3-2-1 backup plan

[TuffToodle]

I recently lost my LIFE on a hard drive crash and have since decided it is time to get serious about backups. I want a solid system and I am willing to pay for it, but I want it to be as hands free and hopefully inexpensive as possible. This is what I have come up with:

I have a MAC I use for photo/video processing (I am a photographer) and a PC for home use, mostly word documents. I intend to make a clone of each system using Super Duper on the Mac and Macrium Reflect on the PC.
I also want to backup both computers to an apple Time Capsule. I can use time machine on the mac and genie timeline on the PC - bonus points for both software's being free! Finally, I would use an iosafe 214 (potentially in a remote location) to also back up both computers in a RAID setup with the free version of crashplan.
So that's it for the backup! I also intend to periodically archive my old images and finished projects on a Drobo 5D

Can someone let me know if this seems feasible? Can I run time capsule and the iosafe at the same time? Am I making this more complicated than it should be? Is there a better way? Thanks so much for the guidance -- i am not a computer person, but in this day and age we all rely on it, so time to learn lol.

 

[glamdringfh]

You have a lot of good options there...I'd probably simplify to something like this:

Windows Machine:
- Crashplan to local external backup (and cloud)
- Windows Backup

Mac Machine:
- Crashplan to local external backup (and cloud)
- Time Machine

You don't need to backup in 100 places to be safe, eventually you'll hate having your stuff spread over so many places. One (or two) good local and one good external/ cloud backup should be fine.

If you want to also create redundancy for the drives themselves you could look at setting up your hard drives in RAID 1 or RAID 10. Doing this will be expensive as well as time consuming (you'll probably need to buy new drives and ideally a RAID controller), but doing this on top of the backups listed above would make it really hard for you to lose all your data ever again.

**Edit: Also, do look into hard drive data recovery options, sometimes you can reclaim some of the data on a bad drive.

 

[kawininjazx]

Get carbonite online backup

 

[Mr5oh]

I have too much data for online back up. However why not just simplify this some with a couple extra hard drives. I don't care about the OS drive, but you could image the drive if you want. I mainly care about my data. So I have the data on a drive in the PC (actually every PC in the house), and then 2 external drives. One external drive is stored at my house. The other external is store at my in-laws house. Every so often I swap the external drives to update the other one. Simple, and then even a fire at my house doesn't result in data loss.

If you want to secure your data, use Truecrypt to encrypt it. Since it works in Mac, Linux, and Windows, you'll be able to access it no matter what system you have.

 

[TuffToodle]

Thanks so much for the quick response!

The reason I have so many externals listed is that I am wary of the cloud. As a photog, I don't want to risk client's images being stolen or viewed by parties they did not release them to. I realize I am slightly paranoid in this regard, but better safe than sorry I think.
Why do you list windows backup in your list over genie timeline? I have never used either, I'm just going off of internet reviews and blogs.
Obviously buying all of the hard drives and RAID components will be costly, and I certainly won't be starting there, but I think it might be a good end-goal. I'll add to the system as I can.

So if my local external is a time capsule and I use the iosafe in lieu of a cloud - will I be able to use them simultaneously or will my computer explode lol?

Side note - I sent my HD into seagate a over a month ago for their recovery service and have yet to hear back. When I called they said they were still working on it, but it wasn't looking good and they couldn't say for sure how long they would continue working on it.....

 

[glamdringfh]

I listed Windows Backup because it is free, works, and is already available to you. I'm sure Genie Timeline would serve your purpose as well, however, and it would give you a little bit more control over EXACTLY what data you have being backed up.

If you're set on having multiple local backups for each machine it would probably be best to set one as a real-time backup and one do a weekly backup during a time when you won't be using the system for a few hours. This way you have one active mirroring backup, one large weekly backup, and not too much stress on your system's daily performance.

 

[TuffToodle]

Thank you! Its good to know that after all my research I'm not crazy lol! Now I just have to break the expense to the hubby .... anyone have any tips for that?! hahaha
Thanks again