Back-up Storage Options

londonman81

I back-up my family photos and videos onto an external HDD which is 10 years old.
Although it gets very little use (back-ups are done around once a month) and should be in good condition, I'm wary that HDD have a tendency to fail with time.

So I'm looking at other back-up storage options.

Options I'm considering are:

1. SSD external drive, which I hear are more reliable (I don't know how long they're expected to last..?)

1. Cloud storage, which seems more permanent but also seems to need a
   fast upload speed and an on-going subscription

1. Large capacity USB drive.
   I don't know what the difference is between a 1TB USB drive and a 1TB SSD other than cost, unless I'm missing something...?

What is the best option for backing up family photos and videos?

Are there any other options once I've not mentioned, that should be considered?

Thanks!

arciere

The best option is to have a mirrored drive, which is 2 drives continuously copying data between them.
I have seen 20 year-old drives in perfectly good shape and tons of brand-new drives failing after 24 hours. Everything can fail (irrespective of age), the best way to prevent data loss is to have backups on more than 1 device.
- SSD for backups: not useful. They are more expensive than HDD and not necessarily more robust (sometimes they are even less reliable than HDD).
- Cloud storage: yes and no, depending on how much you are willing to pay, how fast your internet connection is and how much you need to store
- Large capacity USB drive: NAS enclosures (instead of USB) is probably a better choice, but again you need to make sure you have at least 2 mirrored drives  (RAID 1).

RumRat

Google Photos. Free and simple to use, no point in having to pay for cloud storage.

JJ_Egan

Me separate hard drive in PC   and or Google Photos  .

bob_a_builder

Google photos  + the upload application on the PC which will upload all your photos in the background, overnight or as long as it takes
https://windowsreport.com/google-photos-windows-10-2/

For videos,  either a Facebook or Youtube account - in both cases you can make the videos private, but open it up to other family as you wish - it will be your own private family area

MarkFromCornwall

londonman81 said:

I back-up my family photos and videos onto an external HDD which is 10 years old.

I'm not sure exactly which technology is best.  I think it's important to have at least TWO backups, and that your backup strategy is SIMPLE.  How much you spend and how often you backup will depend on how much you value your data.  I use two external USB drives.  The most recently bought is a Western Digital 'My Passport Ultra' which I'm pleased with.  I only plug it in when it's in use (in case the computer is hit by lightning) and I keep the two devices in separate locations.  Also important is to test your backups - occasionally I will deliberately delete an unimportant file on my computer and check that I can restore it from backup.

a

arciere said:

The best option is to have a mirrored drive, which is 2 drives continuously copying data between them.
I have seen 20 year-old drives in perfectly good shape and tons of brand-new drives failing after 24 hours. Everything can fail (irrespective of age), the best way to prevent data loss is to have backups on more than 1 device.

Wow that is good! Did you check every file, or do you mean the index read? I was not at work for 6 months and the fast san drive that some  years ago found its way into my pc had data issues. After 5 year Megaupload's servers that were kept in a hosting companies server room had some corrupt hard drives.

Think you are lucky!

The_Fat_Controller

I have two old laptop hard drives, removed when both ACER devices had power supply failures.
Just bought a couple of cheap drive enclosures to put them in which I connect via USB when necessary.
Number three is a 1TB external hard drive connected to the USB port on my router.
My photos are also on two USB flash drives.
As I am also away from home a lot, a few important documents have been uploaded to Google Drive and others are synced there every time they are changed.
Maybe a bit of overkill, but the most important files are not going to be lost.

mgfvvc

I back up to a NAS (Network Attached Storage) box containing twin mirrored hard disks for my local backup. I also have a cloud backup, in case we have a fire and lose the local backups. It's not the cheapest solution, but I would have to be very unlucky, to lose the original data, both the mirrored disks and the online backup, all at the same time. I have the encryption key for the cloud backup held in a Keepass2 database which is backed up to Google Drive.

Paula_Smith

We have original files stored on the main pc, then backup onto an external hdd.
We have a further backup network drive with 2 hdd's - held in the other end of the house, with 2 further (weekly and monthly) backups.
It should be ok, even in the event of a fire, but possibly not if it is catastrophic - but we will have other things to worry about if it is.
I don't want to store data on line as the provider (even Google, Amazon etc) could cease to exist or decide that our account doesn't exist.

grumpycrab

arciere said:

The best option is to have a mirrored drive

I have not read all posts...but mirror is BAD for a backup for obvious reasons (e.g. what happens if you mirror a bad source?).   If data is important need 1. backup locally. hard disk is fine ( buy a new one if you have too.).  2. cloud gives you that important 2nd copy.