Need help with a back up soloution

Hi,

I'm having areal issue trying to find a suitable back up soloution. I've tryed quite a few different online back up companys who all say they don't throttle the upload - this is real important as i'm adding 60gb of files that need to be backed up every week - but my and all isp's will throttle, at the moment my uoload speed is about 100kbs, so i'm add many many more files than i'll ever be able to be backed up.

A while ago Lee Ricker showed me a company in the USofA who gave you a physial drive and each week you would go in to there office and excange it for a blank drive and they would back it up on site -  i think this is my only option but i have not been able to find anyone like this in the UK/London,

Does anyone know of any companies who would do this, or could offer a alternative soloution?

cheers

Have you considered tape backups? Everyone raves about online and remote backups these days, but tape backs remain one of the best and most reliable solutions - especially for long term backups.

You also dont have the problem of having to download GB's of data to restore after full loss.

Depends on the total you want to write to tape, a DAT160 drive would hold 80GB of uncompressed files (probably wouldnt be able to compress your files too much if they are JPEGS anyway) per tape.

Steve

Thanks steve, Every wedding i shoot is about 30gb of images, so i really need to have a back up of everything i haven't edited. I've got back ups running in the office, hard drives in raid config and a 1tb external back up drive.  

I really need to have a off site back up as well, incased of theift, fires etc

Mark
did you use film before going digital?

most companies in london still do this every day. a large quanity of those courier sacks are full of tapes and disks going from one site to another.

if you are based in london i can put you in touch with a guy that can let you walk in with a disk peiodically or send media of one type or another post or bike.

thing is there is something that you are either overlooking or has not been addressed.

you say adding 60Gb per week. so 250Gb ish a month, 3Tb a year. if thats the case you dont want to be using the cloud my friend @£per gb per month. it will be too expesive.

i guess you could be running at that rate being a photographer. i would suggest a good RAID based NAS and a set of removable disks to archive older files to.

as a principal you have to separate your 'back up'- think of this as current projects from your archive-dead and historical work, you can use the cloud for a back up but archive longer term content to where its cheapest.

Yes, you can copy the 30GB onto it's own tape (or maybe 2-3 lots), then archive it offsite in a firesafe.

Tapes are rated to last a lot longer than external HDD's (in ideal conditions, up to 30 years) and RAID is never a backup solution.

Steve

An option that you might want to consider:

I have a 4 x 1tb raid set up in the office - each drive can be swapped out whenever needed.

Cost might be a factor but, maybe get something like this that's big enough for a weeks worth of back-ups and store them at your bank or get a security box.
All I'm thinking is 1, you can swap the drives out each time they're full/ used and 2, the bank safe should be fire/ bomb proof etc.

I use a NAS drive as Brian talks about, I have ahd several in the past as well and they have all worked pretty much OK but one!  It failed and cost me a bit to recover the data but since then I have been using a netgear NAS station, the drives are hot swappable as well so I can just swap out a drive when I need to.  I can plug in other external drives as well as usb sticks etc...  I also have the advantage of being able to grab the files from any internet connection even via my phone.  It works as a media server as well and with some messing around I am sure I could set it up as a web server as well.

The only downside for you is if you go the NAS route and still have it on site where you normally work, then if there is a fire, you would more than likely lose it.  If you work out of a studio, then you could set it up at home but you will then be just reliant on your internet connection so it would probably be too slow.

You say you could back up onto a disk in a hot swap set up.  Have a look for some sort of rack that will allow you to do this and take the disk with you.  The main issue with taking disk around etc... is that you potentially leave yourself open to disk damage due to the disk getting knocked around.

I would also agree, don't rely on RAID being your back up.  A true back up solution will make it easier to retrieve as well.