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All posts tagged backup

Photofocus Podcast February 25

Posted by Richard Harrington on February 25, 2013
Posted in: Audio Podcast. Tagged: , , , , , , , .

NOTE NOTE NOTE NOTE NOTE: The Photofocus Podcast Feed HAS CHANGED!

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Download episode here…   or get it on iTunes

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Rich and Scott catch up on a bunch of topics to help photographers of all levels.
  • Black and White workflow
  • Postproduction solutions for black and white
  • Essential grip gear
  • Skip Cohen University
  • Timelapse and Camera Moves
  • 3-2-1 Backup
  • Our new books and how to get them

Hosted by Rich Harrington and Scott Bourne

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lynda.com Learn photography anytime, anywhere, and at your own pace—from bite-sized tutorials to comprehensive courses. Try lynda.com free for 10 days by visiting lynda.com/ Photofocus.

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ShootProof – Use code BOURNE20 to save 20% off the first year of any level plan – even monthly

Drobo - Not only is Drobo 5D fast, but it’s easy-to-use, expandable, flexible, and protected.

The Drobo 5N – Mini Review

Posted by Richard Harrington on February 6, 2013
Posted in: Opinion, Reviews. Tagged: , , , , .
While the Drobo 5N looks like the 5D... it's a very different box.

While the Drobo 5N looks like the 5D… it’s a very different box.

DISCLAIMER: Drobo sponsors the Photofocus podcast. This review was not purchased and is independent of our arrangement to promote Drobo products.

The folks over at Drobo have been on a rampage releasing new products lately with major upgrades across the whole product line. We’ve already given detailed reviews on the Drobo 5D and Mini which both Scott and I have been using. Just last week a new box arrived… the Drobo 5N. I’ve unwrapped and set mine up (Scott’s done the same) and we’d like to share a few thoughts on how the Drobo 5N fits into the storage workflow for any pro or serious photographer or pro video shooter.

What is the Drobo 5N

Simply put the Drobo 5N (retail $599 USD) is a networked storage device. It offers networked storage for a home/home office/small office. From the front, it looks just like a Drobo 5D… the visible difference is the backside. Here you’ll find a single Gigabit Ethernet port. The unit is meant to get plugged into your network. You can use an open ethernet jack on your network or plug it directly into your Wireless router. You can also direct attach it to a Gigabit ethernet port on your computer.

The back of the Drobo 5N only offers one connection type— gigabit ethernet.

The back of the Drobo 5N only offers one connection type— gigabit ethernet.

The unit has 5 bays. I dropped in five performance SATA Disk Drives. These can be found at just about any big box electronic store, computer retailer or online. I used the 3 TB models from Seagate (the Barracuda models to be exact — about $150 a drive). Drobo offers a useful page here telling you what drives work — http://www.drobo.com/products/choose-drive.php.

How many drives do you need?

You can start by putting in only one drive (although you don’t get protection that way). I chose to put in all 5 slots as I wanted the Drobo 5N to cover my entire home office and personal computers in the house. In fact, you can choose to set the Drobo up some one or two drives can fail, with no data loss.

Screen Shot 2013-02-03 at 12.31.53 PM

My setup resulting in about 12 or 9TB of effective storage (single versus dual disk failure).

Keep in mind… ALL drives fail… I mean ALL. It’s a matter of when… not if. Drives are like the tires on a race car… eventually they wear out. Drobo’s not in the drive business… so you can use just about any performance drive you choose. You can also mix drive sizes or brands if you need to. The best part is, you can upgrade storage by just popping out the smallest drive and replacing it with a larger one… the Drobo 5N rebuilds itself and protects your data.

What do you use the 5N for?

There are lots of reasons to use a Drobo 5N. Here are some of the ways I am using it. Think about it as an expandable backup disk that all your computers can see. Going with dual disk redundancy is a small performance hit, but the extra security is worth it.

Screen Shot 2013-02-03 at 12.32.00 PM

Dual disk enhancement keeps backup sve

  • Shared storage. You can partition the Drobo 5N to have shares. A share carves out data for a particular user. All the software to create and administer users is included and runs through the Drobo Dashboard package. It’s easy to setup and I could make dedicated shares for each user in my home office. All shares have password controls and you can set it so users can only see certain volumes. Additionally, a share can be set so multiple people can log in at one time… allowing for collaboration.
  • Automated backups. Using Apple Time Machine or a Windows utility like File History or Volume Shadow Copy? You can target the share for automated backup of your computer at a scheduled time. Mixing Mac and Windows on same network… consider MacDrive or the equivalent so you can mount Apple formatted disks on Windows boxes.
  • A wireless parking lot. I have SSD’s in my Mac and HP laptops. They’re fast… but not very big. I find myself filling them up with movies, podcasts, photos, etc. I can quickly transfer files over my network (even wirelessly) to backup or clear off space.
  • A backup for my primary storage. I have targeted several folders on my Drobo 5D and Drobo S for additional backup. This copy can run in the background, but still transfers quite fast.
  • Remotely accessible. Using the Back to My Mac feature on my Mac, I can login remotely to one of my home computers. From (if you have a Mobile Me account, you can turn this on Under System Preferences. You then have storage you can access remotely by connecting to a computer that shares the same network as your Drobo 5N.

How fast is the Drobo 5N?

The Drobo 5N is meant to be a fast and easy to access storage device. I wouldn’t make it the device that I do my primary editing off of (the Drobo 5D is best for that as its a faster connection type). However the insides of the device seem to be MUCH faster than the Drobo FS (the previous network unit). Inside they’ve boosted the speed by about 5X.

If you really want speed, you can add a MSATA card which is a type of SSD Drive (supported cards here —http://support.drobo.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/664). These cards start around $60 and are a great add on for performance as they improve the cache (where files get stored). I didn’t test the 5N with one.. but have ordered another MSATA card from Amazon as I am pleased with the boost it gave my 5D and Mini.

A wired connection was much faster

A wired connection was much faster

I found that the Drobo 5N was nearly as fast as a USB3 hard drive when connected via Ethernet to my network. The speeds I got were fast enough for demanding tasks like photo and video editing. I got close to 100 MB a second (MB/s) — while FireWire 800 is about 80 MB/s. Keep in mind that factors like drives, network connections, and cables could impact this either way (up or down).

Drobo5N_Wifi

WiFi speeds are still quite usable

Over WIFI, I still got respectable speeds. Backing up 400GB as a new Time Machine backup took about 6 hours over WIFI. By comparison, the Apple Time Capsule required almost 3 days for the same task (Drobo kicks Apple Time Capsule’s a$$). This was a huge plus for me as I travel a lot. I want my computer to backup quickly without having to plug into the wired network. Wireless automated backups have saved me before.

Backing up a full laptop to Time Machine ran fairly wuic.

The Bottom Line

The unit itself has killer features that normally cost a ton of money. The SSD slot we mentioned earlier… plus the ability to set two a two drive threshold for failure. If a drive does go down, the system can send you an email notice. Accidentally lose power and the unit’s built-in battery will ensure that the Drobo stays alive long enough to get any data in transmit recorded to a drive.

Scott put the Drobo 5N through his usual torture tests: removing and adding drives during read/write operations, using different sizes and brands of drives, mixing old and new drives, pulling the power cord out “by accident,” etc. In every case the Drobo was able to rebuild and retain all data. No loss. None.

The Drobo 5N is an easy way to add redundancy to your storage regimen. it works for single users, homes, or small teams. It’s easy to set up (just follow the setup card in the box). In about 10 minutes I had a network drive up and created shares for 6 users. If you want the ability to backup your files or computers to a second location, this unit is a clear winner.

Highly recommended.

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This Post Sponsored by:

lynda.com Learn photography anytime, anywhere, and at your own pace—from bite-sized tutorials to comprehensive courses. Try lynda.com free for 10 days by visiting lynda.com/​Photofocus.

Skip Cohen University Professional photo education for wedding & portrait photographers. Sign up for SCU THRIVE in Vegas, March 8, 9 – 2013

ShootProof – Use code BOURNE20 to save 20% off the first year of any level plan – even monthly

Drobo – Not only is Drobo 5D fast, but it’s easy-to-use, expandable, flexible, and protected.
Amazon

Drobo Mini 4-Bay Storage Array – Mini Review

Posted by scottbourne on January 14, 2013
Posted in: Reviews. Tagged: , , , , .
Drobo Mini Photo

Drobo Mini

(Disclosure: Drobo is a sponsor of Photofocus)

Some of you may remember that last month I reviewed the new Drobo 5D. (You should refer to that review because some of the information there is also applicable to the Drobo Mini.) This month I’m going to review the Drobo Mini. This is a very different animal than the Drobo 5D. In fact, it’s a very different animal than anything else out there. But if you’re in the market for fast, portable, redundant storage, you should read on.

The Mini holds up to four 2.5″ SATA I/II/II drives and one mSATA SSD. This is in effect a fusion drive (similar to the technology used in the new iMacs from Apple and the same fast cache arrangement offered in the Drobo 5D.)

The connectivity on the Mini is provided using both Thunderbolt and USB 3.0. Cables are included. (I love that – wish Apple would listen up.) As far as I know, there is no other device (besides the Drobo 5D) that offers both USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt. The Thunderbolt transfer rates are very fast. Using USB 2.0, we transferred 210 GB photo folders that took almost 11 minutes to move from place to place. It took 20.02 seconds using Thunderbolt on the Mini.

The BeyondRAID technology allows for redundancy, meaning if you have one drive go bad, you can replace it and the unit will self-heal with no data loss. There is also a battery backup built into the unit. This is impressive. Drobo has assigned this battery backup technology to both of its new products and you would pay big bucks for this from most any other manufacturer.

Like we did with the Drobo 5D, we torture tested the Mini. We pulled and added drives during reads and writes with no problem. We pulled the power with no problem. The Drobo Dashboard software (free) helps you keep track of the drive bay (and installed drives) health and makes it easy to format and configure. Gone are the days where you needed to hire an engineer to configure RAID arrays.

The Mini doesn’t self-heal quite as fast as the Drobo 5D but it’s fast enough and faster than any other RAID (or RAID-like) device we’ve tested with the exception of the much larger and more expensive Promise Pegasus R6.

The Mini is very thin compared to the Drobo 5D. It is easily portable. It comes with a special cable that recognizes that the use case for this device is on-the-go, portable storage. You have to insert the cable like a key – turning from left to right so the power cable doesn’t accidentally get pulled out.

Some reviewers (one prominent reviewer in particular) should have egg on their face since they based most of their negative review of the Mini on the fact that the cable kept coming out of the back of the unit. Well – if you don’t take time to RTFM that’s what happens. There’s also a clear diagram on the back of the unit (for those who didn’t read the manual) that indicates how the cable should be installed. Sigh. I guess anyone on the Internet can say anything without concern for accuracy. For the record, properly installed the cable will NOT come out of the back of the Mini.

I have also read reviews claiming that the unit is noisy. Maybe I got lucky but considering the speed, power and size I think the noise is minimal. It’s quieter than the big RAID drives I used to keep on my desktop.

As to the performance, I installed four of the Seagate Momentus XT 750 GB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 32 MB Cache 2.5 Inch Solid State Hybrid Drives (and bought a fifth as a backup.) The drives are $130 a piece. I also installed a 64GB mSATA solid state drive in the Drobo Accelerator Bay. This cost $75. You don’t have to install more than two drives and the mSATA is optional but if you’re going swimming you might as well get yourself totally wet and fill the whole unit. (I should note that there are 1TB 2.5 inch drives but I always like to wait until something like that has been out for a while. I opted for 750GB and have a total of just slightly more than 1.5 TB of useable space after redundancy. Also note you can mix and match drive sizes and brands. Drobo doesn’t care, as long as the drive is on the list of those they support.)

The reason to buy the mini over the Drobo 5D is its portability. And portable it is. The whole thing (loaded with drives) weighs in at just under three pounds. It’s light and small and would easily fit in a briefcase.

The Drobo Mini isn’t for everyone. Seriously. If you don’t need portability you probably don’t want one. It’s not the super fastest unit in the world, but it’s still plenty fast. It’s not cheap, but there’s nothing else like it. And for those who want redundancy on the road, fast and reliable data transfer, battery backup all in a small case this is your choice. If you don’t need the portability and have the space on your desk buy the Drobo 5D. If you want something that simply says “COOL” and fits in a small space, get the Mini.

The unit sells for $605 on Amazon. Add four drives like I did at $130 each and you’re up to $1125. Add the mSATA card and you just top $1200. For that you get Thunderbolt/USB 3.0 connectivity, fusion drive, peace of mind, redundant data, battery back up, speed, sleek design and extreme portability.

I understand the objections to price on this unit and to a degree I’d say they are warranted. Could it or should it be cheaper? Probably, at least a little bit. At least Drobo could throw in the portable case. But there is no doubt that if you need this type of setup – you won’t be discouraged by the price. Why? Because the price discussion has to be had in the context of ”Compared to what?” And that’s where the cookie crumbles because there IS nothing that compares. Thunderbolt, and USB 3 fusion drive that would fit in a ladies large purse?

Highly recommended.

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Photographers’ Field Prep – Test & Backup

Posted by scottbourne on February 4, 2011
Posted in: Technique & Tutorials. Tagged: , .

Kaflia Bay, Alaska - Scott with Coastal Brown Bear in the Background - Copyright Marc Katz

In just about six weeks, I’ll be leaving for one of my mega expeditions. I have been doing fewer and fewer of these because frankly, they get harder and harder for me to do for physical reasons and because I can actually make more money at home. That said, I still enjoy them and as long as I do – I’ll go shoot them.

This time it’s back to Alaska. I’m not after Coastal Brown Bears this trip. I’ll be flying in by seaplane to several locations near Homer, Alaska this March to photograph Great American Bald Eagles. During this trip I will literally be surrounded by Haliaeetus leucocephalus. Hundreds (even thousands) of eagles are thought to inhabit the state in late winter.

Henry David Thoreau wrote, “In wildness is the preservation of the world.” Let us cherish and protect those wild places and the creatures that inhabit them.” Eagles have come back from near extinction, but they are not out of the woods yet. The goal of this trip is to memorialize the eagle and it’s impact on Alaska and the nation.

Alaska is rugged country and in winter, it’s more rugged still. That means I have to give careful consideration to gear – both the kind I wear to keep warm and the kind I need to shoot with.

On this trip there will be tons of gear. I’m shooting lots of video as well as stills. I’ll be shooting with dedicated video cameras, hybrid video cameras, even medium format and compact cameras. I’m shooting with Nikon AND Canon cameras and lenses. Then there are the accessories like flash, lens/sensor cleaners, batteries, memory cards, etc.

Copyright Scott Bourne 2008 - All Rights Reserved

It will take me the better part of two days to get from Vegas to my ultimate destination. The same goes for coming back. So with all the time, trouble and expense involved, I want to make sure I give myself the best chance possible of success.

So here’s a lesson for all of us. Before going out on any big shoot, but particularly an expansive field expedition like this one, make sure to test your gear. Make sure everything works. Give yourself enough lead time so that you can send things in for repair if need be before the shoot. If you’re going to Alaska in winter, make sure your clothing is in order. Also make sure you have plenty of spare batteries.

Copyright Scott Bourne 2008 - All Rights Reserved

Then – after you have tested all your gear for the trip, think back up. You need backup for your data, your clothing and your camera gear. What happens if your luggage gets lost? Do you have sufficient clothing with you to make the shoot? Is there a store nearby where in the worst case scenario you could buy new clothes? Then there’s data. How will you back up your files? What if you’re away from power and civilization? Then there’s the camera bodies and lenses. What if they fail? It would be a real shame to go to all this time, trouble and expense and then end up with bupkis because your gear went bad and you had no backup.

In my case, I’m bringing my main gear and then relying on borrowlenses.com to ship me another set of gear to my hotel in Alaska. Then when I leave the hotel for the seaplane each day I can know I have redundancy without having to bring everything I own.

In short, do your homework. Do you have the right gear? Is it functional? Does it need repair to be brought into an operational environment? Do you have backups and the backups for them?

This sort of preparation may seem like overkill, but I’d rather have the hard work on the front end to avoid the heartbreak of getting skunked.

PS. I will have trip updates here on Photofocus.com just as I did when I made bear trip. Stay tuned.
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Sponsored by CLIQ Photo Community

Are Your Photos Backed Up? My New Photo Backup Tools & Archive Strategy

Posted by scottbourne on January 10, 2011
Posted in: Reviews, Technique & Tutorials. Tagged: , .

I am no longer using Drobos in my workflow. I’ll address the Drobo situation in a moment. First I want to talk about my new system. It’s one that I am feeling pretty good about.

I have switched to the wiebeTECH system. It’s a standard RAID box that holds drives just like a Drobo does. The big difference is that it’s pure RAID – no proprietary software required. It’s easy to set up and use and offers rock solid protection for my images. As far as reputation goes, not many photographers have heard of weibeTECH. They are big in the military and law enforcement world. Their boxes are industrial strength and that makes me feel just a bit safer.

Here’s my new workflow. My working Aperture Libraries – i.e., the stuff I am working on lately, sits on wiebeTECH RTX400-QR. (Retail price $899 – street will be slightly lower.) (My legacy files are stored on multiple SATA drives and backed up onto DVDs and tape.)

The RTX400 is my new main hub. This 4-Bay tray-free RTX has the right mix of easy connection options (USB, FW 400/800 and eSATA), performance and portability. It is a good introduction into having a large working volume with RAID protection. I am using Hitachi’s Hitachi Ultrastar A7K2000 2TB hard drives configured RAID 5 and this yields a volume size almost 6TB. If a drive fails I merely pull the bad drive and insert a replacement, the RAID rebuilds fast and automatically. Much faster than a Drobo. (NOTE the Hitachi “Ultrastar A7K2000″ are enterprise-level drives. You can probably get away with using cheaper drives. Hitachi’s Deskstar 7K2000 will probably suit most people. I am no longer using the Western Digital Green drives because in a true RAID device, they seem to have trouble reporting that they have falsely spun down. I never had any problems with them in the Drobos.

My backup/archive solution is the wiebeTECH Model RTX220-QR. (Retail price $499 – street will be slightly lower.)

It has an onboard RAID controller supporting RAID 0 and RAID 1 and connects via USB, FireWire 400/800 and eSATA.

I operate this box configured RAID 1, which according to wiebeTECH is the most popular configuration and is commonly known as the “mirror”. This is because it creates two identical copies of the two hard drives used.

When the drives fill up, I remove/label and place into an anti-static case (Case-DB http://www.wiebetech.com/products/cases.php). Then I store a copy onsite and another copy offsite. This tray-free philosophy is especially cost effective for photographers since they no longer need to buy enclosure after enclosure (as I did with Drobo) but merely buy bare drives when needed. I rotate these drives every 24-48 hours depending on how many shoots I have scheduled during the week.

When I want to spin up one of the back up drives and copy data from it, I insert it into a single-bay wiebeTECH RTX-100. (Retail price $225 – street will be slightly lower.) It connects to my Mac just like any other drive and shows up on the desktop ready to work.

Performance

In a word the wiebeTECH stuff is FAST – and I do mean fast. The read/write times, when connected via Firewire 800 are noticeably faster (in real world tests) than the Drobo. Where you really see a difference is in rebuild time. I find the wiebeTECH RTX220-QR rebuilds itself after a data loss or new hard drive insertion in roughly 33% less time than it takes a Drobo. In one test it was half the time. This makes a big difference in my personal workflow.

The drive boxes are built to US Department of Defense specs and tough as nails. The word industrial comes to mind. In some cases, they are lockable – which is great if you’re trying to keep the interns from doing severe damage to your data.

The wiebeTECH products all come very well packed with full documentation, cables, etc. After a month of testing I can tell you I am hooked. We recently tested products from several manufacturers. This is the one I decided to keep and put on my own desk.

Conclusion

In closing I’ll detail a little more about the switch. I started using Drobos when they launched. At that time, I had little experience with RAID and the notion of a no-hassle, plug and play piece of gear appealed to me. But since then, the newer Drobos have reported more issues as the company moves away from the simpler boxes they sold near launch. I also became concerned about customer service and support issues. My four weeks with wiebeTECH has shown me the difference in support. Theirs is amazing. I also prefer the non-proprietary aspect of the wiebeTECH boxes. If the Drobo stuff fails, you have to find another Drobo box to make the data work. If one of the wiebeTECH boxes fails, I can drop the drives into ANY RAID compatible enclosure and get to my data.

There’s nothing wrong with using Drobos. The older ones are better in my opinion than the newer ones, especially if all you need is mass data storage. They are super easy to set up and use and for the general photographer will work fine. In my case, I have mission-critical data – i.e., my image library which is essentially my 401k to worry about. I feel better in that case using the wiebeTECH.

P.S. No matter what system you use, if your images aren’t backed up in at least two locations, stop what you are doing and take care of that. A friend of mine just lost his 100,000 image library to a fire. Don’t let that happen to you.

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This post sponsored by the Digital SLR Store

Backing Up & Moving Photos On Windows Machines

Posted by scottbourne on October 15, 2008
Posted in: Technique & Tutorials. Tagged: , , .

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a guest post by TWIP fan Ben Leal. Ben is a Microsoft employee, however he’s not part of any of the product groups mentioned in this post. Ben is a tech enthusiast, gadget freak, and photo lover fully on a PC platform.

Back up

On TWIP you talk a lot about the need to have multiple copies of files and a redundant file back up system. Microsoft produces a product called Windows Home Server targeted at the consumer market for the growing digital collection of content homes are generating. You can buy these machines prebuilt or can build one to your specific tastes and needs. The processing resources are pretty modest and people could easily convert an existing older system and run it comfortably.

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Surprise Backup Device (The iPod)

Posted by scottbourne on August 23, 2008
Posted in: Technique & Tutorials. Tagged: , .

If you’re like 97% of the photographers who read this blog, you are involved in digital photography. And that means you have to consider backing up your digital photo library. You do have a backup don’t you? If not, stop reading right now and go make at least one back up and then come back to the blog.

Assuming you understand how important it is to backup your digital photos, you might have access to a backup drive you hadn’t counted on – your iPod.

That’s right, the iPod makes a wonderful backup device. If you have a large enough iPod (The new iPod Classic from Apple offers up to 160 Gigs of storage) and if you have a small enough photo library, your iPod (in a pinch) can make a wonderful emergency backup device.

Back when I photographed weddings, I carried my iPod with me and transferred images from the CF cards to my laptop and then from the laptop to the iPod. I carried the CF cards and the iPod in my pocket during the wedding and left the laptop in the trunk. That way I always had the wedding stored in at least two locations.
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