G+_Shooter_FPV (Shooter_FP Posted April 28, 2017 Share Posted April 28, 2017 Saw a few posts on Synology and stuff, made me think of a question: I was given a new Drobo 5C (yep, I've had good luck with them...). I am a sports photographer, and I shoot primarily in RAW, so I have maybe 5 years worth of photos that takes up about 7TB of space on the Drobo. Being right now that's my only location for these pictures, how in the heck can I back up a 7TB (and counting) Drobo? I can't afford to get a Synology-type device, so not sure what my options are... All I ask is PLEASE don't discuss the bad/good/bad on the Drobo... been there, done that, got the t-shirt... :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Ben Reese Posted April 28, 2017 Share Posted April 28, 2017 I'd say another Drobo, but you're in the same price range as a Synology. An 8-10TB hard drive would cost $250~$400, but I'm not sure how much I'd want to rely on a single drive for backup. Maybe 2 swapped out in rotation? CrashPlan or Carbonite are decent options if you have good upload speed. It would probably take a year to complete the initial backup - though I've heard Carbonite will still ship you a disk to seed the backup. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Jim Hofmann Posted April 28, 2017 Share Posted April 28, 2017 A few months back, KH had an episode on backups, local and online. One was fairly cheap, Glacial(?). If this is just an archive might be an option for long term storage. Personally, I'm still waiting for the 3d crystal cube being developed that a buddy and I discussed about 35 years ago. :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Ben Reese Posted April 28, 2017 Share Posted April 28, 2017 It looks like AWS Glacier is $0.004/mo per GB - or $4.096/mo per TB. That comes out to $28.672 per per month for 7 TB. Backblaze has unlimited data backup plans for < $4/mo. CrashPlan and Carbonite are both in the $5-10 range. Hope this helps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Shawn Ashe Posted April 28, 2017 Share Posted April 28, 2017 Start converting from raw to a lesser format.. eliminate a good number of pics.. else if they are all valuable then glacier is the lowest cost offsite though it will take a while to upload it all Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Black Merc Posted April 28, 2017 Share Posted April 28, 2017 Sports photographer? Mho... Time to move your warehouse of photos to a site like shutterfly (or others) to possibly monetize your supply of "action" photos that some advertising company may pay handsomely for. Proceeds from said could help with upgrades costs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_DeWayne Shorts Posted April 29, 2017 Share Posted April 29, 2017 If your drobo works for now and all you are looking for is a backup for "just in case" why not just buy a drive and a SATA adapter and copy them over? I think the crossover point right now is about 4TB (ie. 2 4's are cheaper than an 8). You can copy them all to the new storage and then disconnect the new drives and store them. A nice ziplock ESD bag with a little desiccant should be fine. You won't be accessing them after they are full of your files so not having more redundancy in your backup shouldn't be an issue. Then once you are forced to replace your drobo you will still have them untouched and can decide then how much you want to spend. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Peter Hanse Posted April 29, 2017 Share Posted April 29, 2017 I have used Amazon drive with prime you get unlimited file and photo storage for $60 a year. It works with Synology directly and can use encryption I control if I want. So that is $5 a month but with slow upload speed very slow. I would also consider DeWayne Shorts suggestion backup or move to external drives your older non accessed photos. I would organize by year label drive and store in fire safe or offsite for emergency backup. You may want to consider an external raid enclosure on a PC or mac to backup to. eshop.macsales.com - External Hard Drive Enclosures For 3.5-Inch Drives From OWC However for cost your better off looking at WD or similar 8 TB drives USB they are cheaper then drive and enclosure Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Daniel Stagner Posted April 29, 2017 Share Posted April 29, 2017 I am into time lapse photography and have a two freeNAS computers with a bit over 40TB of raw photos. I use rsync to keep one the same as the other. This also has the benefit of keeping deleted files on the box being used to (back up to). This was the best option for me as I was able to repurpose older computers from family members who did not want them any more. I needed to buy the hard disks, sata controllers, and two tower cases. Cost in 2014 ~$500. At that time they both only had ten 2TB drives each. I have been adding larger HD as old drives went down. SpinRite is used to fix some 2TB drives but i can not use SpinRite on the larger drives for some reason. At some point i will move one to my mother in laws house and rsync over a VPN. But I need to get the VPN up and running. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Daniel Stagner Posted April 29, 2017 Share Posted April 29, 2017 Forgot to add Amazon Prime Photos is free. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Shooter_FPV (Shooter_FP Posted April 29, 2017 Author Share Posted April 29, 2017 Ben Reese I did Crashplan at one point, got a good Black Friday deal about 3 years ago. Problem was as your storage to them grew, you had to allocate more and more memory to their software running on your PC. I was backing up over 2TB, and the software was dragging so much I had to finally cancel because it was taking over 15 minutes for my computer to boot. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Shooter_FPV (Shooter_FP Posted April 29, 2017 Author Share Posted April 29, 2017 Black Merc I do have my own website, but a lot of what I shoot I like to keep around... ex.: I shoot a lot of Minor League baseball, and I pull players out of my archives when they make it in the Majors... just an example... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Shooter_FPV (Shooter_FP Posted April 29, 2017 Author Share Posted April 29, 2017 DeWayne Shorts This is what I was leaning towards... even though I've been a computer tech for over 17 years, I never really knew how long a stationary hard drive would last. I'd just dump them on a drive, then store them, like you said. I could even do a Safety Deposit box, or at a relatives house, which would satisfy my off-site backup requirement. How long do you figure the shelf life would be of a hard drive with data on it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_DeWayne Shorts Posted April 29, 2017 Share Posted April 29, 2017 When you are talking about it being written to a drive and then that drive being stored and not used? I think you have a bigger chance of the filesystem the drive is formated in being no longer supported before the drive would die. ESD bag will help protect from outside issues and the drive it's self is a sealed environment. If you pull them out of storage once every 3-5 years and do a system scan of the data they will outlast you. The scan will refresh the magnetic charge on the disk, so refresh the data. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_DeWayne Shorts Posted April 29, 2017 Share Posted April 29, 2017 Here is an article that explains it a little better. makeuseof.com - Hard Drives, SSDs, Flash Drives: How Long Will Your Storage Media Last? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Joe Valasko Posted April 29, 2017 Share Posted April 29, 2017 Have you implemented Dual Disk Redundancy in your Drobo? At least you would be protected against TWO disks failing in the One Drobo device. It is not a perfect backup plan since all the data is kept locally but you would not loose any data if even two drives failed within your Drobo. Just a thought. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Jason Davis Posted April 30, 2017 Share Posted April 30, 2017 I think crash plan will send you a drive or two to fill up to save you the initial upload time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Peter Hanse Posted May 1, 2017 Share Posted May 1, 2017 Jason Davis if I remember my time from when we used crash plan it also allows personal use and setting up with a friend or relative to backup to giving remote site Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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