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Thread: BackBlaze and/or CrashPlan "Cloud" Backup

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    Default BackBlaze and/or CrashPlan "Cloud" Backup

    Is anyone using either BackBlaze or CrashPlan for backing up multi-TB of image files?

    If so, what was your upload experience for you initial archiving? I'm expecting weeks for 2 to 3-TB, but there's a big difference between 3-weeks and 3-months!

    Also, I'm worried about the financial stability of these companies. The companies like Carbonite, Amazon, etc., with a lot of financial wherewithal, have severe limits on total storage usage. These smaller companies have unlimited plans and very competitive prices, but I wonder if they'll be around when it's time to recover files.

    I'm beginning to think that putting a NAS drive at a friend's house and keeping one for them at my house is the way to get offsite backup that's reasonably reliable and reasonably cost-effective. Still, after initial load-up, cloud storage is very tempting.

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    Super Moderator arash_hazeghi's Avatar
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    The problem with off-site over the internet backup is the very slow transfer rate, even with a fast cable connection it takes days if not weeks to transfer TB's of data.

    I think a solid NAS is the best solution, l am thinking about Synology who are the leader in this business.
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    Thanks Ari.

    My daughter is a senior site reliability engineer with a very large technology company and she's using Synology NAS in her personal 24-TB solution. I actually have a Synology NAS (4-TB), here at the office, that I'm using for my offsite backup now. So far, knock wood, all the Synology drives are behaving well.

    I agree with the speed problem with uploading an archive, but I'm thinking that it's worth the investment in system time. The other option is to put a drive in a friend's system for the offsite solution. My research into cloud solutions is showing HUGE variability in upload speed, by a factor of 10. The two that I've listed are a couple of the fastest. I'm hoping here to find some with real world experience with large archives and these, or other, cloud solutions.

    My immediate personal needs are only 2 to 4-TB, but I'm also trying to help a pro photographer friend, with a 48-TB archive. He lives in remote South Texas and has a hodgepodge of drives onsite, with no offsite protections. He's particularly worried about area flooding and thinks that he needs to have his remote somewhere far away. Also, whether hardware, or cloud solution, the thousands of dollars involved are daunting to his budget. He works his butt off to make a good living, but, like most "successful" photographers, he's not rolling in money. This is part of the attraction to BackBlaze and CrashPlan, because even though they're flawed, they're cheap. You have to balance that against the massive time needed to get a 48-TB archive uploaded and the substantial risk that one, if not both, of those companies is likely to be out of business in three-years.

    Ari, what's your offsite solution? I imagine that you have many TB to protect.
    Last edited by David Stephens; 10-07-2016 at 01:29 PM.

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    Super Moderator Daniel Cadieux's Avatar
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    How are external HDs for offsite storage? Is it wise to have backups this way? Do those HDs fail even when not in use long-term?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Daniel Cadieux View Post
    How are external HDs for offsite storage? Is it wise to have backups this way? Do those HDs fail even when not in use long-term?
    Maybe I don't understand your question. To use HDs for off-site backup, you take them off-site. For instance, I have a NAS drive at my office to backup my HD drive at home.

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    I guess I wasn't clear, as I do know what off-site backup means. I'm just wondering if simply storing a HD offsite is a good long-term idea. I've always assumed that when it is said that they all eventually fail, it is because they are in use, not just sitting idly as backup.

    Anyhow, I'm not a technical person at all, so I had to look up what "NAS" is. Is using an offsite NAS as a backup to a home HD better than just using another HD? I do not need anything more than 4TB really.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Daniel Cadieux View Post
    I guess I wasn't clear, as I do know what off-site backup means. I'm just wondering if simply storing a HD offsite is a good long-term idea. I've always assumed that when it is said that they all eventually fail, it is because they are in use, not just sitting idly as backup.

    Anyhow, I'm not a technical person at all, so I had to look up what "NAS" is. Is using an offsite NAS as a backup to a home HD better than just using another HD? I do not need anything more than 4TB really.
    NAS, at least for Windows users, has gotten much easier to install lately. In some earlier versions of Windows, it was a "professional" solution, not aimed at us average neophytes. Lucky for me, one of my daughters is a senior network reliability engineer with a major tech company, so she could remotely help me through. With the last Windows 10, it's closer to plug-and-play, as are most HD by companies like WD, Netgear, LaCie, etc. What's moved me away from the plug-and-play is horror stories about things such as hardware based encryption keys that cannot be recovered if there's a failure of the power supply. With NAS, you define such things as encryption and have your own key, if you even encrypt. For cloud based, the files should be encrypted, but for hardware based, you can probably do without it. WD is an example of hardware based encryption key. I suppose that you can capture that key when you first install the drive, but apparently it's easy to install and skip that step, which you could live to regret.

    For me, NAS had fewer unknowns and its lack of user friendliness was something that I could overcome, thanks to family resources. I think that most users can still work with proprietary drives of 4-TB and less, but make certain that you've recorded encryption keys or turned off automatic encryption during the setup. Every brand has it's bad reviews and failures, which is why we need back-up. About, RAID, if you've truly back-up offsite, then don't need RAID except for data that hasn't been backed up. In general, those drives don't just sit idle, because the back-up must be continually updated. If you have old stuff in true "cold storage", then you need two, because of the failure risk that you mention.

    When your needs go beyond 4-TB, I think that you should look to NAS. My daughter agrees with Ari, that Synology is a go-to brand in smaller solutions (in this case, I'm meaning that 24-TB or less is "smaller").

    All this points to the need for a robust Cloud solution for photographers with over 1-TB to backup. As Ari rightly pointed out, upload speeds are painfully slow and we're talking weeks or months of constant upload to bring large archives up to date. Some providers allow you to send in a HD, but you have to buy the overpriced HD from them and it's only 1-TB. Despite the pain of getting a large archive initially loaded, I'm thinking hard about trying BackBlaze or/and CrashPlan for a cloud backup. It's looking like no one here has tried. it.

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    Hi Dan,

    a single HDD is not really a robust solution for cold storage (data that is not being accessed frequently), at some point it will fail, but nobody knows when. So when you go back to read your data you may just find a useless brick.

    NAS= Network Attached Storage

    it usually is a chassis with HDD or SSD drive bays, where you can install, 2,4,8, or even more drives. The NAS controller usually operates these drives in RAID mode with some redundancy so if one (or some times more ) of the drives fails your data is secure. NAS also has its own file system, and talks to the outside world as ftp serve/network drive so you can read and write from multiple platforms like Windows, Mac, Linux or even iOS/Andorid at the same time without needing to re-format it. The files can be backed up and synchronized automatically from different physical locations over LAN or the internet. It's like a personal cloud or dropbox per se. As you see , it is much more sophisticated and robust than a simple HDD which is not really considered a true backup solution for data that is critical or valuable.



    hope this helps
    Last edited by arash_hazeghi; 10-15-2016 at 01:16 AM.
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    Another off-site storage solution and probably the most reliable in the world! is AWS (Amazon Web Services) snowball backup service. this is designed for large multi TB data users. instead of using the internet with limited bandwidth, Amazon will mail you a "black box" which you attach to your computer and download all the data, then mail it back to amazon. they then store this in their almost infinitely secure cloud pool. The data will be distributed in hundreds of sites around the world with 10's of redundant copies. However this service is a monthly subscription and can become quite expensive. Also back up is not real time so data loss cans till happen between your back up intervals.
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    Thanks for the info Arash. That's what I feared about HDDs, even when used as cold strorage. I still have some DVDs from when I first started, and I sometimes get the feeling that those are the safest for the moment, barring an unlucky event to get them physically lost! But then again in no time there will be no more drives to read them....

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    Quote Originally Posted by Daniel Cadieux View Post
    Thanks for the info Arash. That's what I feared about HDDs, even when used as cold strorage. I still have some DVDs from when I first started, and I sometimes get the feeling that those are the safest for the moment, barring an unlucky event to get them physically lost! But then again in no time there will be no more drives to read them....
    I'm not sure that risk of physical harm is any less with DVDs vs. a NAS drive or even RAID HDD. Certainly, fire and flood can do them all in. Searching DVDs has to be painful. With my drives, I don't care if the image was from last month or from 2007. I can access it in seconds.

    For those with under 1-TB, there are free or near-free off-site cloud solutions with Google, Amazon and others. Above 1-TB, the solutions get rarer, more expensive. I'd go with a big name, public provider to mitigate the risk that they may go out of business.

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    The best advice I heard was that if you do use online back-up to treat it as the 'third' option in as much as you should have at least 2 back ups somewhere in your chain - one you are working with, one back up and a third copy in case the back-up fails. If you subscribe to that philosophy then you should be doing an 'at home' back up anyway with the online back up as an emergency if both your drives at home fail. One other thing to consider is how long it takes to recover data from the online service which again is where having a NAS back-up at home is a consideration. One advantage of a cloud service is that you can access your photos from anywhere you have an internet connection which may reduce the need to carry drives around with you.

    I can understand your caution about online services: I recall about 5 or 6 years ago one of the major players went bust and gave the users just 14 days to download their files so you can imagine the uproar that caused!

    The process Arash mentioned about the company sending you a drive for them to do the initial upload is one that I have heard other companies do so it is worth knowing the questions to ask when doing further research.

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    Having two on-site back ups only protects you from failure of one of those devices. Come fire, flood, etc. both devices are likely to be ruined. Hence, back up is only complete if there's an off-site component.

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    About 6 years ago, the neighbor across the street had a lightning strike which caused a fire. The house was destroyed .... not from the fire, but from the water damage from three fire trucks.

    Since then I decided I needed to have an offline backup option.

    1. Four external drives
    a. 500 GB SSD with Final Cut Pro X
    b. 4 TB with Lightroom Photos/Raw Files
    c. 4 TB partitioned into 1TB and 3 TB. 1TB is for iMac Time Machine. 3 TB contains iTunes, Documents and other files
    d. 3 TB partioned into 500gb and 2.5GB. 500Gb is SuperDuper backup of iMac drive. 2.5 TB is for various other files
    2. I also have two more 4 TB drives that I keep in my bank safety deposit box. I use each to backup drivs b and c from above. I go to the bank on 1st and 15th of each month and backup to these drives using SmartBackup 4.1

    I had tried BackBlaze, but to do the first backup of my Lightroom drive? It said it was going to take 6 weeks!

    Marlo

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