Apple, Windows, data security, backup strategy

[Frank Fremerey]

No. I never trusted Apple. I build my own hardware and use Windows. For backup I chose my own set of Hardware / Software solutions that suit my needs. And I test these and they work. With Windows 10 it is even easy to reinstall the whole system if it should be necessary and the error lives in the system backup too.
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META: I feel there is too many forking. We should somehow recollect the three threads on this I know of


Admin comment: excerpts from the thread on the 200-500 lens that deal mostly or exclusively with computer issues are moved into this thread.  The current thread is initiated by MFloyd. however, as the forum software uses the original time stamps when topics are merged, there might be some loss of context in the first few posts. This is unavoidable lest the original thread http://nikongear.net/revival/index.php/topic,5138.0.html be scrapped entirely, which would be a pity.

[BW]

I have the same experience with Time machine as you, David. When I needed the backup, it wasnt there. But on the other hand I have seen it happen with other OS as well. Computers are notoriously unreliable and managing huge volumes of data will only be more difficult if you dont have professional help. It takes away the joy of photography

[David H. Hartman]

David,

Thanks for posting. I like the photograph. I like the warm light. I like birds.

Best,

Dave

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If so, DO NOT put your faith in Time Machine. I have religiously taken TM backups every two weeks, for many years. But when I finally really needed to restore the system drive on my main computer, Time Machine DIDN'T WORK. At all. So I have shot almost nothing - sorry! But it was nice of you to think I might have more good images.

I had a problem just the other day. My boot volume on my iMAC would not work. I booted on the second volume on the HD fine and tried the Disk Utility from there. First Aid failed several times. I then booted on the recovery partition and First Aid also failed from there also. I erased the volume and ran Time Machine and TM worked perfectly. This proves conclusively that the Devil now lives in silicon.

With my luck I figure a Time Machine HD will fail so I use two separate HD(s) and keep two separate backups. One is connected all the time and one is connected about every week to 10 days. I should make a point of connecting the second TM backup HD say every Friday evening. The primary TM HD is the one I used. All is well.

David,

I wonder if Time Machine failed you or the Time Machine HD failed you. Did you run Disk Utility and First Aid on the TM HD? I think having a second option no matter what backup program you use is smart. I'm sorry you had computer problems.

Dave Hartman

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One more thought: since you can install OS X as many times as you want I've installed it on a thumb drive. Besides have the second volume that I can run if the first doesn't deliver I can boot from the thumb drive. This is like having a second spare tire on your truck.

[MFloyd]

I open this thread where everyone can discuss his image backup strategy, best practices, and, why not, fails and disasters.

[John G]

As for the fails, I have lost nearly all my D80 images due to a Lenovo Laptop Crash. The Hard Drive is in storage, it has not been successfully read to extract the photo files. I have been informed by a IT shop that placing the hard drive for a period in a deep freeze can allow a read to successfully take place.
As for the present, I delete out many images that do not have the qualities I like to see, I put many processed Jpegs onto Onedrive and will start to use NG Gallery this year. If I really like a collection of edited jpeg images, they go onto another laptop as well, all retained RAW and Jpeg images are put onto a portable external hard drive.
My storage requirements are very small due to the quantity of files created.
   
     

[Bjørn Rørslett]

There are probably as many approaches as there are photographers to these matters. However, successful storage strategies hinge on unrelenting redundancy on all levels. Always have two or preferably three different copies on different media and at least two different locations. Don't reformat storage cards before verified copies are stored elsewhere.

[David H. Hartman]

I use the latest Nikon Transfer 2 associated with ViewNXi to upload NEF(s) to my Win7 computer. The files get a suffix indicating the camera used. The are reviewed and obvious misses, poor quality, bad expression and the like are deleted. Them they are duplicated to a second HD in the Win7 computer and also to an external HD attached to my iMAC.

I don't use a raid to mirror my primary HD because of the performance loss and an accidental deleted file is gone as soon as the recycle or trash is dumped. A sync program used to *contribute* new files to a target drive is safer. Finally I have external HD(s) to backup to and lock away.

I started this because of an incident where I had a crash that took out the master boot records and there backups on four HD(s). About a month prior I was uneasy and felt my luck might run out so I bought an external 650GB drive. After the crash I bought a 1TB external HD and used recovery software to recover files. Later I over wrote recovered files with backed up files. I lost about thirty PSD files that were recovered as thumbnails only and one TIF file. I was damned lucky to loose no NEF or JPG files or important personal documents. I shortly added two external and five internal 1TB HD(s).

I'm sure my procedures can be improved but I'm not as vulnerable as I once was.

Dave Hartman

[ColSebastianMoran]

I do two different backups:
 - Time machine running all the time over WiFi
 - Periodic copies of the hard disk with Carbon Copy Cloner

Time Machine is outstanding for retrieving an earlier version of a file when I need to. But, once trying to recover the full HD, it failed me.

Carbon Copy Cloner is terrific. Makes a disk image. You can test by booting it,  you can feed it to the Apple migration assistant, etc. Never failed me.

(admin comment: moved here from wrong thread)

[Airy]

I keep raw files on the storage cards for some time, as Lightroom will anyway avoid duplicating them on the hard disk.
I empty the cards onto an external, RAID 1 HDD. That sort of drive has been my primary storage for years.
Processed files are on my laptop, replicated on the cloud.
When I upgrade the external HDD, I copy all "old files" (easy, given Moore's law), but I leave these on the old drive, just in case.

No fails so far. I have applied the same tactics to concert recordings.

[MFloyd]

In addition to what already has been said: using multiple storage methods (e.g. Time Machine and Carbon Copy) also avoid partitioning disk between backup (e.g. ™) and image data.  The following happened to me: having a big disk 5TB I partitioned it between image data and Time Machine data (the latter being written alternatively on two disks); TM warned me that it couldn't write anymore on the 5TB disk. SMART software indicated that there was something wrong. I immediately moved my image data to another disk; in this case, I had some early warning before the entire disk collapsed.  3 conclusions: (1) for backup purposes like TM only use dedicated disk; they will wear out pretty fast, as TM writes every hour on your disk; (2) in most cases, I had an early warning that disks will crash; and (3) don't rely solely on SMART diagnosis or the like, they not always warn you. The story ended 1 month later where the complete disk failed i.e. the two partitions.

[RobOK]

We all have horror stories and I wonder if we don't all have gaps in our plans, I know I do.

My most recent issue was not photography related.  The boot drive of Mac Mini failed. I had a Time Machine backup of it, but some important files [my daughters Minecraft Worlds] were stored in a folder that is NOT backed up by Time Machine. For my images and Lightroom catalogs I had both an onsite and offsite backup, but i did not realize that some important files were not being backed up by Time Machine. I forget what folder it was in, but its a folder that TM does not include by default.

My biggest challenge is not having a consistent, smooth system between using my laptop vs Mac Mini Desktop (which has a much bigger monitor), so I have to keep them manually in sync because i haven't invested in an approach to consolidate repeatedly.

Rob.