The Best Backup Solution

I was wondering what is the best and most secure way to backup your data. As you all know our work is really important and we can’t afford data loss etc. because this can lead to loss of income if you lose some of your current projects. I personally use 2TB RAID1 (Mirror) solution for my internal storage and another 2 TB external drive where I have another copy of my RAID , so It’s like I have the same data on 3 different drives. The external one isn’t plugged in my system the whole time. I just update it every month or so in order to be sure I have a fresh copy of my new updated files.

Let me know your experience in this field. What solution you use, are there better ways to do that. I’m sure some of you that have a lot of experience can share very useful information about this “problem”.

Another thing I’d like to share is that I personally prefer to stick with 2TB storage for now, because If I upgrade with 2 or 4 more TB I will get lost. I feel that I can manage to remember where I keep some of my files. Even though I keep my computer very well organized it is easy to get lost in the thousands of folders and files. This thought leads to another one, how do you archive your old projects? I’m sure you don’t keep finished projects on your system unless you know that the client will get back to you wanting to create a different version of the project or something like that. I personally put all of my finished projects into 2TB external drive. Let me know your way of doing that. I guess that in future I will need to upgrade to 4 TB external drive for the work archive. But doing it that way in future the number of finished projects is going to increase and this means that I will end up with 5 or 10 external drives keeping all of my files. I guess at some point all of you delete the projects and keep the final outcome so you can put it in your demoreel.

What about an external storage tower? I have seen some solutions where you get a big box where you can plug 4-8 and in some cases even more drives and it is like a network storage uint it is connected with the computer trough LAN cable. I guess this is useful for small home offices with a few computers where the people can open their projects on each computer from the central storage unit. Can this be useful for a single user doing freelance work? I know that some of the things and solutions are very specific and it depends of the user, but in general will be helpful if you can share some experience, thoughts or ideas.

Looking forward for your comments.

I keep my main jobs on a large RAID 5 , that I back up periodically to another RAID 5 .

When I’m working on a job, I do a nightly back up of that job to the second RAID 5 , as well as backing up the essentials to my local disk. I also back up the absolute essentials (i.e. .aep, .psd, .c4d) files to the web, allowing me to reconstruct the entire project in a worst case scenario.

When a job is finished, I back up the end result (QT Prores 444 HD) to a single “Showreel” hard-drive. Another copy of the same lands on the web on a cloud backup service.

I also make a copy of the final job in open form onto a single “Archive” hard-drive. This is a bit costly in terms of hard-drives as some of my jobs can generate 0.5TB of data (for shoots, where there may be several hours of 4K rushes), but I don’t buy the fast ones.

After a year, I delete the original job from the two RAID 5s. My clients know that I keep a live copy of their job for a year and that after a year, I still keep an archived copy – but with no guarantee.

Incidentally, I’m not too sure of the safety of RAIDs (hence my double safe RAID bckp system). I’ve had a RAID card go wrong and trash all 4 drives at once before.

I do not make any copies. I just live my life

I do not make any copies. I just live my life

You’re A Fearless

Thanks for sharing your experience felt it is helpful to know how others manage to manage this problem.