Review my devised backup solution.

413x

413x

413x

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Ive thought long and hard about this backup solution but would like a few critical eyes on it

in lightroom i have two 'components i need backing up

catalog
DNG files

i think i only need the DNGs but would like the catalog too as it is no hassle


i have two drives in my pc
2x250GB SSD RAID 0
2TB HDD

i keep the catalog on my SSD RAID0 partition for use
i backup my catalog using Lightroom to the HDD
and i keep the DNGs on the HDD

both will be backed up to my on site microserver

periodically i will backup the HDD to an external HDD and take this to work as an off site backup.
(this contains catalog backups and DNGs themselves

does this give me a

working copy
on site backup - for such things as dead drives
off site backup - for such disasters as power spikes/fire etc

of absolutely everything i need?
 
That should be ok but the 'periodically' bit needs clarification as I wouldn't risk a time gap anywhere if possible.
We backup to a 2x 4tb NAS which also immediately backs up to Amazon Cloud storage (free with Amazon Prime) and also convert to DNG prior. Also as well as your catalog, don't forget to backup your presets!

Recently we've also moved to compressing all work over 2 years old to .jpg, then added each individual set to WinRAR and compressing further for storage only purposes which has freed up nearly 3tb of storage.
 
I recently moved our whole lightroom folder onto dropbox. Not really a backup solution but it gives my wife and me shared access to the library (not both at once though). Dropbox does give me protection against a failed HDD though and a certain amount of security.

If I upload some photos and do some processing, they are also accessible and downloaded onto wifes PC via dropbox (and any other PCs in the house)

Also then backup folder to external offsite USB drive kept at another location every few weeks
 
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I think the cloud storage solutions are are all too small for raw files.
I may be able to keep the exported DNGs of my favourite pics in there

I have just bought a Seagate 4tb external drive to keep at home and I'm hoping to use the 200gb of storage in there for this + catalog.

Have no idea how many real keepers I have. Maybe I need to be more ruthless and only keep ones I feel are good enough to put on Flickr.
 
413x said:
I think the cloud storage solutions are are all too small for raw files.
Click to expand...

Amazon Prime has unlimited photo storage for DNG/JPG etc and thats what £70 a year or something? and you also get music/video streaming and next day delivery on top works well for me.
 
Didn't realise amazon prime is unlimited. That is good. I'll probably take that up if my 200gb isn't enough.

May add a raid 1 as it would save some hassle of having to do anything if one drive failed
 
Looks like a good plan.

I've got everything on an external drive apart from this year's stuff. All raw files, in folders by date taken. I keep copies the files I publish and they have the date in the exif so it's easy to find the raws if needed. I rarely use LR, all my processing is Bridge->Camera raw->PS so no catalogues etc.
 
And said:
Looks like a good plan.

I've got everything on an external drive apart from this year's stuff. All raw files, in folders by date taken. I keep copies the files I publish and they have the date in the exif so it's easy to find the raws if needed. I rarely use LR, all my processing is Bridge->Camera raw->PS so no catalogues etc.
Click to expand...

wat? T___T LR is so much easier though!
 
The way I had my backups arranged 6 years ago or so:

Desktop:
2x500GB RAID1 Working Drives
2x1TB RAID1 Medium term Drives

End of shoot (so when I got home from a wedding or photo-shoot) & End of Day Backed up to:
HP Microserver 5x 2TB MS HOME managed duplicated folders. Which was in a different part of the building.
Continuous Online Crashplan backup, unlimited backups with file versions.

Offsite HD Backups that I swapped over each week.


This meant that if there was a local issue I always had off site backups.

This setup meant that I lost no uptime when I lost one of my working and medium term drives (faulty PSU), Malware Issues (Client USB drive - lesson learnt!) and windows update knackered the server shared drives.

Crashplan wasn't very fast, but as I had this running in the background during the day and unlimited overnight, it kept on top of a days work easily enough - but the initial backup took a few weeks.


If I was redoing the system today, I would use SSD's instead of HD's as working drives, and potentially someone other than Crashplan.


Personally I'd never use RAID0 as you're doubling your chances of a bad drive taking out your work, and I would have two HD's that you swap over attached to your Microserver providing backups.
Crashplan still provides free software to do local backups - and also if you have a friend you can backup to for free too.
 
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Bear in mind that RAID on SSDs brings several other complications with performance and endurance- TRIM doesn't really function on RAID unles you spend megabucks on an Enterprise storage card, so you'll need to overprovision all your SSDs or use an SSD brand that has decent onboard wear-leveling and garbage collection features. These aren't (yet) as effective as good-old TRIM however.

You can always use OS (software) RAID instead, with a small performance penalty.

Additionally, remember that SSDs have a finite and fairly predictable lifespan, so if you put two brand new SSDs in RAID1 of whatever type, they're likely to fail at about the same time, which kind of negates the benefit of redundancy in the first place... I've seen this happen on production systems.
 
He'l never be able to write enough to the SSD's to worry about them failing due to endurance, even TLC.

In the early SSD days, I had an x25m, vertex, and 830 Pro fail. One was sudden controller failure (x25), the other was buggy OCZ firmware, and the 830 Pro failed due to a power cut when it was in the middle of writing. It wouldn't even secure erase and Samsung couldn't fix it either.

Since then, touch wood. None of my SSD's (I run about 8 of them) have given me any issues.

But yeh, SSD Raid 0 is pointless for Lightroom (even SSD's don't make much difference compared to HDD's). A single big drive is better. Less latency as well as the other issues you mention.
 
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The raid0 I have on my ssds is no bother.

I've actually never had a hdd fail and even if it does it takes about an hour to restore from microserver backup.
Feel the increased read and write speed of raid 0 ssds is more than worth risk of unlikely failure

I will have 4 copies of everything

1 on cloud
1 on my off site drive
1 on local machine (DNGs on hdd catalog on ssd raid0)
1 on micro server

For all 4 to be lost would be very very unlikely I feel

Thought about putting DNGs in ssd but appears not worth it
 
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413x said:
Feel the increased read and write speed of raid 0 ssds is more than worth risk of unlikely failure

Thought about putting DNGs in ssd but appears not worth it
Click to expand...

I wouldn't worry about your raid 0 failing either. But you really are not getting any performance benefit from the increased read/write speed, you are probably getting less performance in most instances.
Just look at real world benchmark times of the 950 Pro. And that doesn't have to deal with the increased latency of the raid overhead + the performance degradation due to lack of trim. Next time you upgrade, I think you are better off getting a single fast SSD from a performance point of view. Or get two drives or more, but forget about raid 0.

My setup is Apple/Samsung pcie SSD for OS. 1TB 850 Pro for catalogue and Cache. 4TB software raid 10 for DNG's. However with all that, I doubt I'm getting much performance benefit in Lightroom. To be frank LR sucks from a performance perspective relative to the competition, especially with high res raws on high res screens. On normal screens it's ok though.

On1 raw converter is looking interesting.. hopefully it will nudge adobe to do a complete rewrite of lightroom, instead of releasing slower and slower versions with a few extra performance sucking features tacked on.
 
My system is a variant of the above. I don't run a business, personal stuff only.

1. SSD for import, selection and edit on my main PC. Catalogue on SSD too.
2. SSD is backed up to external USB (my main PC backup).

3. Once photos edited, I move them to my guetto NAS where my library lives. (Intel NUC with 4x external 2TB USB drives)

4. Syncback pro copies catalogue to USB drives
5. Syncback pro mirrors files from the 2x (data) USB drives to 2x USB (mirror/backup) drives overnight.
6. Syncback pro sends all images to Amazon drive overnight. I store RAW files + XMPs. The XMPs are so small that they just fit in the other non photo quota on Amazon.
7. 2x mirror USBs drives rotated off site for offsite backups every month or so.

This gives me, 1 day rollback on the USB drives, some redundancy, automatic offsite drive backup rotation and cloud backup.
 
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PS: if you go down the amazon route, I recommend syncback as it's going to take you a LONG time to get your initial set before you can just upload the deltas.
 
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