My Photo Backup Solution:

I have been asked may times what do I do in case of a disaster to keep my images safe. This very situation came close to happening recently. We just moved my office down to the basement to make a bedroom available for my daughter. During a recent thunderstorm a drain got backed-up and water started collecting behind the door leading to a stairwell. Pretty soon there was roughly 800 gallons of water residing outside the door with only one way of relief, into the office on the other side!

Thankfully when we built the office we had everything built on risers, but there were other considerations to meet as well. There was important data residing on the hard drives inside the Mac Pro system. For that any water could be a disaster. Thankfully I had my Backup system already in place some months before and as I saw the water rushing in I knew more than likely my images and other precious data would be safe.

My first run images reside on a 1TB hard drive inside of Mac Pro. I then do a Time Machine Backup to a Drobo that resides on my desk. A Drobo has the ability to backup data and Mirror it so if one of the drives fail your precious data is still safe. In this case since it is a Time Machine Backup if I accidentally delete a file I can go back and grab an earlier version of the file that is still in the Time Machine.

I wanted at least two data points for my images though and so there is also an older NAS that I have set up to Backup this same drive keeping 30 days worth of changes in a separate folder. That way I can go back and collect any files that I feel I might need. So there I have two points of backup. The bad part, they are both on my desk. Sure they are on opposites sides of my desk AND connected via different electrical outlets. This didn't give me much comfort when there was 4 inches of water already on the grown and 800 gallons outside of my door waiting to enter.

What did though was my off site backup to Backblaze. For $5 a month I can upload all of the data that I want from a single computer. Now the initial backup took me 60 days on my present connection. After that is done the uploads take much less time and it can be even scheduled to do it in the evenings only. What would have been more effective would be to have a backup solution another house reach out and download the pictures instead of an upload, but that will be for a later design.

As I looked at the water pouring in, I knew that not only did I have two points of backup that would have to fail, I also had one off-site. With gallons of water all around electronic equipment that sure did give me some comfort that I wouldn't lose everything.

What is your backup solution?