TJOtala

I’ve evolved my photo storage system over the years to avoid loss of data due to single hardware failure. The basic idea behind it is staged redundancy.

Short Term Storage (Working Set)

I use a fairly typical Dell Dimension 8400 PC as my primary workstation. Inside it has a 200GB SATA system drive (C:) and the data drive (D:) is a pair of 500GB SATA drives configured as a RAID1 mirror. I’ve exposed the last remaining SATA interface on this system as an external SATA (eSATA) interface.

The RAID1 array will in theory survive the failure of one of the two disks, assuming I catch it soon enough. I have yet to test that theory.

Medium Term Storage

I use a Buffalo TeraStation Pro II NAS device as my medium term storage. My model is a 1TB unit configured as RAID5 array yielding about 700GB of usable space. This is a consumer-grade NAS device which means that it is not the fastest thing around, but it is plenty fast for my modest needs. Based on my volume projections, this should offer local redundancy for the next couple of years. The obvious downside is that it is physically in the same location as the PC itself. In case of a fire or an earthquake, this storage would not survive any better than the PC next to it.

Long Term Storage

In the past I used tapes or burned a stack of DVD-R discs to provide long-term backup of my photos. Unfortunately neither the tape nor the optical disc capacities have kept up with the pace of increasing file sizes, thus making this no longer a feasible solution.

Now I use a stack of relatively cheap USB 2.0, IEEE 1394 and eSATA enclosures with hard drives in various capacities (100GB, 160GB, 250GB, 500GB). These enclosures offer large enough capacity yet are small enough to be stored in a safe deposit box in a bank vault. As Blu-ray and HD-DVD drives become more afforable I may consider optical discs again as a secondary storage method.

Network Storage

Over time I may also consider using services such as Amazon S3 for truly redundant offsite storage of photos. Right now the cost and transfer times are prohibitively high.