Data Backup Strategy

[wdegillio]

I remember reading a long time ago the statement "If digital information doesn't exist in three places, it doesn't exist", stating that at least 2 backup copies of data should be maintained. Is this still recommended? I currently have a Time Machine drive which backs up my system SSD drive, and I keep 2 backups of my external drive (2TB SSD) which holds non-current projects and assorted data. Should I make an additional copy of my System Drive in addition to Time Machine? If so, how? Thanks in advance.

[mikehalloran]

I run multiple Time Machine backups. Very easy, as they rotate through hourly — or rather the next one begins one hour after the last one stops.

I find that Ethernet, WiFi and Thunderbolt (and eSATA if your Mac is old enough to support it) are rock solid.

I never use USB drives except temporarily such as making an archived copy on an HDD. There is a now 20 year old sleep issue with USB drives i. e. sometimes they don't wake. I have never found a USB drive, drive dock or hub that doesn't suffer from it now and then. It may be a hardware issue—some are a lot worse than others. Thunderbolt, OTOH, is certified and licensed by Intel. "Thunderbolt compatible" is marketing nonsense that translates to "cheaper components".

I use NAS boxes connected via Ethernet and to my WiFi router so that all six Macs in my network back up to the same three TM drives. Like the late Ron Popeil, I "Set it and forget it." WD and Seagate have NAS boxes that support Time Machine right out of the box. I have one of these stuffed with a pair of 18TB HDDs in a RAID 1 array — both drives run simultaneously and are mirrored so that, if you lose one, the data on the other is identical. Takes about 30 seconds to swap drives in this box.
https://www.westerndigital.com/products ... 00NCH-NESN

If your needs aren't that heavy, WD has these 8TB MyCloud Home units for $150. Again, Ethernet connected to your Mac, WiFi router or both. The drive inside can be swapped but it isn't a 30 second procedure like the above. You configure these through a browser and WD has phone support as needed (pretty easy).

The only time I ever lost data is when the 20mB SCSI drive connected to my Mac+ died in 1986. Fortunately, my tape backup worked well enough to restore all but 121 FileMaker invoices to the new 40mB drive. Because I used a 3-part invoice in my pin-feed ImageWriter II, I restored the missing data from paper.

[wdegillio]

Thank you, Mike, I now have a much better idea how to configure my system. I can employ Time Machine to a greater degree, and gain more security in the process. Again, your help is much appreciated!

[HCMarkus]

May I also suggest off-site backup? As I've reported previously, my studio burned to the ground in a wildfire in 2003. I lost some work, including formative years' archives, forever.

Nowadays, BackBlaze is my protection against a similar disaster... unlimited cloud backup for a single computer costs about $6/Month. I'm paying a little more to get 1 year archiving; otherwise all drives must be connected every 30 days. I have 11+ TB up there. One thing about BackBlze: you cannot backup NAS, so internal and USB-connected drives must be used locally.

I also do manual backups of current projects to SSD, and keep everything except VI Samples (they go to BackBlaze only) backed up locally, with Time Machine and Long-Term storage residing on 8TB drives of spinning rust. Costco has Seagate 8TB USB3 drives with a built-in 2-port hub for $150.

[mikehalloran]

It's been awhile since I've looked at Backblaze. A lot has changed (TB externals can be backed up now) and I might go with it this year. They now recommend using it alongside Time Machine which is good but they cannot backup TM drives (no surprise there) nor the MacOS—not a big deal and may have changed now that Ventura is on a separate Volume on the System drive.. or not. I like the $7/70/130 pricing and see no need for the extra $24 annual to keep everything forever.
https://www.backblaze.com/backup-pricing.html

Of the six Macs in my network, the only one with external drives attached is mine. This should make setup easy. NAS can be backed up (only with business plans) but that doesn't include Time Machine which is how I use my NAS boxes. There are a number of other restrictions such as Bootcamp Volume (needs additional license for Windows) and Virtual drives (no) unless the files are made available locally (then Yes).
https://help.backblaze.com/hc/en-us/sec ... Backing-Up

The big thing to know about Backblaze is that Restore is much faster and more complete* with Time Machine. But, if what happens to Mr. Marcus happens to you, "faster" doesn't matter: You have access to your data.

*In case of a disaster, as long as your Mac is 2012 or newer, you would restore its original OS online and update to the one you prefer before initiating a complete BB restore. If your Mac is destroyed, you'd just fire up the new one and go from there.

[primeevolutionary]

I second the recommendation to use Backblaze. It’s turned out to be a very easy affordable offsite platform. I used to use Crashplan and it was very slow and a CPU hog. It might just have been the times though. With Crashplan it seemed like a chore to backup and I used to streamline to keeps things running smoothly (like only documents and files). It seemed to struggle with them. I started small with Backblaze, but, it seemed to backup everything quickly enough that I eventually started backing everything up including external hard drives. It couldn’t have been easier. If I create something new that starts to slow my internet connection at a bad time, it’s very easy to pause it.

[primeevolutionary]

Oh, and as a strategy, I have a Time Machine backup in a Thunderbay. I hook up a second Time Machine drive monthly once a month and put it in my bank safe deposit box. I grab the third Time Machine backup drive from the safe deposit box to use at the beginning of the next month. And then, Backblaze simultaneously.

[BobK]

Anybody else other than Mike H doing redundant drives, either hardware or software RAID?

I've been getting by just fine with Time Machine, Backblaze, and manual backups to external HDDs for data and SSDs for the system drive.

But this week, I was shocked to find that my sample library and A-V data SSDs are both failing, after just over one year of very light use. Most likely they were defective from the start.

That got me thinking I should have some redundancy with at least the A-V data drive.

(Both are Samsung 870 EVO 2TB drives, manufactured on consecutive days in late 2021. I bought them about 14 months ago, and they started failing in January if not earlier, when Chronosync backups starting throwing "read" errors (-19). I didn't have time to look into it then, so I didn't realize what was going on. I've had terrible luck with SSDs - around 20 percent failure rate, between these two and an OWC SSD several years ago that just suddenly stopped working. So far it appears that I haven't lost any data, except maybe some sample libraries I can download again.)

A simple and inexpensive hardware RAID option is the OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual mini:

https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/externa ... -dual/mini

Or I could get another Thunderbay 4 Mini and Soft Raid.

I'm still OK with keeping inactive projects on detached HDDs...

I'm trying to watch the budget and would appreciate hearing from others who have redundant drives (in addition to backup).

Thanks!

[HCMarkus]

One thing: Don't use RAID for VI Sample Streaming. JBOD is better for those many small reads.

There were a lot of reports of bad Samsung drives... sounds like you got a couple of them. You might want to do a little Googling to see if there is any recourse.

My backup strategy is unchanged from that which I posted earlier.

[BobK]

One thing: Don't use RAID for VI Sample Streaming. JBOD is better for those many small reads.

Are you referring to striped RAID? Or would mirrored also be worse then JBOD?

There were a lot of reports of bad Samsung drives... sounds like you got a couple of them. You might want to do a little Googling to see if there is any recourse.

Ugh. Might be worth a quick search, but every time I've received notice of a class action suit involving a company I've dealt with, the payout hasn't been worth the time it takes to fill out the form!

[HCMarkus]

Are you referring to striped RAID? Or would mirrored also be worse then JBOD?

It seems unlikely mirrored RAID drives would slow VI data reads, but I don't know this to be a fact. Clearly, striped drives, which can speed up writes and reads of large files, are disadvantageous for VI Sample Data.

That said, since VI Sample Data is predominantly a read-only proposition, the utility of a Sample Data mirrored RAID array strikes me as questionable. A simple Time Machine or Super Duper incremental backup on a spare HD, performed when new VI data is installed, would be more efficient. I keep a copy up on Backblaze to simplify restoration in the event of a drive failure, but my ultimate VI Sample backup is currently a download from the developer if disaster left me no other option. Maybe I'll dedicate an old spinner to this; would take but a minute to set up.

[bayswater]

A simple Time Machine or Super Duper incremental backup on a spare HD, performed when new VI data is installed, would be more efficient..

I keep it even simpler than that. When there is a change to the SSD with VI libs, I do a simple drag-drop-replace to a large spinner when I’m all done for the day. The computer shuts itself down at midnight. I should probably do a second simple copy to a cloud service of some sort, but this has worked for many years and relies on nothing more than the Finder.

[HCMarkus]

A simple Time Machine or Super Duper incremental backup on a spare HD, performed when new VI data is installed, would be more efficient..

I keep it even simpler than that. When there is a change to the SSD with VI libs, I do a simple drag-drop-replace to a large spinner when I’m all done for the day. The computer shuts itself down at midnight. I should probably do a second simple copy to a cloud service of some sort, but this has worked for many years and relies on nothing more than the Finder.

But of course! +1

[BobK]

It seems unlikely mirrored RAID drives would slow VI data reads, but I don't know this to be a fact. Clearly, striped drives, which can speed up writes and reads of large files, are disadvantageous for VI Sample Data.

That said, since VI Sample Data is predominantly a read-only proposition, the utility of a Sample Data mirrored RAID array strikes me as questionable. A simple Time Machine or Super Duper incremental backup on a spare HD, performed when new VI data is installed, would be more efficient. I keep a copy up on Backblaze to simplify restoration in the event of a drive failure, but my ultimate VI Sample backup is currently a download from the developer if disaster left me no other option. Maybe I'll dedicate an old spinner to this; would take but a minute to set up.

Thanks - I figured mirroring wouldn't be needed for sample data all the reasons you mentioned, but it's good to hear it!

I'll focus on something more robust for my recording drive.

Hopefully this week's nightmare is just bad luck, but my failure rate for SSDs is about 20 percent, and for 2TB SSDs it's 100 percent!

[mikehalloran]

There have been some reports of bad batches of 970 EVO SSDs from 2021. I've not experienced any failures but I've read about them.

Normally, I'd post an informative link but I've not found one that didn't include some posts with absurdly stupid advice including 'write to zeros' which can kill a perfectly good drive and no decent drive app or OS will allow.

Unless purchased from an *OEM or VAR, Samsung warrants these for 5 years or certain number of R/W cycles—probably impossible to hit in 2–2.5 years. Interestingly, Samsung requires you to keep the retail boxes for RMAs.

Crucial has their warranty center in Nampa Idaho and their turnaround time is fast. Most of theirs are also have 5 year warranty periods. Crucial is the retail brand of Micron. Drives bought under the Micron brand are bought and sold by *OEMs and VARs.

*OEMs and VARs get discounts that take into account the 'no warranty' status and they are expected to eat any defects incurred by their customers. Good luck with that.