It’s hard to put a price tag on years of memories you captured in photos or the hours of video you took that still brings a smile to your face. Ask yourself, what are my photos worth?
If you’re a professional photographer — someone who sold a print or charged for service — this question gets easier. How much would I lose if I lost everything on my hard drive? You get my point. We need a bulletproof backup plan, hardware that is safe, simple and expandable, and last, easy configurable software to manage it all.
3-2-1 Backup concept
- Create three copies of your files
- Store on two different media
- Keep one backup copy off-site
The 3-2-1 Backup concept has been around for years and is foolproof (a big advocate worth checking out is Peter Krogh). So, if it’s foolproof, why are so many frustrated people (I was one of them) calling recovery companies to ask them, no begging them, to retrieve their precious files?
In order for the 3-2-1 Backup to be foolproof, you actually have to follow the simple steps correctly to build a “set it and forget it” backup.
Store on two different media
The first step is to decide what type of media you plan on using for your backup. Let me start by saying DVDs are gone (they also start to disintegrate after a few years). Sorry, not up for discussion.
But seriously, the “Store on two different media” concept isn’t about choosing two different TYPES of media. It means to make two identical copies of your files stored on two separate devices. This way, if you have a hardware failure, you can recover using the other device. I suggest using two external storage systems.
Don’t misuse the word “Backup”
The process of backing up refers to the copying and archiving of computer data so it may be used to restore the original after a data loss event.
That’s what I thought until I deleted a file on my main hard drive and couldn’t find it on my “BACKUP” drive. I chose to use file syncing as my backup format. OK, so I fix that by selecting FULL BACKUP. I looked at my new backup drive and couldn’t read it. To save space, FULL BACKUP compressed my files and the only way I could see them was with the software that was provided.
My final step was to mirror the drive. That worked great until I manually saved files to the mirrored drive. The software deleted them on the next sync. Have I painted a frustration scenario?
Which one do I use and when?
Syncing
Creating two identical copies that is updated both ways. If a file or change is detected on drive A, drive B is updated. If a file or change is detected on drive B, drive A is updated. If you delete a file, both are deleted. This is great if you make changes on both drives. For our purpose this ISN’T RIGHT for us.
Mirroring
Creating two identical copies that is only updated one way. PERFECT for us. We want our second drive to be the same bit for bit. If the main drive fails, we swap and use the mirrored drive until we rebuild a new one. There’s no downtime. This is the reason I recommended using two external storage systems earlier.
Copying
Selecting all files from one hard drive and copying them to the other. There is no link. If you change something on drive A, drive B never sees it. Use this when you are giving away copies.
Backup
Create a compressed copy of every file: Deleted files, multiple changes to that file, every file you ever created. As you can imagine this will require more storage than your original hard drive and it can only be read or restored with software. This is a perfect format for off-site backup. It can also be used for a dedicated system that is only used for backing up your system but remember the last part of our foolproof 3-2-1 plan? Have a stored copy off-site.
Recap
MIRROR two external hard drives that are updated automatically when a change is made. There are plenty of free utilities that can do this; I recommend SyncBack from 2BrightSparks. The Pro version has a few extra features that are worth it. I’ve added an affiliate to both versions, but do your research and find one that works for you.
Purchase an OFF-SITE BACKUP PLAN with online access. I use CrashPlan from Code42 because it’s perfect for my Drobo 5N, but there are plenty of other off-site backup companies.
Idle thoughts over morning coffee: Hey, Photofocus and everyone! I have never bought into Cloud storage. It is, to me, the equivalent of handing over a hard drive full of my photos to a perfect stranger, giving them money, and saying “watch these for me,” except with the Cloud, the hard drive belongs to the company. What happens when the Cloud company goes out of business? What happens when, through yet another security breach, my photos are raided by an employee or hacker? I am tied to the Cloud storage company “permanently.” If I don’t continue to pay them a… Read more »
This is why we say have 3 copies. 2 are backups. The cloud is a last resort for me. But because its automated I don;t have to remember to make a copy and shuttle offsite.
I would certainly will always do a 3rd backup, will be offsite but my own, not third company, RKJ is totally right and doing the 3rd copy myself in a 3rd media storage is the best bet. We are talking about efficiency and availability which is any company look for. I am not saying this post is a bad idea just though on a better idea.
Ivan.. you stated “We are talking about efficiency and availability” that’s the purpose of having 2 local copies of your data. The third copy off site is only used for an extreme situation and hopefully you’ll never need it. Having it off site in another state or area of the country protects your data from a local catastrophe.
After 12 years of never loosing an image, I recently had. 3 hard drives fail in 24 hours (and no, there wasn’t a power surge or anything that would cause all 3 to go, it was just an insane coincidence). Anyway, I am fortunately an avid backer-upper to coin a new term, and managed to recover everything. However, for many of my images, the only copy I had left were stored on 10 year old DVDs and CDs, which ironically were all fine- and all those images that were stored on DVD are now safely on 3 hard drives (locally)… Read more »
Unluckily, when it comes to backups you need to know more about IT than photography. First, you need to understand what could make your data files unavailable. There is not only file loss, there is also file corruption for example. It happens because even computer can make “mistakes”, and because magnetic supports are not perfect and not perfectly stable over time. Your disk is working, your file is there, but its data are no longer correct. This kind of problem is much harder to detect, and if you just copy files, it doesn’t matter how many copies you have, after… Read more »
Hey Kmorwath, finally an explanation that makes some sense to me and I am a complete noob. I often wondered about the scenarios you mentioned and how to best combat them. May I ask what backup software you use?
My current plan is to backup to Amazon Glacier it is cheap and reliable and to upload I’m using Zoolz Home so I don’t have to worry about the retrieval fees. https://www.zoolz.com/Zoolz_Home
Great article! I follow 3-2-1 as well but I just use two USB 3.0 external hard drives. Wonder what is the reasoning of using two units of Drobo?
Just a tip that might help people on a smaller budget. Most decent NAS boxes let you attach an external USB drive so you can backup directly to that (and the cloud) rather than buying two separate NAS devices.
Great article! I follow 3-2-1 as well but I just use two USB 3.0 external hard drives. Wonder what is the reasoning of using two units of Drobo?
After 12 years of never loosing an image, I recently had. 3 hard drives fail in 24 hours (and no, there wasn’t a power surge or anything that would cause all 3 to go, it was just an insane coincidence). Anyway, I am fortunately an avid backer-upper to coin a new term, and managed to recover everything. However, for many of my images, the only copy I had left were stored on 10 year old DVDs and CDs, which ironically were all fine- and all those images that were stored on DVD are now safely on 3 hard drives (locally)… Read more »
Unluckily, when it comes to backups you need to know more about IT than photography. First, you need to understand what could make your data files unavailable. There is not only file loss, there is also file corruption for example. It happens because even computer can make “mistakes”, and because magnetic supports are not perfect and not perfectly stable over time. Your disk is working, your file is there, but its data are no longer correct. This kind of problem is much harder to detect, and if you just copy files, it doesn’t matter how many copies you have, after… Read more »
Hey Kmorwath, finally an explanation that makes some sense to me and I am a complete noob. I often wondered about the scenarios you mentioned and how to best combat them. May I ask what backup software you use?
Just a tip that might help people on a smaller budget. Most decent NAS boxes let you attach an external USB drive so you can backup directly to that (and the cloud) rather than buying two separate NAS devices.
My current plan is to backup to Amazon Glacier it is cheap and reliable and to upload I’m using Zoolz Home so I don’t have to worry about the retrieval fees. https://www.zoolz.com/Zoolz_Home
Idle thoughts over morning coffee: Hey, Photofocus and everyone! I have never bought into Cloud storage. It is, to me, the equivalent of handing over a hard drive full of my photos to a perfect stranger, giving them money, and saying “watch these for me,” except with the Cloud, the hard drive belongs to the company. What happens when the Cloud company goes out of business? What happens when, through yet another security breach, my photos are raided by an employee or hacker? I am tied to the Cloud storage company “permanently.” If I don’t continue to pay them a… Read more »
This is why we say have 3 copies. 2 are backups. The cloud is a last resort for me. But because its automated I don;t have to remember to make a copy and shuttle offsite.
I would certainly will always do a 3rd backup, will be offsite but my own, not third company, RKJ is totally right and doing the 3rd copy myself in a 3rd media storage is the best bet. We are talking about efficiency and availability which is any company look for. I am not saying this post is a bad idea just though on a better idea.
Ivan.. you stated “We are talking about efficiency and availability” that’s the purpose of having 2 local copies of your data. The third copy off site is only used for an extreme situation and hopefully you’ll never need it. Having it off site in another state or area of the country protects your data from a local catastrophe.
Drobo is the worst garbage I’ve ever used. I’ve had several Drobos and every one has malfuntioned, each with terabytes of photos & videos. A client of mine had his only Drobo crash. Every one gave the error that 3 drives had failed at the same time. EVERY Drobo has done this. Drobo uses a proprietary formatting so there is absolutely no data recovery utilities or experts that can get your data back. Their product is deplorable, and if you ask Mr. Google about this you’ll see hundreds of horror stories like mine. As an IT manager for over 20… Read more »