Do have a video on how to prevent my .jpg photos from becoming corrupt. Not many get corrupt but a few that were backed up to USB-connected hard drives using robocopy on Windows 10. All my photos are .jpg about 1 TB

I copy my portfolio pictures and important documents on an encrypted micro SD card, which I can keep in my wallet. You can tape 8 of those to a piece of paper, and have them with you at all times. But this is only useful for small amounts of data that never changes. TerraMaster is an inexpensive hardware RAID solution for those who don't need the QNAP performance and the SYNOLOGY features. The least expensive TerraMaster simply mirrors your drive, which is the bare minimum that everyone should do. JBOD is not a RAID, it means Just a Bunch Of Drives, which is nothing more than a bunch of drives, period.

The main problem with cloud backup, is not that it takes months to backup a large data collection, but the main purpose of having a backup in the first place is to be able to RECOVER your files in the event of a disaster. Who could wait months to recover their data?

Good Show. I am in the midst of a data loss crisis. I was trying to set up a system in similar to what you described. Downloaded the trial version of the Carbon Copy Cloner. Set it up to copy my Lightroom library from one Lacie to another. Started having Kernel Panic crashes. Argh! Then found that when trying to open different folders a lot of photos wouldn't open and instead caused the Kernel Panic. Anyone out there know any kind of solution? Is there any file recovery software that might be my salvation? Are there any hard drive stress programs similar to the one Joseph mentions in the Softraid program?

The limitations you mentioned @ 20:00 are not limitations of RAID 5. They might be limitations of the particular software RAID tool you're using, but that's not inherent to RAID 5. For example, Linux's built-in RAID 5 (which backs most of the common NAS devices out there - QNAP, Synology, etc.) supports both adding more drives and replacing smaller drives with bigger drives. The only limitation that is inherent in RAID 5 is that it can only use the same amount of space on every drive. So you can't have a mix of drive sizes and use all of every drive. Usually what you do is you replace each drive with a larger drive, letting the RAID rebuild after replacing each drive, and then only when all the drives have been replaced can you grow the size of the RAID volume to use all the space. Also, be careful about using huge RAID 5 volumes - they're actually a really bad idea. The big problem is that when the RAID is so large that it takes days or weeks to rebuild, you're actually quite likely to have another drive failure before the RAID rebuild can even finish, especially if you have multiple drives from the same batch that have all experienced the same workload. RAID 6 is a lot better because you can tolerate two drive failures at once.

I ordered the WD Passport Wireless Pro 4TB, that will backup my SD cards to the built in battery powered portable 4TB hard drive. Then I think what I want to get is a good but basic (not too expensive) Synology NAS, single or dual bay, one that has fast USB3 auto backup performance so every time I am home I plug in the WD Wireless Pro to it, it will automatically backup my files to my NAS and then what I hope to be able to do on the Synology is to set it to upload a copy to Amazon Cloud Drive which provides unlimited storage for $59/year. I hope that the Synology is able to upload files larger than 2GB to Amazon Cloud Drive. Perhaps I can set the Synology to only upload during nights when it can perhaps detect that I am not using the Internet for anything else. I might get also the Synology router that might be able to bond two ISP internet connections together, I've always dreamed of doubling my internet upload speed.. not sure though if it's able to bond two different ISPs to double the upload speed to YouTube or if it has to upload one video on one ISP and upload the next on the other ISP somehow. Amazon is the second richest guy in the world, I trust that they will stay in business and that my Terrabytes of data will be safe on Amazon Drive. Not sure about companies like backblaze etc I think that many cloud companies have gone out of business and customers have lost all their data.. I trust only Amazon and Google for cloud backup. Though, I am still not sure if Amazon Drive will have satisfactory Chrome OS support (using the Android app to hopefully sync files ok), I am not totally sure if Amazon Drive will provide unlimited fast upload speed, good download speeds also whenever I might want to download my backup.

Regarding SSD's. They do fail... but with no moving parts they are much more robust as photojoseph says. Not to mention MUCH MUCH faster.. with no moving head, the seek time is greatly reduced. There is no read head to move to the places on the platter with the data, it just pulls it out of static ram. However, they do have a finite number of read/writes.. so the more you use it, the quicker it will fail. And when they fail, they're done. Unlike a platter drive which you can send to a recovery center which opens it up in a clean room and pulls out the platters with your data on them and puts them in a working drive to recover data.. or runs recovery on the original drive with special software.. once an SSD fails, there is NO recovery.

Oh boy! Lots to say.. I do audio on the weekends, but my real job is as an IT consultant.

First of all BackBlaze sounds awesome. Next, a free backup program I can recommend is Cobian backup. Works great, and I've done disaster recovery from it. It does not do system state backup, just file backup- so keep that in mind. But you can schedule the backups and keep a certain number of them.

Now for the main course! A solution we use quite a bit of is SYNOLOGY. SYNOLOGY devices are NAS devices that come in varying sizes from 2-drive models to 12 drive models. These are incredibly powerful devices that you can store massive amounts of data on. They are incredibly fast as well.

You have lots of options for Raid (We usually prefer Raid10) and lots of backup options.. Additionally, you can get two of these devices and have one replicate to the other. Put them side by side for the initial sync, then bring one offsite (home, data center, etc) and let it replicate changes. The SYNOLOGY can keep multiple versions for set amounts of days.. say you want a file version from 60 days ago.. you can get it! Run out of space and need more? You can add an additional device that gets managed by the first. Very powerful, very versatile.

It also has an app for a cloud sync folder (like Dropbox) that can keep certain shared folders sync'd across multiple devices (ie, multiple computers ect). It has the ability to install mail server, it has the ability to run virtual machines.. it can even be a Windows network Active Directory Domain controller!

Only downside is they aren't cheap. The hardware and drives are sold separately, but they give you a list of compatible drives. I recommend the Western Digital RED drives. These drives are designed for the high I/O of NAS devices.

I noticed they also have a video rendering app you can install on them. I've never used that, but I'd love to see what it can do.

If you go over to LONTV on YouTube, he's got several videos outlining the features of Synology. If you can get your hands on one @photojoseph, I highly recommend it!

PS.. was looking at BackBlaze and they have Synology integration!! https://www.backblaze.com/business-server.html

What are your thoughts on cheap Seagate HDs like u mentioned vs more expensive 'pro' HD's like G-Tech G-Drives for archiving?

Nice! I also use two USB 3 drives in mirrored raid. I use Windows 10 and it has "storage spaces" built in for this. It works great for me.

I use Freenas and have a network attached storage. It's Unix based so no real virus threat. This requires a disposable PC with multiple hard drives in RAID config.(albeit more complex than RAID.)

I have a SanDisk Ultra 64GB MicroSD that I cannot seem to format no matter what I try. I've tried formatting via Windows OS, Mac OS, Linux Mint OS, 2 Android phones, Canon 7Dm2, GoPro, and Sony a5000...
...all attempts have failed, has anyone else had this sort of issue and found any solutions?