Photo backups

  • Thread starter Thread starter ajf
  • Start date Start date

ajf

ajf

ajf

Soldato
Joined
30 Oct 2006
Posts
3,052
Location
Worcestershire, UK
Need some advice please.
My backup plan currently consists of 2 USB drives that are synced with my PC and then kept in secure locations on and off site.

Bit of a manual process though.

I am also thinking of moving over to a laptop for all work, so starting looking for alternative ideas.
I'll need an additional external drive for storage for the laptop.
So I thought about getting a small NAS** (Synology DS115J) which I can sync my laptop and drive to.
The NAS supports cloud backup services, specifically Amazon S3.

I was thinking of using that as an offsite backup.

Does that sound safe, reliable and secure?

If it makes a difference (or not!) the laptop is a MacBook Pro.

Probably about 600Gb total.

**I could use my current PC for this but it seems overkill leaving it on 24/7 for this purpose and power consumption?
 
Last edited:
Have a look at Amazon Prime as you get an unlimited* photo backup within the subscription price which I assume using the same S3 infrastructure. It may exclude professional photographers though in the T&C's?

*I imagine there will be a fair use policy
 
I think the NAS route then backed up to the cloud is a good idea. It gives you both on site and off site backups.

The initial upload will obviously take a while but after that it will be incremental updates so it will be small.

Infact actually you could use the NAS as your photo storage and run your lightroom library. That way it's physically protected by a RAID and then it's constantly backed up to the cloud as well. If your PC or your laptop dies, you don't need to worry about the data.

I've been gradually migrating everything as a split between NAS & Cloud storage and I really think it's the way forward. Instant access to all docs, photos and data from almost anywhere and any machine.
 
I'd double check that Amazon don't run their own compression on your photos when you upload.

As much as i like Google Photos, it's very annoying that the compress the files. I tend to save mine to another cloud storage so they don't get compressed.
 
Thanks for the comments and feedback.
I had looked at the Prime option as already have it, but couple of issues. There will be more than just photos to backup if I use this route and also I haven't found a NAS that can hook into it for automatic uploads.

Good point mentioning RAID as actually the Synology I mentioned is only a single disk version so may need to consider a slightly different version there.

I've just signed up to the free tier of Amazon S3 so I'll see what it is like in general use and then make the decisions from there.

Just wish upload speeds were better and uncapped!
 
I back up to both NAS + crashplan. Both of them come from my PC i.e. I run the crashplan client on my PC (can't get it set up to backup from the NAS unfortunately, although it is possible for other NASes)

Crashplan is good for being unlimited and they don't mess around with your files, but being in the US is a bit of an issue. It could be very tedious to get all of the data back if I ever want it - although that is quite unlikely.

ajf said:
Just wish upload speeds were better and uncapped!
Click to expand...


Originally when I joined crashplan in 2014 I tried to upload my 1-2TB or so of back catalog, but when I upgraded to windows 10 in 2016 and it still hadn't finished uploading I gave up and just started uploading from this year, now I just let it finish backing up each time I import and it actually is able to reach 100%

I still have the old stuff in disks which I keep at work so I still have an offsite backup at least!
 
the individual one is $60 per year. I looked in to several alternatives about a year ago but I couldn't find anything I was happy with so crashplan is a compromise for me. Don't know if anything has changed since then. I notice amazon prime includes DNG files for unlimited photos...

If I was starting again I might go down the route of PC -> NAS -> Amazon using Synology cloud sync and cloud station but I'm too scared of deleting all my photos by accident with cloud station. I don't want something that syncs both ways! Also not sure I'd be happy converting RAF to DNG right now.
Hence I just use rsync right now but have to remember to run it manually, and then renaming folders after back up is a hassle because it has to re-sync them all. I'm just bad at doing stuff in the right order at the right time.

I also considered using crashplan to back up to the NAS as a network drive, but it stores it encrypted on the NAS so the only way to get the files back is via their client. In some ways good but not what I wanted
 
Last edited:
Another thumbs up for crashplan here. I have all my photos stored on my UnRaid server so they are protected by Dual Parity. The server is also backed up to the Crashplan servers.
 
I have been hacking my brains out over the last month on a NAS drive (Synology)

Can anyone recommend a 2bay one?

I was going to get a 4bay but can't afford £434 for a unit excluding a drive :(
 
syncbackpro does my backups to amazon, and I use the mirror option which is source -> amazon copy only, not full sync.

You could run it on a PC on a schedule, mine wakes up in the night, and moves stuff from the NAS to amazon. If you have other files to upload, an unlimited sub is a worthy investment too (I did to upload my videos up too).

No hit on compression, I upload RAW + XMPs.
 
I'm still using my microserver and crash plan.

After faffing around with a few, I have just kept crash plan going, unlimited storage for any file type, with every version of the file kept, including deleted files etc, and works great on several os's

Currently I have 5TB of files sync'd with them, never had any issues, and restored files on a number of occasions due to either deletion of accidentally overwriting a file.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom