Externals for back up

[momoffduty]

Any recommendations of externals for back ups? I'd like to get two 3Ts. One to keep at home and the other to store at a relative's house and then swap them out on a rotating basis.

I have an old Seagate external that I don't like. After about 10 backups it would get full and I had to go in delete stuff from backup 1 and 2 passes. The type of back up is where only the new stuff gets added each time. Would a complete back up each time be better instead of the sequential (not sure if that is the correct term.) ?

[TreeTopsRanch]

I have read on some forums that 3T's give some people problems. I think it depends on the computer used but not sure. I would stick with 2T's for now.

[sidd finch]

I am slowly switching over to USB 3.0 and it makes backups quite a bit more efficient. I agree on the 2 TB as the 3TB are a bit too new to not have problems. I have also noticed that there are not as many choices for hard drives as there used to be. I just purchased a 2 TB Buffalo HD and it works well.

Sidd

[Gerlinde]

I use currently 5 different external drives. They are all Seagates. The newest one is a 4TB USB3. I use it to make system images of all my computers. I also store downloaded software on that one. I'm still not really sure about how to get to an effective backup system.

I also use a 1TB eSATA drive mostly for finished videos. Then there are 2 old USB drives, one 500gb and one 1TB. They were the first ones I ever bought and have mostly pictures and other crap I thought might be useful to keep They are very slow and a pain to use. The last one is a small portable FreeAgent Go ( 250gb ) which I really love. It always travels with me and I also use it to transfer files between computers.

My only out of the house backup is stuff I uploaded to diverse online storage sites like Shutterfly, Revel, icloud ....

[Ron Hunter]

I bought an external 3TB USB3.0 WD MyBook about 6mths ago and have had no problems with it.

[Peru]

I don't use backup software for data backups. I do it manually.

I own about 30 external drives ranging from 80GB to 3TB. I currently only use 1TB and larger for data. The 250GB and 500GB ones are used for system images and temporary backups. I'm still trying to find a use for the smaller ones. No, I don't use them all at once. I have multiple on and off site storage for computers at home and work.

I've had two WD 3TB My Book drives fail in the past year, both under warranty. I'm staying away from them.
I don't know what brand is inside my Lacie drives, but I've never had one fail. Some are over five years old.
I like the Seagate Expansion drives as well.
The Seagate GoFlex Desk drives work well, but they stand vertically like the My Book drives and use a mini USB. I prefer regular USB connectors (USB 3.0 for those that support it) and the horizontal drives, as I have made a 'cooling and power station" with wiring harnesses for power and USB cords. Fortunately, many of the differently branded drives use a power supply with the same specifications, allowing me to require only a few power supplies.

One important thing to note:
Although all of my drives are externally powered, I can't use the USB 3 on my internal card reader for anything other than a small flash drive or it will exhibit symptoms of inadequate power.

[momoffduty]

Thank you for all of the feedback, much appreciated. Looked up the Buffalo 2T and read some reviews. I back up manually videos & photos from the new computer to the old computer. The incremental back up with software would still pose a problem of running out of room vs. manually doing a full back up on a schedule like weekly or monthly. Let it run overnight possibly. The hard part is deciding on how I want to manage the data for backups.

[RJ Johnston]

I have a 2TB and 3TB Buffalo USB 3.0 external hard drives for hourly backups. You can't use the 3TB on a system that doesn't support 3TB, such as Windows XP 32-bit. I corrupted the file system when I tried using it with my XP machine. It might have been okay if I had partitioned the hard drive into 1TB and 2TB, but I didn't want to do that.

[momoffduty]

Good to know RJ. The old build is 32 bit and the new is 64 bit.

[John 'twosheds' McDonald]

I used to use Acronis to back up my "stuff" but for the last eighteen or so months I have been using Macrium Reflect Pro.

http://www.macrium.com/

They don't offer any trial period but they do offer an unconditional guarantee (quote from their website - "If you are not satisfied with one of our software products, contact us within 30 days for instructions on obtaining a refund.")

So you can explore what it does and if not happy get your money back. There is also a free version with less functionality - full backups only, no incremental, and no disc space management. I have found their support to be exemplary.

My "stuff" on the PC looks like this:- An SSD for the opsys, a WD Raptor for work in progress and a WD 1TB for data (docs, pics, etc). All of this is backed up to an 8TB NAS configured in RAID 10 with full back ups weekly and incremental back ups daily. The NAS holds all of my bought music, videos, archived projects etc and that is in turn backed up weekly to a 4TB Seagate HDD housed in an Akasa Lokstor case.

Recently both the SSD failed as did my original WD 500GB data disc. Once I received the replacements then I was able to recover everything with minimal effort.

[momoffduty]

Thanks John for the link and your workflow. I checked out the link and if I understand correctly, this software is used to schedule your incremental and full backups?

Backup your entire PC to a single compressed image file.
Backup files and folders to a single compressed archive file.

Does the software compress your data? Lets say I have 2T of data, what would be the compression size? Do set the parameters?

This is very confusing. If one of you lived closer I'd pay you with a hot meal, peach pie, cold beer to get something set up for me.

[John 'twosheds' McDonald]

Have a look at the guides/tutorials on the website. The software does allow compression and there is a user parameter that lets you specify the degree of compression.

As I said, support from Macrium is exemplary so you can always ask them.

Put that hot meal/cold beer on one side. You never know.....

[momoffduty]

Thanks John, I'll check out their tuts. Thanks again all for sharing your workflow/system. I'm sure I'll be back with follow up questions.

[momoffduty]

John, looked at their tuts and have a few questions. I am not sure if I need the standard or pro versions. If I am thinking correctly, I can do a full backup to an external and then do incremental backups.

This is for John or anyone:

My plan and please tell me of any hidden caveats I should be aware of.

Get 2 externals (duplicate copies keeping one off site) and back up the SSD C drive (160GB full) which has the software and the D drive (1.2 TB full) which has my docs & photos, videos, media, etc. The D drive does increase with the tape based projects and then I delete. Start with full back ups and then do incremental backups weekly. Each month swap out the externals. At that point should I start over with the full back up? There could be media that was deleted from the D drive. If so, how do you delete almost 2T of data off of the external?

Later when things get too full, I plan on getting 2 more externals to hold old photos and some tape based video and all the video from the SD cards and video from old family tapes. This will then free up space on the D drive.

I have been copying photos and video to my old computer's D drive which has been my back up temporarily. The Seagate external has some backup on it, but at 1T had to pick and choose what to back up.

Thanks

[Peru]

I don't usually keep system images or clones off-site because they can only be restored to an identical machine.

I use three drives for each set of data backups:

(a) One on-site
(b) One off-site
(c) The oldest one on-site.


When it is time to back up, I do a full backup on (c) and bring it off-site and exchange it with (b).
(b) goes on-site.
(a) then becomes the oldest, etc.

In the case of data which just gets items added, such as captures or photos, I just add to (a) and keep it on-site and overwrite (delete and write) (c) and bring it off-site, etc.
If I have more than one drive worth of data, I use "vol 1" and "vol 2." Once vol. 1 is full, I don't rotate it. I just have one on-site and one off-site. Vol 2 gets rotated as above.

As far as deleting almost 2TB of data, it does take a few minutes, but just do it as you would normally delete files.

Have I confused you yet?