HOW I PROTECT MY BIGGEST ASSET (300TB of Photos & Videos!!!)

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Ask yourself, how are you protecting your photos and videos? If you said, I have them "backed up" on an external hard drive...I'm sorry to tell you, that's not a backup, that's a failure waiting to happen. A true backup is when you have multiple copies of the same thing stored on-site, off-site, and in the cloud. We use Synlogoy over here at the studio. We started with smaller personal boxes and worked out way up to a 16 bay unit in under 10 years.

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PO Box 3715 Philadelphia, PA 19125

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#FroKnowsPhoto #JaredPolin #photography

[froknowsphoto]

Hey everyone, I will add this here. Yes I understand RAID's can fail, anything can fail, that's the point of this video. The point of this video is to get photographer who are doing nothing with their data, to be aware that there are options out there. I understand that "the cloud" is another option for people and Synology also offers a solution there. But for some, the cloud is cost-prohibitive, especially at our size. We're talking 3K a month to store that data in the cloud.

In terms of having multiple racks, we have multiple redundant racks here. In an effort to keep the video to the point, I wasn't going to go into the exact setup we have here. We have multiple raids, multiple racks and we currently have a cloud that we're transitioning off of due to insane price hiking. In the video I mentioned another box going to my house to be offsite.

The key is to make people aware they need to do something and think about their data long term. More backups the better, be redundant, have a cloud if you can, use every solution possible. One last solution someone mentioned is old school tape drives, yes that's a solution for sure.

Thanks for watching.

[froknowsphoto]

I should also add after reading all the comments about people needing to have multiple of this and that. Some people don't even know this stuff exists and this is the first time they are becoming aware. I can tell people they need to have 14 different backups in 14 places and scare them away, or I can point them to a great starting point which is better than where they are currently. Remember, in the video I show multiple boxes and discuss moving one offsite.

The point, protect your data please.

[Charlotte_Photographer]

There are two types of people in this world. 1. Those who have had a hard drive failure and 2. Those who are going to have a hard drive failure. Redundancy is the key. Redundancy is the key. Redundancy is the key.

[jackjoshlin]

I am in the high end enterprise IT space for my day job. As an entry point synology is a good starting point, and thank you for pointing out 1 copy is pending failure.


3- copies
2- media types
1- offsite/offline
Follow this rule when planning.

[Daniel_Scott]

As a professional photographer and someone that works in the IT industry, I’m so glad you made this video. Regardless of what system someone uses, they should always follow the 3-2-1 rule! Redundancy is key! Synology makes it so easy and there’s so many videos on YouTube to help!

[kdw]

Back in 2013 I bought my first NAS for home and my office. I have them setup so they each have 2 drive fault tolerance and each backs up to the other and then backup to an online cloud service. Finally I ocassionally back them up to the Pioneer DVDs that are guaranteed to last over 100 years. I feel pretty good about my solution.

[robeckel]

After I watched this video the first time, I made a note to come back and see the comments in a few hours. I'm not disappointed!

[retirewithjames]

I bought Synology a couple of years ago. Best decision I ever made. Now I am taking personal family photos in my Apple Photos and backing them up in my Synology file system. Just as important as having Synology, make sure you use a very good file naming solution.

[davidstone]

Glad to see you mentioned offsite storage, worst case is a fire or if someone steals you data, keeping an offsite or a remote backup as well as onsite raid storage is the best solution.

[TheOmegaKira]

Thank you for talking about this. Too many youtubers with videos showing external drives. As a photographer, and an IT Specialist... this touches my heart more than you know! Also; sick pick on the Ubiquiti stuffs.... I run that here at home and I'm a Sr. Network Engineer.

[howardyermish]

I"ve had a Synology 4-Bay NAS for about 5 years, and I've been very impressed, not just with the storage, but I've continually gotten software updates for the product. If I were starting fresh, I'd still buy a Synology.

[buning_sensations]

I listen to Peter Krogh who wrote the DAM Book 3.0 (DAM - digital asset management).

[MiladJP]

My mother had cancer and I documented everything with my camera after you have inspired me to do so. Unfortunalty the SDD got formated one day due to a software that accidently thought it's my secondary drive. I've lost all my Images from my mom and from my trip to Israel.
Luckly my mom survived, however the thousands and thousands of photos are gone and it makes me sad every single time...

[realnikonlover]

Thanks for this video Jared! As a retired disaster manager we always encouraged individuals to have a least 3 disk copies. A primary work drive, an onsite backup drive and an offsite backup drive at a secure location. This way if the building with the primary and back up burned to the ground etc., the third drive could be used (hopefully) to restore the lost data. With the inclusion of cloud storage I would also add that into the equation. You can never have enough copies of good data. Thanks again. - Jim

[DeniedGrace]

Let me add something, hopefully not to be taken as a criticism, but as helpful.
Don’t put your server rack in a basement. They flood.

No one ever expects them to flood and most are safe but I’ve seen 2 plumbing failures this year (a pipe connection and a hot water heater expansion tank) and water pools at the lowest level.

The problem with water is that it doesn’t just ruin your data. It ruins the thousands and thousands of dollars worth of equipment in those racks too.

Sometimes you’re lucky that it’s only a foot or so of water that collects.
But if you have cables running across the floor and connections that can be submerged in shallow water, you’re still gonna have problems.

So I’m not saying don’t put your server rack in the basement, I’m saying if you have another choice, that’s usually better.
And get those cables off the floor!👍

[peteserrata]

Damn Jared. So timely. Just rebuilt 4tb worth of still photos after my external hdd died. Didn’t lose anything, but still a pita. Love your content.

[steveburkholder]

Good informational video but I would add a couple of more requirements. 1) RAID 5 is not a backup solution. RAID 10 with an external offsite is. RAID 5 will fail at some point and it will be a hard fail — no recovery. 2) Use enterprise level hard drives and not consumer grade ones. The cost is just a few Shekels more but they will fail way less often.

[ZEkr]

What do you think about the AWS S3 as an extra redundancy. Its only $0.99/TB/month for Deep Archive storage class. So that would be $300/month for 300TB data.

[JRodPhotoArt]

I have been using Synology for many years. I also just upgraded and it went very smooth. Well said!!

[dorinxtg]

Jared, , RAID is NOT a backup solution. The hard disk controller inside your NAS could go "kaput" and your RAID would be inaccessible (been there).
Offsite backup is great, but since those disks solutions makes you money, perhaps it would be a great idea to add another 2U rack solution, and a sync between the disk solutions.