How Do You Backup Your Files (2TB worth)?
 

I'm looking for suggestions on how to backup atleast 2TB-3TB worth of files from hard drive failures, thefts, fire, natural disasters etc. Burning them on CD's will take too long and buying multiple hard drives can be expensive. Any other solutions?

burn them onto 25/50gb blurays? or
another harddrive that you just store and don't use?


better yet, its time to do some cleanup and delete shit you havent looked at in years

Buying a spare HD is your cheapest & best option, unless you don't know how to hook it up. In that case get an external HD.

You can pick up a 1 TB external HD for around $100. That would be your best bet. Also are all of those files implacable. I bet there are some files that you don't need. If you really want to keep your files safe keep one copy offsite.

geez. first thing i would do is buy a NAS and mirror drives so you dont have to back up again until something fails. backing up 2TB is no fun

http://www.carbonite.com/

offsite backup. It's $5/month though. But $5/month seems almost worth it for me for peace of mind.

Imagine how long it would take to upload 2Tb of data.

A while. Few weeks, months? All depends on the up stream.

I used a 2-bay NAS in RAID1.. works well, and it's simple to setup.
If you want something that protects against fires and natural disasters, a reliable offsite company is your only option.

25 days with 1mb upstream.

^ Your bandwidth would have exceeded :lol

Here is how I backup 1.5TB of data...

My setup consists of one tower with two hard drives (640gb + 1.5tb), two laptops (120gb each), two external hard drives (2tb each), and one fire/water proof safe.

On the tower the 640gb hard drive stores my OS and apps, also all my temp and newly downloaded files. The 1.5tb hard drive stores all of my permanent data (photos, music, videos, documents, etc).

The first 2tb hard drive is my working backup, it is connected to the tower via fw800 and is also shared on my network. It archives all of the data from the 1.5tb drive (locally using time machine) and it also archives all of the data on two laptops in my home (over wireless using time machine).

The second 2tb hard drive is my emergency backup, it is stored in the fire/water proof safe. Once a month I bring it out, connect it and clone all of the data from the first 2tb hard drive (using carbon copy cloner) and then lock it up again.



This backup solution works great for me and protects against two drive failures and fire and water damage. Most people can go with out the second external hard drive and just go for a mirrored external or nas box instead... but that wont protect you against fire or water damage. In the end it all depends on how important the data is to you and how much time and money are willing to invest to protect it. My solution isnt fool proof as there is a 1 month period behind my backup clone jobs, my safe is only rated for 30 mins of fire protection, also it does not protect against theft. If someone stole my tower and external then I would still have the second external in my safe, if they took the safe too then I would be hooped.

Take some time to think about how important your data is, come up with a budget, research and then draw a workflow chart for your backup solution.

Good luck!

$240 using 50gb discs to back up 2TB (30discs)
or
$120 using 25gb discs to back up 2TB (60discs)

:) that is of course if u already have a blu-ray burner

Offsite storage with something like carbonite is a great solution for you but if your connection is less than ~10mb up it would take way too long. Best bet is a NAS imo.
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thats true boys but blu-ray is not yet affordable... external hard drives are cheap and are the way to go. plus burning discs is a huge mega pain in the ass and it takes a long time... what are you going to do, set a reminder in your phone to backup every week?

online storage is good if you trust your data with a company in the cloud, also once again this can be slow and will chew into your bandwidth allowance.

NAS boxes are great if setup mirrored or raid-5, just remember that without another secure/offsite copy of the data you are not protected against fire/wire damage or theft.

Thanks guys. I'll try the NAS RAID setup.

Just be aware that RAID does nothing for you when you get a a virus. I suspect you got most of your 2TB from downloading, and this is one of the main sources of viruses.

Just a heads up... RAID is NOT for backup, it's there to increase uptime in case of a single drive failure. Any file corruption will be duplicated in real time over to the mirror drive. A deleted file on a RAID is still a deleted file, there's no backup.

I have a hard drive dock and two 1TB drives, it runs a file sync once a day. I switch between the two drives whenever I remember to and I keep one at work in case of fire at home.

In case you decide to go with carbonite I just remembered seeing a coupon on dealmac for 50% off. Coupon code is CUST50 and it's good till December 31.

http://dealmac.com/50-off-Carbonite-...re/335356.html

me, i just back up chunks of the drive to an external drive as i sleep. 500GB at a time. takes no time as i sleep.

external HDD's are the cheapest fastest way.

can someone tell me what NAS stands for?

BINGO!

NAS is your best bet