24 Jul 2011

Photo Backup

3-2-1 Backup Rule, 3 copies, 2 media types, 1 offsite.

Current state is I have one copy, on 1 media type, on site. Not a good solution.

While I ponder what plan to buy from CrashPlan and how long 200GB will take to upload, I’m making a backup to DVD which I’ll store offsite. I’ll do this quarterly deltas.

I couldn’t find a good backup solution (good == free, and no weird archive format) I chose to go the old fashion way, tar + split:

• tar cvf /Volumes/500GB/20110724.tar Photos/
• split -b 2240m 20110724.tar 20110724.tar.split.
• burn resulting files (2 per dvd)

Things to note:

• no compression, doing this for speed, not for saving space
• no parity, if I corrupt a file then it’s gone, but tar can recover if just some bits are wrong and only lose part of the files in the archive.
• no cryptography, could run it through something

This is one step toward my Idea backup solution:

3 Copies -

Crash Plan - Cloud Crash Plan - NAS HDD DVD 2 Media types - HDD & DVD

2 Offsite - Crash Plan Cloud & DVDs

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