back-up solutions

[dork420]

Hello all

Since my 250GB hardrive is filling up on my iMac CD and my old external back-up drive is getting old. I think I want to revamp my back-up system and also house my Aperture Library on an external.

Is it smart to get a 500GB hardrive, partition it, and use it as both a system back-up and my Aperture library. Or is it better to keep them on separate drives?

After I figure that out, then I will explore my options on making a second back-up for my Aperture library.

Thanks

 

[rogersmj]

No, no, no way put your backup and your primary on the same drive. It's not really a backup then! Except for "oops I accidentally deleted something", that hardly qualifies as a backup. If that one hard drive fails (and they DO fail...I've got a stack of 10 or 12 dead ones in my closet from the past decade or so), you lose everything.

At a minimum, whatever you want to backup needs to be on a different physical drive. I kind of think of it like this:

Backup level 1 (minimum): Duplicate data on separate physical drive on the same machine.

Backup level 2: Duplicate data on separate drive on separate computer (in case one computer goes haywire and corrupts everything attached to it -- although this tends to be more of a concern for Windows machines than OS X)

Backup level 3: Levels 1 or 2 PLUS data periodically burned to non-rewritable media (e.g., DVD) and stored on site (protection against massive hard drive failure due to electrical surge or EMP).

Backup level 4: Level 3 plus store the media off-site (protection against fire/flood/etc) OR Level 3 plus upload all data to remote storage provider (who themselves should be doing some sort of backup)

It can get more insane from there but that's the point at which most people I know stop. If you're willing to spend up to $1000 for a fairly serious backup solution, I'd strongly recommend something like a Drobo and 4x 750GB drives. Pop 4 drives in it, and it does kind of a RAID on steroids; if any one of the four drives dies, you replace it and it instantly restores everything without you losing a bit of data. You could probably get away with *just* working directly off the Drobo, since everything on it is protected by data redundancy. But I'd still periodically burn things off to DVD and archive them, or use a remote file storage service.

 

[66217]

No, no, no way put your backup and your primary on the same drive. It's not really a backup then! Except for "oops I accidentally deleted something", that hardly qualifies as a backup. If that one hard drive fails (and they DO fail...I've got a stack of 10 or 12 dead ones in my closet from the past decade or so), you lose everything.

I think the OP meant to use the drive as a backup for the system (not Aperture) and the other partition for Aperture. And then use an extra hard drive for backing up Aperture. Am I right??



To the OP:

I don't see any technical problem. But the ideal solution would be to use separate drives. One drive for the Aperture Library and the other one for System and Aperture back-ups.

I'm planning on moving my Aperture photos to an external also. This is how it would be done:

-Keep the most recent photos in my internal drive for tagging and editing. After one-two months, I'll move the photos to an external (by relocating the masters). Then I have two extra external drives. One is used for Time Machine and Aperture backup, it is in my home. And the other one is the same, but it is in the office.

Remember, if you relocate the masters, you have to do the backup of this photos manually. Aperture would only backup the tags and the editing, but not the actual RAW or JPEG files.

The benefit of relocating masters, instead of moving the complete library, is that this way you keep the previews available. So you can still see all your photos in an acceptable quality. If you ever want to access the full resolution photo, or make some editing, then you just connect the external drive.

 

[dork420]

I think the OP meant to use the drive as a backup for the system (not Aperture) and the other partition for Aperture. And then use an extra hard drive for backing up Aperture. Am I right??

That is exactly right.
I'm not running time machine so a 500gb partitioned drive can hold a complete back up of my main drive plus be my aperture library. Then I would back up my aperture library on a second hard drive.

I like your plan to keep recent photos on my main drive then move masters. I've gotten the hang of Aperture except this aspect. Can it reference 2 libraries at the same time?

 

[66217]

I like your plan to keep recent photos on my main drive then move masters. I've gotten the hang of Aperture except this aspect. Can it reference 2 libraries at the same time?

You can have multiple libraries, but, as far as I know, you can't open multiple libraries at the same time.

So, you can have two libraries, and relocated masters in each library, but you can't have them both open at the same time. It would be worth checking this out in the manual, but I am almost sure that it is this way.