Video & Photo backup solution

[SMR]

Hi guys,

I work as a developer and the company I work at always puts new hard drives on laptops and PC when passing it from employees. Working in close relation with the IT department I get my hands on some of the drive we would otherwise throw away.

 

So right now I have:

 

2x Samsung EVO 850 500gb

1x Seagate 1tb drive

1x 2.5in 1tb drive (forgot the brand)

1x Samsung 320gb drive

 

I test all the drive I bring back home with crystaldiskinfo to see if they are even worth it. A lot are not, but these listed above are all tested and have low hour count.

 

I do a lot of sport and travelling, so I got a lot of GoPro photos/videos plus all the cellphone photos and my girlfriend's olympus photos.

 

I wan't a reliable backup solution. I don't have space to put the drives in my PC case (S340) and I don't want to. I tought of taking an old PC of some sort and put all the disks in it with a storage oriented OS installed on it, like FreeNAS or something in these lines. But that might just be too complicated for a simple backup solution.

 

I was searching online for photo backup solutions and photographers seems to be taking the PITA way of backup with a lot of external hard drive.

 

I wan't to have 2 or 3 copies of the data. 2 at home and one I might leave at work and bring home to synchronize from time to time. I tought of a network bases solution, so I could worry not about the noise and vibration an old PC might engender. 

 

I don't need a fast solution, only a reliable one. 

 

What do you think ?

 

Cheers, Simon. 

[purpa turta]

https://www.neweggbusiness.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9B-12-400-542&nm_mc=KNC-GoogleBiz-PC&cm_mmc=KNC-GoogleBiz-PC-_-pla-_-USB+Converters-_-9B-12-400-542&gclid=CjwKEAjw5cG8BRDQj_CNh9nwxTUSJAAHdX3fIu32Wnf0E7H-AS6EYhnBY_LIUkGB_pjbtVQY58CzXhoCXH7w_wcB

 

This Sata to USB converter might be the answer you are looking for

 

Edit: Or even OneDrive 

[SMR]

53 minutes ago, JaredM54 said:

I would take those drives and put them in a machine to do FreeNas like you mentioned. It's not the simplest solution, but it's not that difficult and there are plenty of guides online. Having 2 copies at home and 1 copy offsite is an excellent idea. You mentioned bringing the storage home to synchronize but depending on your upload speed you could also sync it locally once and then transfer small changes over the internet.

 

This didn't cross my mind at all in fact. I have an internet limit of 430gb per month and I do a lot of Netflix so I'll have to check if this fits in my internet planning but that might be a really good idea.

 

I don't know that much about FreeNAS and how they deal with a lot of different drives. I'll need to educate myself on this topic.

 

48 minutes ago, purpa turta said:

https://www.neweggbusiness.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9B-12-400-542&nm_mc=KNC-GoogleBiz-PC&cm_mmc=KNC-GoogleBiz-PC-_-pla-_-USB+Converters-_-9B-12-400-542&gclid=CjwKEAjw5cG8BRDQj_CNh9nwxTUSJAAHdX3fIu32Wnf0E7H-AS6EYhnBY_LIUkGB_pjbtVQY58CzXhoCXH7w_wcB

 

This Sata to USB converter might be the answer you are looking for

 

Edit: Or even OneDrive 

I wan't something more that a bunch of drives connected to my PC. I wan't it to be independent from my gaming PC.

[dalekphalm]

6 hours ago, SMR said:

 

This didn't cross my mind at all in fact. I have an internet limit of 430gb per month and I do a lot of Netflix so I'll have to check if this fits in my internet planning but that might be a really good idea.

 

I don't know that much about FreeNAS and how they deal with a lot of different drives. I'll need to educate myself on this topic.

 

I wan't something more that a bunch of drives connected to my PC. I wan't it to be independent from my gaming PC.

BTW, I know grammar isn't the most important thing on the Internet, but this is bugging me It's "want", not "wan't". There's no apostrophe in between the n and t.

 

On Topic: Sounds like you need to build yourself a NAS/Storage Server.

 

You have multiple choices in how to set this up, but I would do the following:

 

Use EITHER the Samsung 320GB HDD as your OS Drive, or go pick up a small SSD (Like 120GB is totally fine).

Then install FreeNAS or Windows Server or whatever NAS focused OS you want.

 

I would then install both of the 1TB HDD's, and configure them as a RAID1 array (Or RAID1 equivalent, such as Mirrored array, etc). Share this array as a network drive, then configure the OS to backup to that drive.

 

I would also potentially take the 2x 500GB SSD's and create another RAID1 array and share that, as a high speed network workspace. A network drive that has very high reads and writes, that you can use as a temporary data dump, etc. The SSD's can also be used for anything at all that you might desire. I just suggested to add them as a second network drive if you've got nothing else planned for them.

[SMR]

23 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

BTW, I know grammar isn't the most important thing on the Internet, but this is bugging me It's "want", not "wan't". There's no apostrophe in between the n and t.

 

On Topic: Sounds like you need to build yourself a NAS/Storage Server.

 

You have multiple choices in how to set this up, but I would do the following:

 

Use EITHER the Samsung 320GB HDD as your OS Drive, or go pick up a small SSD (Like 120GB is totally fine).

Then install FreeNAS or Windows Server or whatever NAS focused OS you want.

 

I would then install both of the 1TB HDD's, and configure them as a RAID1 array (Or RAID1 equivalent, such as Mirrored array, etc). Share this array as a network drive, then configure the OS to backup to that drive.

 

I would also potentially take the 2x 500GB SSD's and create another RAID1 array and share that, as a high speed network workspace. A network drive that has very high reads and writes, that you can use as a temporary data dump, etc. The SSD's can also be used for anything at all that you might desire. I just suggested to add them as a second network drive if you've got nothing else planned for them.

Ah yeah thank you for that, I switch language so many times a day it gets confusing sometimes

 

I really like your solution, and I am strongly thinking of building a 500gb RAID 0 as my main drive for my PC + one of the three 1tb I have for stream library, movies, etc..

 

This is starting to take form, I will clone my current of SSD on the Samsumg RAID 0 array.

 

Can I do that ? Like putting a clone of my current SSD to the array of samsung's?

 

It would be the best performance I can get for what I have in hand !

 

Thank you for the idea, I'll look into this.

[mealto]

Before you build anything, have a look at the size of your data set. Are we talking about 1TB of photos and video? If you are an avid sports photog, then you may be looking at 4-5 TB?

 

1. Primary and secondary at home plus tertiary off site is good. But off site in another city far away is better, just in case there is an earthquake or something that affects all 3 locations at the same time. Maybe you bringing dives into your house to swap and something catastrophic happens that day.

 

2. Having Primary and secondary at home on separate locations is ideal but that is not always easy to do. Some users throw primary and secondary location on the same computer, just another HDD. As long as you have a tertiary location, this is acceptable risk in my opinion.

 

Get back with your data set size and we can brainstorm this through. DAM (Data asset management) is getting crazy for the home user and if you really want to protect your files, you need to do it right. Or as right as possible. Our files are only going to grow unless you purge and get rid of old content.

[SMR]

On 22/07/2016 at 8:13 PM, mealto said:

Before you build anything, have a look at the size of your data set. Are we talking about 1TB of photos and video? If you are an avid sports photog, then you may be looking at 4-5 TB?

 

1. Primary and secondary at home plus tertiary off site is good. But off site in another city far away is better, just in case there is an earthquake or something that affects all 3 locations at the same time. Maybe you bringing dives into your house to swap and something catastrophic happens that day.

 

2. Having Primary and secondary at home on separate locations is ideal but that is not always easy to do. Some users throw primary and secondary location on the same computer, just another HDD. As long as you have a tertiary location, this is acceptable risk in my opinion.

 

Get back with your data set size and we can brainstorm this through. DAM (Data asset management) is getting crazy for the home user and if you really want to protect your files, you need to do it right. Or as right as possible. Our files are only going to grow unless you purge and get rid of old content.

I don't need 4-5 TB, for now. I don't even have 300gb of datas. I don't take that much footage and it's mostly to have memories of my travels and activities. I don't even edit 95% of the footage I take.

 

I won't bother earthquakes, hurricanes or anything, I live in a really stable location in Canada and if there is any of this stuff happening here I will be worried about other things first.

 

I'll use my PC at work to do the synchronization for my remote drive, if I can get the OK from the network administrator.

 

I know that sometime I will need more space, but it's not in a near future.

 

Oh and one of my friend gave me an old thermaltake something something case today with a lot of space for drive, he also gave me a 650w power supply so I only need to find a 64bit cpu/mobo + some sata cables at work, won't be too hard.

[Captain_WD]

On 21.07.2016 г. at 6:49 PM, SMR said:

~snip~

Hey there @SMR 

 

My humble two cents on this:

If you want true data safety I would use enclosures on each of those drives and simply use them as backup devices from your main computer. Depending on the storage space you need, you can have similar or different data on each drive. This way you would be safe against power failures, Os data corruption for one reason or another and it would be the least complicated solution. The more complicated (RAID arrays, OS settings, compatibility, always on devices, etc.) the solution, the bigger the risk of something happening. Having all the drives in one single enclosure or build would mean that all of them are susceptible to power failures, physical damage or other type of damage.

 

Let me know if you have any questions! 

 

Captain_WD.

[SMR]

10 hours ago, Captain_WD said:

Hey there @SMR 

 

My humble two cents on this:

If you want true data safety I would use enclosures on each of those drives and simply use them as backup devices from your main computer. Depending on the storage space you need, you can have similar or different data on each drive. This way you would be safe against power failures, Os data corruption for one reason or another and it would be the least complicated solution. The more complicated (RAID arrays, OS settings, compatibility, always on devices, etc.) the solution, the bigger the risk of something happening. Having all the drives in one single enclosure or build would mean that all of them are susceptible to power failures, physical damage or other type of damage.

 

Let me know if you have any questions! 

 

Captain_WD.

Hi,

 

Thank you for your input. Well this is kind what I was thinking about. I thought a Raid 1 terabyte + the remote backup would be safe enough. 

 

I also want to keep my gaming space clean. So the less drives and wires I can have the better.

 

So far I came to the idea of having a drive for the FreeNAS OS, two 1tb drives in RAID 1, plus a remote backup at work that I'll try to setup via internet, all this on a completely standalone build. After that I would use the NAS via my house network.

 

It doesn't seem too complicated and I believe is safe as f***k, no ? 

 

At this point I don't understand why you say a couple of external drives would be safer ? Could you explain a little more ? Is it not a messier way to do backup, forget files, etc ??

[Captain_WD]

14 hours ago, SMR said:

~snip~

Having drives as standalone external storage devices can eliminate any type of errors during the backup such as data loss due to connectivity issues, internet issues, data corruption due to bad transfer protocols, etc. Moreover, having a HDD in a whole system makes it more or less dependent on the other parts and if any of the other parts fail during the transfer you may have your data corrupted or even the whole file system corrupted or damaged. Also, having HDDs in an always-plugged working system makes them susceptible to power issues such as shortage or power outage. All of this adds on to the more risk I was referring to, but this is purely theoretical. You can never know what will happen.

 

You plan sounds good and since you'll have your data on multiple separated storage locations you should be good. 

 

Have in mind, though, that WD Blue drives are not designed for RAID arrays and usage and you may encounter issues such as drive dropouts and data corruption. These drives, unlike WD Red, don't have the additional features such as TLER that can minimize the chances of this happening.  

 

Hope this clarifies it a bit. 

 

Captain_WD.