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13-10-2021, 04:21
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#1
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Registered User
Join Date: Jun 2020
Posts: 1
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data management (photos/videos) aboard
Hi ladies and gents,
first of all thank you for a fantastic platform to learn about so many sailing related topics. It is a great way for a newbie like me to dive deep into this exciting matter.
Just to introduce myself: I started sailing last year and joined the RYA competent crew and day skipper courses. It was a great experience and I definitely want more. In a couple of weeks my coastal skipper course starts and meanwhile I watch out for opportunities to step on a boat and sail. My wife and I are pondering about buying a sail boat and so I am looking for opinions and information of experienced sailors.
Today I have a question about on board data management. I am a photographer and I am definitely concerned about data loss and backup solutions for larger amount of customer or project data (> 2 TB a year). Because my wife and I want to go on extended sailing trips (6 - 8 weeks) regularly, I would love to have a bullet proof solution on my future boat.
Appreciate your personal experiences with this topic.
Thank you very much.
Thomas
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13-10-2021, 05:11
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#2
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Registered User
Join Date: Aug 2020
Location: Melbourne, Australia
Boat: Swarbrick S-80
Posts: 1,009
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Re: data management (photos/videos) aboard
Assuming you have your files on a laptop, just save them to an external hard drive.
When you’re in wifi range, upload to a cloud drive.
Pretty much the same as on land.
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13-10-2021, 11:51
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#3
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Registered User
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: Solomons, MD USA
Boat: Formosa 51 Aft Cockpit Ketch - "Beausoleil"
Posts: 611
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Re: data management (photos/videos) aboard
Quote:
Originally Posted by ChrisJHC
Assuming you have your files on a laptop, just save them to an external hard drive.
When you’re in wifi range, upload to a cloud drive.
Pretty much the same as on land.
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Make that external hard drives.
For around $100 or so you can by a RAID array enclosure from Amazon. Stuff 4 identical drives in it, and set it up as a RAID 10 array: it combines the four drives into two logical drives, which are "mirrored" (duplicated). You can remove two of them for off-boat safe-keeping, and plug in two more drives (for a total of 6 drives) which will automatically be mirrored with the data of the remaining drives in the array.
And also upload to a cloud storage service as Chris suggests. But keep in mind that if you have raw images or videos, that can add up to terabytes pretty quickly - so shop around for a decent, secure cloud storage service.
It may sound complicated, but there's plenty of instructions on the web and Youtube on how to do it.
__________________
Cap'n Jon (KB1HTW)
S/V Beausoleil -1979 Formosa 51 Ketch
"If it's gonna happen, it's gonna happen out there." - Captain Ron
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13-10-2021, 11:58
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#4
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Registered User
Join Date: Nov 2013
Location: Edmonton/PNW
Boat: Hunter 386
Posts: 1,754
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Re: data management (photos/videos) aboard
I've wondered about this as well especially given all those youtube sailors out there. For myself I run mirrored ssds and have backups at home. If we were ever out longer than a couple of months I would probably add a cloud backup as well but between bandwidth and the amount of data I wonder if I would find that cost effective for anything other than cold storage.
I've also been reading a lot about the Synology NAS's and I wonder if that might be a good solution as they can sync to another NAS. Probably a bit too power hungry though.
__________________
---
Gaudeamus igitur iuvenes dum sumus...
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13-10-2021, 14:54
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#5
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Registered User
Join Date: Dec 2019
Location: on our boat cruising the Bahamas and east coast
Boat: 2000 Catalina 470 #058
Posts: 1,342
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Re: data management (photos/videos) aboard
Lots of good suggestions already given, but for a boat the NAS and RAID approach is not elegant and not fully risk mitigated.
Buy 2-3 portable drives, with one being at least 2Tb (I would have a 500Gb, 1 TB and 4Tb set)
Move data onto these drives at regular, perhaps staggered intervals
Keep drives in a water proof and damage proof container
Finally, move data to cloud when convenient if size permits.
__________________
Sailing a Catalina 470; now retired
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13-10-2021, 21:11
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#6
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Registered User
Join Date: May 2010
Location: NW Washington State
Boat: Yankee Dolphin 24'
Posts: 256
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Re: data management (photos/videos) aboard
I'm going to be a bit contrary here. As a retired storage engineer, I have done my share of data recovery efforts. If you get an accidental deletion of data on an SSD, it is GONE in seconds or less; and not recoverable (at least for normal filesystems). The newer and faster the drive, the faster it happens. Apparently many SD cards are slow enough on the freeing of deleted data that you can often recover most of the data from them if you are quick enough. You better have a backup of anything you care about. Windows crashes (though less frequent than they used to be, and less frequently) can do accidental deletions. All of the data recoveries I can remember were from Windows related. HDDs, on the other hand, you can do data recovery relatively easily. I know of at least one Youtuber who lost months of video to a Windows crash on an SSD.
As long as you can recover the data easily if lost, SSDs have many advantages: lower power, faster access, no moving parts. But there is a trade off.
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13-10-2021, 22:00
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#7
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Registered User
Join Date: Jun 2016
Location: New Jersey, USA
Boat: Jeanneau SO409
Posts: 628
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Re: data management (photos/videos) aboard
Another vote for a Synology NAS:
https://www.amazon.com/Synology-Disk.../dp/B087Z34F3R
Stuff four 8TB hard drives in RAID 1 and you're good to go... the only time you'd lose your data is if the whole NAS sank with your boat. Then, when in a marina or close to one... get on their WiFi and start uploading to the CLOUD...
Just remember... there IS no cloud... it's just someone else's computer
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14-10-2021, 01:00
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#8
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Nearly an old salt
Join Date: Jun 2009
Location: Lefkas Marina ,Greece
Boat: Bavaria 36
Posts: 22,801
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data management (photos/videos) aboard
Don’t bother with rotating drive NAS systems.
Buy 1 or more usb SSD drives. Run as many backups as you can
As I have good 4G , I actually save everything ( documents , CAD designs , software source ) onto Dropbox and basically have nothing of importance locally. Most design files are not individually large so saving them as you go along has little performance effect, as you have a local copy , reopening is fast
__________________
Interested in smart boat technology, networking and all things tech
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14-10-2021, 01:02
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#9
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Nearly an old salt
Join Date: Jun 2009
Location: Lefkas Marina ,Greece
Boat: Bavaria 36
Posts: 22,801
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Re: data management (photos/videos) aboard
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cool Hand Luke
Another vote for a Synology NAS:
https://www.amazon.com/Synology-Disk.../dp/B087Z34F3R
Stuff four 8TB hard drives in RAID 1 and you're good to go... the only time you'd lose your data is if the whole NAS sank with your boat. Then, when in a marina or close to one... get on their WiFi and start uploading to the CLOUD...
Just remember... there IS no cloud... it's just someone else's computer 
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Well it’s a lot of computers

( Dropbox servers )
__________________
Interested in smart boat technology, networking and all things tech
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14-10-2021, 10:58
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#10
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Registered User
Join Date: Oct 2018
Location: Bremerton, WA
Boat: Island Packet 485, 52'
Posts: 92
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Re: data management (photos/videos) aboard
Quote:
Originally Posted by goboatingnow
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One cheap solution for cloud storage is to look at Amazon Glacier. Easy fast uploads and slow downloads and very cheap. I want to know a copy of my images are somewhere else, it if takes a while to download them that's fine.
I have a script running on my nas weekly that syncs my photos directory with AWS glacier.
Sean
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14-10-2021, 14:53
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#11
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Registered User
Join Date: Oct 2013
Location: Lake City MN
Boat: C&C 27 Mk III
Posts: 2,648
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Re: data management (photos/videos) aboard
If you are going the raid direction the go raid 5 or 50 as you can recover from a single drive failure whereas a raid 1 or 10 is not as recoverable
__________________
Special knowledge can be a terrible disadvantage if it leads you too far along a path that you cannot explain anymore.
Frank Herbert 'Dune'
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15-10-2021, 07:12
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#12
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Registered User
Join Date: Jul 2012
Location: North East USA
Boat: 1975 Tartan 41'
Posts: 1,054
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Re: data management (photos/videos) aboard
As far as cloud or local storage, that completely depends on where you are cruising and if you will have cheap, reliable access to internet. We did not, so we keep all data local.
You say 6 to 8 weeks.. that's a fairly short time out cruising. So your >2T a year is <1T over 6-8 weeks. Just back up your camera's SD to your laptop, plus an external drive. For that short of time, I would carry a few SD's so you won't even need to overwrite any cards while out cruising. When you get home, back data up as you do today when not cruising.
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15-10-2021, 07:44
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#13
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Nearly an old salt
Join Date: Jun 2009
Location: Lefkas Marina ,Greece
Boat: Bavaria 36
Posts: 22,801
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Re: data management (photos/videos) aboard
Quote:
Originally Posted by AKA-None
If you are going the raid direction the go raid 5 or 50 as you can recover from a single drive failure whereas a raid 1 or 10 is not as recoverable
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Really the whole Raid argument has been over taken by SSD. Raid primarily addressed the unreliability of mechanical storage. This is now rendered largely superfluous by SsD.
__________________
Interested in smart boat technology, networking and all things tech
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15-10-2021, 07:55
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#14
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Registered User
Join Date: Jan 2014
Location: Florida
Posts: 976
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Re: data management (photos/videos) aboard
Having had a long career in film/video/television
Post Production the rule for digital assets is
“If it doesn’t exist in 3 places, It doesn’t exist”
I would recommend transferring acquisition format
to at least two drive arrays ( one working, one backup)
AND a long term archival format such as LTO data tape.
The best practice is to adopt a rotation of the LTO tape
so that you create a new one, once a week and have at least
5 in rotation.
LTO is made from Working Drive array
Worst case scenario
Both drive arrays die, latest LTO dies, you go to the prior
weeks LTO which is good and all you have lost is one week
of work
If you are really interested in Digital Asset Storage/Management
check out
Creative.cow.net
and check out some of their storage forums.
Cheers
Neil
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15-10-2021, 09:59
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#15
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Registered User
Join Date: Dec 2014
Location: Little River, SC
Boat: Grand Banks Europa 42
Posts: 30
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Re: data management (photos/videos) aboard
What Time2Go said, especially if your livelihood depends on it.
On my boat I use a Western Digital PR2100 NAS device, primarily for storing 400 ripped CDs (FLAC). At home, I have a similar device which I sync with the onboard device before leaving for long cruises. I use GoodSync on a Windoz computer which allows for syncing all my data including my Google Drive account. So in essence I have my data stored in 3 locations.
We all know that broadband internet access is an asymmetrical service, hence the sloooow upload speeds. This is problematic when uploading large amounts of data especially if the image files are in raw format.
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