External Storage & Backups

Hello everyone…havent been around for a while. Busy at work and home.

anyway, I have been thinking of getting a new home computer. Possiu=iuby desktop, possibly laptop. I have a desktop now (in the basement) and many times just grab the work laptop for convenience but I want to have a newer home unit.

That said, most computers these days have “small” SSD drives and the thought is maybe I am best hosting my media Movies/Photos (lots and lots of those)/design work/etc on an External Drive. THEN get 1-2 Backups for these and maybe even a cloud-based backup.

I’ll be buying a newer Mac with USB-C/Thunderbolt (maybe USB 3 for iMac). Some at work have suggested I just get regular Externals (HDD) instead of pricier SSD and they’d be fine. Some said RAID/NAS can be more expensive and that a couple backups are just as fine. one Photographer here said he uses a Mirror External box with second External - 2 are for main storage and the second external backs up one of the mirrored drives, then BackBlaze I think for Cloud.

Anyway, what are YOUR methods for storage and backups. Thanks in advance and ask away if you want any further clarification about my needs.

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Dedicated drive for OS Time Machine.
External local storage on a RAID (4 drive bays). We only bring jobs to desktops to do work on them. They cant live there. The files are too large and fill necessary scratch space.

Remote storage on a second RAID drive (4 bays) for a not local but not internet-necessary backup. Still available via network rather than online. Because the intertoobs do go down once in a while.
i believe we have a “cloud” backup solution as well for the entire system but that is the realm of IT, so I have no idea what it is.

The only problem with RAID drives is sometimes a new box driver is not compatible with old box drivers. So if the BOX goes, it is not possible to just swap out the disks. Ask me how I know this…? It’s happened more than once.
We now get an extra backup unit with a new drive.

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I use backblaze for cloud backups. I haven’t had to retrieve" from them (thankfully), but I do occasionally test out downloading random files form my cloud backup. To me, its worth the peace of mind. I have a regular (non SSD) dedicated external drive hooked up that backs up through time machine.

I figure between cloud backup and local backup, I’m pretty covered. BackBlaze also backs up connected external drives. So if you have an external drive that you have connected that is more “long-term” job storage, it will back that up as well. If that makes sense.

Thanks guys…
also this is for HOME usage. so perhaps not as extensive a solution is needed.

oh and good tip for the BackBlaze and Externals.
My next big thing to tackle is deciding on a DAM for my photos. Aperture just isn’t going to cut it much longer.

I have a Synology 4-bay NAS device. Each bay has a 4TB drive. I’ve been really happy with the software that came with it. I work off of my internal hard drive. The NAS is for Time Machine backups and used as a media server.

My OS and personal files are backed up via timemachine to a 3tb external drive that’s hooked up to my home WiFi.

I use Dropbox business for all of my work files, so that includes automatic cloud backups and unlimited versioning.

I’ve used Carbonite for years now. I know I’m not reliable about manual backups, so I like that it’s automated and they keep track.

We got a NAS drive at work for our mixed network (Mac + PCs). Maybe we were sold a lemon but it’s so slow it’s almost unusable. We use shared drives to pass jobs around and one PC with a big HD for archive.

At home my iMac is getting old, so disk space is purely system, applications + scratch. I bought an external SSD 1Tb which is probably nerfed by the old USB connection, but that is my file storage (and applications I don’t use regularly). I plan to add more as I need them. It cost me £50 which I thought was reasonable.

I use Cloud services like DropBox (other providers are available) to transfer big files to and from work or home. I wouldn’t use cloud storage for anything personal or sensitive for work because of security concerns. Plus, I like to have a copy of everything. With cloud storage, if it disappears one day there’s really nothing you can do about it.