Back up Hard Drive

Dave and Ginny

Dave and Ginny

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Since 2011, previously a tugger
I was keeping my old Packard Bell on Windows 10 just for photoshop and storage of photos. I also have a number of films on it. For whatever reason, unknown...it dumped the majority of my photos yesterday and despite best efforts they are gone! It's been playing up a while which is why six months ago we treated ourselves to a MacBook Air...and haven't regretted it in the slightest!

I need to back up!

Can I have some recommendations for a quality storage device for the Mac primarily...if I can use the same to grab my remaining pics and films from the Windows PC that would be even better.

Cheers Dave
 
I have a 4TB Western Digital external hard drive connected to my iMac, then just let Time Machine do it's bit in the background. Works flawlessly.

You might be able to recover some of the photos from your PB hard drive by removing it and installing it into an external hard drive caddy. Plug it into another windows OS PC, and with fingers crossed, you might be able to drag and drop some / all of the photos / data.
Failing that, there are companies out there that will recover the data from your trashed hard drive - but sadly, you'll need to be sat down when you get the quote.
 
I use a synology ds215 NAS drive with 2 hard drives fitted in it. Apart from giving me mirrored back up in case one of the drives goes pear shaped, it also stores all my iTunes music. I have a Sonos player in the house so I can play music around the house using the synology drive as my music source. It's worked great so far, ........ had it about a year (y)
 
I also use a synology DS 215 with two 3tb drives (mirrored) inside. The three latops in the house get backed up to this. I also use it to store films, mp3s and photographs. I then have a western digital 4tb portable drive which I backup the Synology unit to about once a month. I store the portable drive at a different location. I can thoroughly recommend both.
 
You can go down the route as outlined above and or use cloud storage as well - depends on your view on the use of cloud storage. Google, Microsoft etc all all have competitive offerings and no doubt you may have some free storage with the Mac device. Not sure if non mac cloud offering work with Macs but I am sure someone on the forum will advise.

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I use the built in Time Machine backup to an external Seagate drive and I back up my photos to a separate WD external HDD. I also back up the whole thing to cloud using Backblaze. It's not a question of if a hard drive will fail but when!
 
clanjones said:
You can go down the route as outlined above and or use cloud storage as well - depends on your view on the use of cloud storage. Google, Microsoft etc all all have competitive offerings and no doubt you may have some free storage with the Mac device. Not sure if non mac cloud offering work with Macs but I am sure someone on the forum will advise.
Click to expand...

Should also say that I use a cloud server too. The one I use is https://www.sugarsync.com/en/
But there are plenty others.
Belt and braces and all that (y)
 
Cloud is an option but be careful which one you choose. The cheaper ones will compress your pictures lowering the quality.
 
I've use a 3Tb Apple Airport Time Capsule. It handles all back ups using Time Machine wirelessly without bothering me and all my music is also stored on it. I also use it as the router for all our computers and keep other devices, TV etc, connected to a separate one.

It works in the background and has never missed a beat.


Also, if you have a Mac, why in the name of anything holy are you still using a bloody Windows machine for Photoshop???????
 
Gromett said:
Cloud is an option but be careful which one you choose. The cheaper ones will compress your pictures lowering the quality.
Click to expand...

If it's just for storing pictures then Dropbox is as good as anything. A photographer friend of mine swears by it.

He just sticks with the free version and when he runs out of space just signs up again with another email address. I think he's up to around 20 accounts now.

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I too use a Synology NAS, and a Thecus, and a Zyxel, and....
My Synology is backed up nightly to an external disk.
After all that, as well as Dropbox, Google Drive, I have a free Flickr account which gives me a whole terabyte of photo and video storage (only a few restrictions) which I use as a backstop, belt 'n braces method.
As an aside, after years of mirrored raids, I found the problems were most likely due to faults in the device, rather than the disks, and such faults would knacker all drives in the device . That's why I now use multiple, independent NAS boxes which are themselves backed up to external devices.
I admit I haven't yet managed to set up off-site facilities
 
We have a Western Digital NAS drive system which works very well.

You can get various storage capacity options and it is very easy to install and are connected to your router. If you get a unit with 2 hardrives in it you can set it up so that you can backup up to Drive A and Drive B then automatically creates a mirror image of A. Then if one of the hardrives fails you can replace it and it will then mirror itself to the other hardrive. Alternatively you can get 2 single drive units and when you set them up the second mirrors the first. If you have a failure of a Single unit when you replace it and restore from the other. This helps cover a unit failing rather than a hardrive in a unit. If its a unit that fails you could buy a new box and put the okay hardrive in it.

We store all our stuff including all the films and photo's etc we have and our Smart TV's, Tablets and PC's etc can connect wirelessly to the NAS drive and play the films and Photos stored on it.

Installation is easy needed a power supply and connection to your Router. You then download the software and set it up. The units work with both Mac and PC at the same time.
 
I can back up a hard drive because I have a reversing camera fitted!!
 
Good cloud storage is the best option. Don't rely completely on back up drives, mine failed and I lost a heck of a lot.

There is a 1-2-3 rule that I was told by our IT dept

1 copy in the cloud
2 copies on hard drives (kept in different locations)
3 copies on CD/DVD (in different locations)

That's 6 backups for important data and irreplaceable photos.
 
NickNic said:
If it's just for storing pictures then Dropbox is as good as anything. A photographer friend of mine swears by it.

He just sticks with the free version and when he runs out of space just signs up again with another email address. I think he's up to around 20 accounts now.
Click to expand...

I got the photoshop elements 11 back in 2013 when I just had the windows pc. I know I can remove it from that one...but no disc drive on the Mac to re-load it...unless there is another way?

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Dave and Ginny said:
I got the photoshop elements 11 back in 2013 when I just had the windows pc. I know I can remove it from that one...but no disc drive on the Mac to re-load it...unless there is another way?
Click to expand...

All of the Adobe suite is available to download. http://www.adobe.com/uk/creativecloud.html

I use Photoshop, Illustrator, Lightroom, InDesign & Acrobat for work and I've never had discs.

Alternatively you can get a USB disc drive for your Mac. There's not much point in buying one for a one off use but I've got one if you're ever passing this way.
 
NickNic said:
All of the Adobe suite is available to download. http://www.adobe.com/uk/creativecloud.html

I use Photoshop, Illustrator, Lightroom, InDesign & Acrobat for work and I've never had discs.

Alternatively you can get a USB disc drive for your Mac. There's not much point in buying one for a one off use but I've got one if you're ever passing this way.
Click to expand...

Thanks, just been looking at my box and the discs...loooks like I can 'officially' uninstall it from the windows PC and then reinstall it on the Mac from a download and use the original serial number.
 
I have a Western Digital 2tb disk on my MacBook pro, but also use iCloud to store all photos - paying apple a few pound a month for more space!
 
Thanks for all the help on this. I think I'm going to go for a combination of iCloud storage and an external hard drive. Possibly this one at Argos.

One quick last further question; would I be able to save some files from my Windows 10 laptop so I can then scrap that...before then continuing to use it with my MacBook?


Broken Link Removed
 
I've just started using the unlimited cloud storage for photos which comes with Amazon prime as well as a 2Tb portable hard drive.

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mustaphapint said:
I've just started using the unlimited cloud storage for photos which comes with Amazon prime as well as a 2Tb portable hard drive.
Click to expand...

That sounds a good deal but am I right in thinking you can't use prime in other European destinations?
 
Dave and Ginny said:
That sounds a good deal but am I right in thinking you can't use prime in other European destinations?
Click to expand...
You can't watch the videos from abroad unless you have a vpn set up with a UK IP address, but I don't think there would be a problem with accessing their cloud for backup purposes, although I've yet to test that.
 
I have over 2 Terrabytes of photos. I keep four copies of each photo using two hard drives and both Dropbox and Google to store them. The hard disks and dropbox backups are full resolution files but the google account downsizes them. I like Google, I have my phone and Macs to auto upload them to google and I have access to them wherever I am, from any device. Dropbox and the hard drives I keep in sync with a program called goodsync. These run automatically overnight. (y)

For a simple backup if you dont have too many is to buy a cheap external drive and just copy the photos to it every now and then. You should still consider and online option too.

Amazon product ASIN B00Y0R9D6G
 
mustaphapint said:
You can't watch the videos from abroad unless you have a vpn set up with a UK IP address, but I don't think there would be a problem with accessing their cloud for backup purposes, although I've yet to test that.
Click to expand...

You can though download a lot of Prime content onto a machine/hard drive and take it with you.

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