (being in the insurance business)

I do incremental DVD backups (once every 2 months). The fireproof safe is at a relatives house and its OLD school, with 4 inches of clay in the walls.

I like the safe deposit box idea. I'll check out my bank during the week) Having a server in the house that backs up really isn't needed since I offload the media top my main PC, then copy it to all the other machines via USB jump drive.

I run a redundant file server at my place, and my parents do the same at theirs (2hrs away). We give each other FTP access for backups.

JCLW said:

I run a redundant file server at my place, and my parents do the same at theirs (2hrs away). We give each other FTP access for backups.

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JCLW,

Can you expend a bit on your setup? I too am in the process of trying to figure out my backup scheme.

Hughhefner, sorry to jump in.

I like the ftp access thing, I just built a new system for a friend and could simply give him a spare drive to throw in his server.

Well I'm sure you know already, but make sure it is passworded good, or better yet tunnel it through ssh or some other form of encryption, because (to me) family data is as important as business or banking data.

If you're really anal about longetivity, tape backup is probably your best bet, but it's hella expensive.

Off site storage is a good idea, it all depends on how much you want to keep this data.

JamesXP said:

tape backup is probably your best bet, but it's hella expensive.

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Not as expensive as the priceless information that it carries

Tapes themselves are not bad pricing wise, the drives on the other hand can be spendy.

Dunno your budget, but these things are probably the best available right now in terms of longevity - short of punch cards of course

http://www.inphase-technologies.com/products/default.asp?tnn=3

thideras said:

Not as expensive as the priceless information that it carries

Tapes themselves are not bad pricing wise, the drives on the other hand can be spendy.

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also the controller if you want a good one it will cost you as well

I store a copy of all my more important files on a Qnap NAS device with a 1TB drive. It's passively cooled and supports just about anything you want (runs linux and you get root access by default). I have an external 1TB drive attached, and it syncronises the data to it once a week.

Before ending up on the NAS the data has been (or stays) on my main rig which is currently a mac. The mac has backup with timemachine to an external disk. This is cooler then syncronizing with rsync because it stores every changed version of the file. So if a file would happen to be corrupted the old backup copy won't get replaced.

I also burn a copy of all my important files on DVD's and take them to work. And then I have one more external drive I keep at work and syncronize every 6 monts or so.

edit:

I don't care about cd / dvd longevity. I used to burn stuff on cd's, and later copied the data to dvds. Some day when blueray get's cheaper I'll copy everything over, and next I'l copy to whatever replaces blueray.

dropadrop said:

This is cooler then syncronizing with rsync because it stores every changed version of the file. So if a file would happen to be corrupted the old backup copy won't get replaced.

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I'm not going to pretend rsync is anywhere near as user friendly as Time Machine, but there's a pretty clever way around most of that issue.

I backup my files to a local fileserver with rsyc, following the Easy Automated Snapshot-Style Backups with Linux and Rsync guide. Its rsync, cron, and hard-link wizardry makes for a mighty nice backup.

I make daily snapshots of ~100GiB of data (mostly photos), and keep each for a week. One of those daily backups survive as a weekly backup, and I keep around weeklies for a month. Because of how the snapshots share unchanged data, my 250GB drive is only 60% full and rsync does its nightly backups in a few minutes.

If I had a spare box, I'd consider also putting a little rsync server in my brother's house for an offsite backup...

JigPu

I just use a backup drive I have in my pc to store that stuff and I share it all with the wife via ftp. I also sync to an external backup drive and ftp to our file server.
Every 3 months or so I rip some new dvds of everything just to be sure.

I have a good friend who just purchased a system from me who is going to allow me FTP transfer to his home fileserver.

I'm going to give him a 750gb Western digital and upgrade his ram to 3gb so his system can SCREAM. He will split the drive in 2 partitons and give me exclusive secured access to the main partition.

For me this works out real well since what I was looking for was an Offsite solution.

So there we have it, What can go wrong? DON'T answer that guys!!!!!

1. Family files backed to 3 different PC's and 4 different hard drives at my house.

2. Backed up to DVD and stored in a fire Resistent safe OFFSITE. ( eventually to Blue ray--once the price drops)

3. Backed up to an offite FTP server with secured access.

Now I feel better... thanks for all the input.

kind of scary the lenghts we have to go through to make sure out data is safe and survives soon you will buy a house with a datacenter in the basement that is water and fireproof for all your computer needs.

Hughhefner said:

So there we have it, What can go wrong? DON'T answer that guys!!!!!

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Well...quite a bit. Have you considered backing up to an external drive and completely unplugging the device just in-case your ups/surge protectors fail? Hard to fry a drive that isn't plugged in . I know you backup to DVD's, but I do not trust optical media what-so-ever to hold data for a long time. There is actually a bacteria or fungus (don't quote me on that) that will actually eat the metal on the disc that stores the data.

1. Family files backed to 3 different PC's and 4 different hard drives at my house.

2. Backed up to DVD and stored in a fire Resistent safe OFFSITE. ( eventually to Blue ray--once the price drops)

3. Backed up to an offite FTP server with secured access.

Now I feel better... thanks for all the input.

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That is a pretty good start

Mr.Guvernment said:

kind of scary the lenghts we have to go through to make sure out data is safe and survives soon you will buy a house with a datacenter in the basement that is water and fireproof for all your computer needs.

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How did you get the plans for my house?!?!?