Photo Storage on Cruising Yachts

[Paul L]

Crossing the SP I would not count on doing cloud uploads for archiving. Even when you get WiFi it is not often fast enough to upload the last 6 or 8 weeks of photos. And cell connectivity is too slow and too costly. A couple of hard drives for backup should suffice. Whenever you get the opportunity, get one of them off the boat to your land base. And start a new one.

[ReneJK]

I use a Synology NAS (DS216play or similar)


runs on 12 volt , 2 HDD's mirrored , (size dependent on the HDD size , we have 2x 6TB) if one crashed everything else in on the other HDD , auto sync after the HDD has been replaced. Can also be used as a media (music , video etc) server

[Paul L]

Originally Posted by ReneJK

I use a Synology NAS (DS218+ or similar)


runs on 12 volt , 2 HDD's mirrored , (size dependent on the HDD size , we have 2x 6TB) if one crashed everything else in on the other HDD , auto sync after the HDD has been replaced. Can also be used as a media (music , video etc) server

Sounds like a good solution for onboard storage. What do you do for off site backup?

[ReneJK]

Originally Posted by Paul L

Sounds like a good solution for onboard storage. What do you do for off site backup?

Havent used an offsite backup yet but I do have a spare empty HDD in case one of the mounted ones goes haywire , if that happens the spare gets mounted and I will order a new spare


Whenever we really need/want to make an offsite backup I backup on an external HDD (all files since last backup) and send that out to family for safeguarding , the files just get too big for 'cloud' storage so I rely on 'personal cloud' with the synology nas and periodic back up on external HDD's

[toddster8]

My info may be dated, but the last I heard, the writable CD media used in consumer electronics works by burning holes in an ink layer - not in foil like commercial CDs. They are not "permanent". Heat, age, or bad juju can cause the ink to run or fade and erase any data. Even old floppy disks may last longer. Not the most reliable off-line storage.

[Tessellate]

Portable USB hard drive is the way to go I think. I do that plus the laptop's hard drive is the backup until I can backup to the cloud.

Modern hard drives are more vibration resistant than you think. After all, laptop hard drives have to be engineered to take some vibration - do you think laptop users keep their laptop perfectly still while using it?

Cruisers that report frequent HDD failures are more likely exposing them to salty air / water, or dropping them, or not taking care of them in some other way. I keep mine in a plastic ziplock bag when not in use.

https://www.google.com/search?safe=o...ration+testing

Even if you get hit by bad luck (X% of drive failures are just normal manufacturing failures, ie, causes that aren't your fault), a data recovery service could probably recover most of the contents for a couple hundred bucks. I look at that as the data insurance option (insurance you don't have to pay for advance, which is the best kind of insurance!).

A 1 Terabyte external drive is only about $50 now. So you could even get two and backup to both if you're really concerned. Make sure to use USB 3 ports if you can - the transfer speed is much higher.

I like your description of why you value photos; it's much the same for me.

[ReneJK]

having worked in 'the industry' for the last 18 years I can tell you that HDD's are the #1 failing parts in enterprise level machines , they are still susceptible to:


- bad sectors
- stop spinning

- contamination

- smart errors
- growing defect lists

etc etc etc



they are hardly getting any better , I personally have not seen significant quality increases or improments in MTBF , ELF , MTTF etc



personally I would not trust a single HDD , they fail and it doesnt matter if they are cheap , expensive , portable , USB , SCSI , IDE , Fiber etc etc either , they fail



oh .. and solid drives are only marginally better

[Time2Go]

Originally Posted by maxingout

When we sailed from Australia back to the USA we shot about 200 hours of video on tape, and as long as we kept the tape away from magnets, it was fairly affordable and safe. There was only one copy, but we never lost any of the tape footage. I wonder if tape is going to come back some day.

.

In fact "Tape" never really went away
Current standard is LTO 7
offering 15TB of storage in a small form factor
Soon to be LTO 8
These are Archival formats and data need to first be
transferred to somewhere else to be used
Even these need a robust Data Migration Plan
or they will be toast in 10 years
Digital Assets must be continuously migrated
or be lost
End of Story
Cheers
Neil

[ReneJK]

Originally Posted by Time2Go

In fact "Tape" never really went away
Current standard is LTO 7
offering 15TB of storage in a small form factor
Soon to be LTO 8

Neil

Correct , with the Storagetek / SUN / Oracle E10Kx tapedrive series still in development as well with the 5th generation in development


typical bank/insurance/government needs to save data for at least 35 years , and that is not being done on HDD's or any other media . tape is still very much alive

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by BlueChicago

. . . That said, redundancy is your friend - two of everything. Portable USB hard drives will still get you a nice combination of capacity, portability, size, price, and speed. .

This.

Plenty of backup is the way the pros deal with important data.

You can create a RAID0 with two portable hard drives -- that would be best practice I think.

Then back up THOSE periodically with something offsite -- best of all, in the cloud.

[ReneJK]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

You can create a RAID0 with two portable hard drives -- that would be best practice I think.

RAID 0 is not really meant for back up as none of the data is mirrored on the 2 HDD's . RAID 0 is used to enlarge the usable capacity , for backup you need a minimum of RAID 1 which mirrors (copies) data on 2 drives so you always have 1 copy of your data in case 1 of the 2 drives fail

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by ReneJK

RAID 0 is not really meant for back up as none of the data is mirrored on the 2 HDD's . RAID 0 is used to enlarge the usable capacity , for backup you need a minimum of RAID 1 which mirrors (copies) data on 2 drives so you always have 1 copy of your data in case 1 of the 2 drives fail

You are absolutely right -- brain fart. I meant RAID 1, or course. Thanks for the correction.

[robregje]

I was ready to comment when i red Time2go's comment. As a once was pro fotographer I must say he's right. In the computer industry we would call that raid 5.

[Stu Jackson]

I have two PHDs, two Toshibas. The smaller one I've had for five years, the larger one for two. I do pretty good backups from my laptop after downloading either camera or phone photos, plus we have a desktop which also sees its use as a backup device. The newer Toshiba PHD that has been used as a System Image for my laptop just "informed me" that it won't do it, needs to be reformatted. Oh rapture, Oh Joy! Multiple backups is the way to go. The medium? Your stuff, your choice.

[robregje]

The safest,

theoretical, way is having three storage media and then use a free downloadable raid 5 app.
This stores, devides, the data as follows data devided in two and spread equal over all three media so that always one half is on two media.

In understandable terms; if something is stored in three spots, rarely two go down.

Grtz Robért