thebwlife
Senior Member
I put this on my blog not long ago and it may apply to some of us on this forum that are photography or music lovers. I've learned the hard way twice now....but luckily it was all backed up so I'm good.
Backup Solutions
Backing up a computer for the family or small business can be a pain. I think I have the easiest solution to the biggest problem in the computer world and it really doesn’t take much work. Let me first give you an example of how much data actually cost you to replace and we’re not even talking about business data that is bound by contract.
I have a buddy that has more songs in his iTunes catalog than anyone else I personally know. So I asked him about how many songs and movies he has in his catalog – he said around 25,000 and about 100 full length movies. Let’s do a little math on that 25,000 songs @ 12 songs per/album @ $10 per album is roughly $21,000 in music and 100 movies @ $10 per movie and that is $1000. So he has roughly $22,000 worth of music and movies. All of this is on his 27” iMac with a 1TB HD and if lost or destroyed in a fire insurance isn’t going to cover that (I don’t think). All of this could be backed up for about $100 total.
And for myself I have over 60K of pictures and around 20K of those are of my family and kids. Those to me are priceless as they are to most people. But imagine this you loose your house to a fire, flood, tornado, or other “act of God” and they are gone forever….not for me because I’m backed up in two different place and have 3 copies of the data. 1) is the original 2) is the at home backup 3) is the offsite backup.
Really you need a backup at home to guard from a computer failure and an offsite backup to guard from a natural disaster like a tornado which are really common here in Oklahoma. So here are my recommendations for backing up. I’m going to cover using an Apple Computer because that’s what I use and all I’ve used for the past 10 years.
My recommendation is to use what Apple now ships on all Mac computers, Time Machine. It is by far the easiest way to do any kind of backup on the Mac Platform and should be defense number one. For the hard drive I would recommend getting an external one that is 2 times the size of the internal drive.
Onsite Storage
WD My Book 2TB External HD – Amazon.com: WD My Book 2 TB USB 3.0 Hard Drive with Backup: Computers & Accessories – these also come in 3TB, 4TB, and 6TB versions. For the Apple’s Time Machine any will do, but 2TB should be plenty. Lots of other brands are fine too, but I’ve always used Western Digital and haven’t had one fail yet.
Offsite Storage
For offsite I prefer Backblaze. I’ve used them for over 3 years now and they have saved my data twice. I like backblaze because its the easiest of the internet based offsite storages that I’ve seen. This will work with Apple or PC and should be exactly the same. This will take some time depending on your internet upload speed. Mine took almost a month to upload about 500GB.
Backblaze.com
Don’t wait until its too late to backup your data, I’ve been there and lost and entire wedding after delivering the pictures to the bride. It could have been really bad, but luckily I was able to run a repair and search on the broken drive and recover all the data. What took me hours and lots of money could have all been taken care of by running TimeMachine once.
Backup Solutions
Backing up a computer for the family or small business can be a pain. I think I have the easiest solution to the biggest problem in the computer world and it really doesn’t take much work. Let me first give you an example of how much data actually cost you to replace and we’re not even talking about business data that is bound by contract.
I have a buddy that has more songs in his iTunes catalog than anyone else I personally know. So I asked him about how many songs and movies he has in his catalog – he said around 25,000 and about 100 full length movies. Let’s do a little math on that 25,000 songs @ 12 songs per/album @ $10 per album is roughly $21,000 in music and 100 movies @ $10 per movie and that is $1000. So he has roughly $22,000 worth of music and movies. All of this is on his 27” iMac with a 1TB HD and if lost or destroyed in a fire insurance isn’t going to cover that (I don’t think). All of this could be backed up for about $100 total.
And for myself I have over 60K of pictures and around 20K of those are of my family and kids. Those to me are priceless as they are to most people. But imagine this you loose your house to a fire, flood, tornado, or other “act of God” and they are gone forever….not for me because I’m backed up in two different place and have 3 copies of the data. 1) is the original 2) is the at home backup 3) is the offsite backup.
Really you need a backup at home to guard from a computer failure and an offsite backup to guard from a natural disaster like a tornado which are really common here in Oklahoma. So here are my recommendations for backing up. I’m going to cover using an Apple Computer because that’s what I use and all I’ve used for the past 10 years.
My recommendation is to use what Apple now ships on all Mac computers, Time Machine. It is by far the easiest way to do any kind of backup on the Mac Platform and should be defense number one. For the hard drive I would recommend getting an external one that is 2 times the size of the internal drive.
Onsite Storage
WD My Book 2TB External HD – Amazon.com: WD My Book 2 TB USB 3.0 Hard Drive with Backup: Computers & Accessories – these also come in 3TB, 4TB, and 6TB versions. For the Apple’s Time Machine any will do, but 2TB should be plenty. Lots of other brands are fine too, but I’ve always used Western Digital and haven’t had one fail yet.
Offsite Storage
For offsite I prefer Backblaze. I’ve used them for over 3 years now and they have saved my data twice. I like backblaze because its the easiest of the internet based offsite storages that I’ve seen. This will work with Apple or PC and should be exactly the same. This will take some time depending on your internet upload speed. Mine took almost a month to upload about 500GB.
Backblaze.com
Don’t wait until its too late to backup your data, I’ve been there and lost and entire wedding after delivering the pictures to the bride. It could have been really bad, but luckily I was able to run a repair and search on the broken drive and recover all the data. What took me hours and lots of money could have all been taken care of by running TimeMachine once.
