Backing Up My Digital Files

Working in the IT industry, I have seen my fair share of system failures and the data loss that ensures. Whenever something like this happens, I often ask myself how I’d be affected if I’d lost all my personal data. In reality, I could probably cope with losing everything *but* my photos. Photos (and other treasured memories) are the irreplacable items. I can recreate spreadsheets, documents and the like, but I’ll never have the chance again with my family to capture those memories.

Many years ago, when we first started with digital photography, I started wondering how to best backup my documents for total fear that some day I’d loose it all. I came across two main risks, and here is how I mitirgated them:

Hard drive crash: Moderate risk
I have many drives that have given me many, many years of service. I’ve also had one or two with problems that renders the data inaccessible. To get around this, I have an external USB drive that all data is backed up to. I’ve had this in place for over five years, and I’m now onto my second generation unit which is the same size as my main data drive (1TB). This is set as a scheduled task, so its not a chore for me to manage. I just use Robocopy – it is super simple to setup.

Cost for 1TB USB drive: $150

However, about 18 months ago I started becoming paranoid that this was not sufficient, and either there would be a problem before the files were copied off to the external drive, or the scheduled task would fail and I’d be without a backup for several weeks (which has happened). At the time I was doing a technology refresh for home, and invested in a mirrored raid array as the first line of defence. (For those not aware, a mirrored array is as simple as two sets of disks, which have the same information written to both of them, and managed by your hardware. If one disk fails, you should be able to continue uninterrupted, and then replace the failed disk ASAP. The added benefit is that disk reads are twice as fast as you can have two drive heads reading data from separate disks at the same time.)

Cost for the second drive and better motherboard: ~$150

Further to that, I also duplicate some photos to my wife’s laptop on a scheduled task too – but that is more for convenience for her than for backup purposes. Again, Robocopy serves well.

Incidently, after reading a lot of advice online, I never wipe my camera data cards until the images are in at least two other locations, usually my PC and the external drive.

Theft/fire/damage: Low risk
To combat total phyiscal loss, I always had the intention to leave my external USB drive with my mother-in-law, and conduct a backup at least once a week for it to be taken off-site. In practice, this would have been great, but in reality it never happened. I needed my data off-site, and I needed a method that was self-maintaining and affordable; online backups fitted the bill.

After a considered review, I ran a trial with BackBlaze. What impressed me the most was an article I read on building Petabytes on a budget. The engineering that had gone into their pods impressed me, as well as the pricing model of unlimited storage for US$5 a month. I have now been using them for about 11 months, and been very happy. I randomly test a restore of a few files, and there is nothing I need to do other than check that their software is still running (hasn’t crashed out yet). My only gripe was the portability of the data between computers. I rebuilt my PC earlier in the year, and I had to re-upload all my data again (a 3 month process with my ISP data limits). The customer service was receptive of my feedback, and their client software now allows this porability.

Cost: US$50pa (or $5 per month)

With these softwarekeep.co.uk methods in place, I sleep well knowing that my data is safe. The data integrity process is for all intensive purposes entirely automated, and will serve me well for many years to come. You could easily forego either the USB drive or the mirrored drive and save some money – but I wouldn’t recommend foregoing both. Removing one option would leave you with an initial first year cost of about $200, and then $50 pa ongoing. A very cheap method of insurance for keeping those precious memories intact.

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