# Advice on building PC/backup system



## curly (Jul 23, 2015)

Hi all,

I am considering stepping away from the MacBook Pro world and building a PC for my photo editing. My mid-2009 MBP has just gotten slow and is time to either get a new one or build something else. I have also been considering building a NAS to backup files once they have gone through the Lightroom process.

My current idea is to build a PC with the following setup:
(1) 250GB SSD for OS boot, program files, and pictures that are to be edited (these files will stay on my SD card until edited and moved to NAS)
(2) 3 TB Western Digital Red HDD for NAS in RAID 1 configuration for RAW and final edited files (transferred from SSD)

Does anyone run a similar type of setup, and are there any considerations I should take? What do people think of cloud backups?


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## floatingby (Jul 23, 2015)

"If your digital file doesn't exist in at least 3 differents places, then it does not exist"

I used to run a NAS in Raid 5, I could loose a disc and just replace it and not loose anything, in theory. Yeah, but It's the controller that failed, so I lost everything.

Now I run the OS and program off of SSD, data goes to two 2 Tb HD in Raid 0 for speed, and backup daily to 2 other, straight, external HD, one of which is kept at my neighbors, so once a month or so I get the HD from my neighbor and update that one.

Cloud backup? Expensive and slow, no thanks.

Oh, I use Synctoy 2.1 to synchronise all the HD, simple, fast efficient, reliable.


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## curly (Jul 23, 2015)

Thanks for the info. I will consider this, and likely would add another layer of backup.

Maybe start with the SSD and (2) HDD NAS storage in RAID1, then add a single HDD (7400rpm) that is equal to the NAS backup size. Files stored on 7400rpm HDD, and get mirrored to the 5400rpm HDDs in RAID1 daily.

I don't use a ton of data space - my first camera only went through 7,000 shutter clicks over 5.5 years.

All of this is better than my current setup which is asking for problems - all on my laptop HD. This is all started by my desire to get a NAS backup for my files. Now I'm more leaning towards a new PC build with a RAID backup all-in-one.


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## floatingby (Jul 23, 2015)

Gotta keep a backup off-site. Hardware is insured, but no insurance can give you back your data if they get stolen, or get lost through fire or water damage.


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## Wizard1500 (Jul 23, 2015)

I agree in that if you are not storing a copy of your backups off-site, then all the RAID arrays in the world won't help.  At the hospital, I did online backups nightly, and swapped out off-site backups every Tuesday.  Just as an aside, we ran an Alpha system w/32 833 processors.....storage was a RAID 5+1 system......if you wanted to, you can stand there, pull a disk out (while the system was being used), and insert a blank disk in it's place...never lose one bit of data....the system automatically started writing the correct data that the disk in that slot should have.....made my job easier.....


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## table1349 (Jul 23, 2015)

This....






With a 4 bay Hot swapable thunderbold 2 DAS.  Two drives are general stoage, use.  Two  drives are Raid plus I keep have a third hd for the raid configuratin that is kept off site and is swapped out once a month so in the event of a major catastrophe I loose 30 days at most.


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## curly (Jul 24, 2015)

floatingby said:


> Gotta keep a backup off-site. Hardware is insured, but no insurance can give you back your data if they get stolen, or get lost through fire or water damage.


Gotcha. Will add that to the list.


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## bratkinson (Jul 24, 2015)

I use a similar setup on my computer...SSD for Windows, documents, and photo shoots during post processing.  I try not to erase the memory cards until I have completed all processing for that shoot.  But sometimes I have no choice.  

At the end of each night, I copy the entire folder (RAW, JPG (I shoot RAW+JPG), shots selected for editing, output from Lightroom, output from Photoshop Elements, and pictures cropped for specific print sizes) to a WD 1TB drive (soon to be 3TB).  I also copy the entire folder to a thumbdrive and put it in my pocket...in case the joint burns down before I fetch my offsite external 3TB drive to put the 'finished products' on.  When I'm all done, the finished project lives on my WD Green HD and offsite drive.

I also have an identical SSD and HD that I clone the drives in the computer to, and then run with them, removing the original SSD and HD.  I have everything on 'slider' drawers so it's only seconds to do a swap.  I do the clone routine about once per month, and keep them in a bookcase 6 feet from my computer.

Why do I do the clone thing?  More than loss due to drive failure, fire, theft, tornado, or whatever, I fear virii.  Whether it's 'ransomware' (send $$ to remove drive encryption), malicious destruction of data, or some other problem that I can't solve manually (Windows won't start, etc), I'm covered.  RAID does NOT protect against software-induced problems and it will write duplicate corrupted information on the drives spinning.  I think I'm covered for any problem.  At worst, if I can't run with the SSD in the computer and have to use the other SSD, I've lost a months' worth of retained emails and other 'new' data.  And even that can be recovered if the 'bad' SSD is still readable.


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## manaheim (Jul 24, 2015)

Look into Crashplan. $60 a year and unlimited backups to the cloud. And you can plug in a USB drive and have it back up there as well. Checks for new files every 15 minutes automatically. Really can't beat it.


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## chuasam (Jul 25, 2015)

I considered the same thing and figured getting a Mac would be so much easier


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## floatingby (Jul 25, 2015)

chuasam said:


> I considered the same thing and figured getting a Mac would be so much easier


Why? In what way does a Macintosh computer makes backing up files easier to any sort of degree than any other computer on the planet?

(and just to be clear, I'm not being rethorical or facetious, I genuinely want to know what made you come to that conclusion)


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## chuasam (Jul 25, 2015)

floatingby said:


> chuasam said:
> 
> 
> > I considered the same thing and figured getting a Mac would be so much easier
> ...


Oh not about backing up. 
Easier for just buying and editing and using. 
Having to relearn a new system seemed like extra work.
Most NAS are not so much dependant on the system.
I like the speed and ease of Thunderbolt RAID drives.


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## table1349 (Jul 26, 2015)

floatingby said:


> chuasam said:
> 
> 
> > I considered the same thing and figured getting a Mac would be so much easier
> ...


20gbit per second file transfere rate both directions.   An OS already desigened to constantly keep back up's, no 3rd party software needed.   Ease of use across platforms.  My Mac will read NTFS and with a free small piece of software write to NTSF.  Does Windows read HFS?


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## floatingby (Jul 26, 2015)

gryphonslair99 said:


> floatingby said:
> 
> 
> > chuasam said:
> ...


As everything Mac, if the default behavior suit your purpose, then you're golden; if it does not, then you run into complication real fast. Exemple: last I checked, timemachine will backup your whole drive but won't let you decide what specific folders you want backed up, which right off the bat does not work for me at all. And it is based on Unix, so that mean that if you use drag and drop to overwrite a folders on a backup drive, it does not overwrite it, it actually erase the folder and write the new one and it's content, so if you have folder X on your backup drive that contains file A and B and you overwrite it with a folder that contain a newer version of file A but no file B, you end up with a folder X containing a new version of file A, but no file B; it is just gone.
As to transfer speed, you will only reach speed that the end media is capable off, which is the same on any platform, being Window, Linux or Macos, the rest is purely theoritical.
And yes you can read HFS with a free piece of software.


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## table1349 (Jul 26, 2015)

Which shows me you have little real experience with OSX.   You can either use software to modify time machine or you can do what I did and write new .plist instructions. 

As for speed,  Thunderbolt 2 on my iMac with a DAS that is also Thunderbolt 2 with 10,000rpm drives connected by a Thunderbolt2 2 cable.  It's blowing USB 3.0 out of the water. 

As for your thoughts on Time Machine, you are just wrong.  I can go back an pull an old file or the newer updated file.  Its not just an overwrite process any more than windows is. 

To each his own for use.  It is what you like to use.  Me I like to sit down, do my work then go do something else with only minimal maintenance.

Thing is, none of this really has to do with the OP's building a new machine.


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## floatingby (Jul 26, 2015)

gryphonslair99 said:


> Which shows me you have little real experience with OSX.   You can either use software to modify time machine or you can do what I did and write new .plist instructions.


And this is easier than using Microsoft Sync toy how exactly?



> As for speed,  Thunderbolt 2 on my iMac with a DAS that is also Thunderbolt 2 with 10,000rpm drives connected by a Thunderbolt2 2 cable.  It's blowing USB 3.0 out of the water.


No it's not.

[edit]Here's some test, in some cases USB 3 was slightly faster, in other Thunderbolt was, but no such thing as "blowing out of the water"

How fast is USB 3.0 really Macworld



> As for your thoughts on Time Machine, you are just wrong.  I can go back an pull an old file or the newer updated file.  Its not just an overwrite process any more than windows is.


Yes it is, as spelled out here: How to Merge Folders on Mac OS X Without Losing All Your Files Seriously 



> To each his own for use.  It is what you like to use.


And what suit one purpose. I find it funny thought that people using Mac would come in and suggest the OP using a Mac when he clearly state he want to move away from Mac and build his own PC. It'd be like a guy asking about which lens to use on his Canon T3i, and you go in and suggest he buy a Nikon.


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## table1349 (Jul 26, 2015)

Thunderbolt 2.0  Apples to Apples not Apples to Oranges.   Old article.  Old results.  Buy the way, how many USB 3.0 devices can you daisy chain together? 

Again. Old article.  Had no problems with merging in 10.10.  

Actually what is funny is a Windows person missing the point.  PC connected to a hot swap DAS instead of a NAS.  But then the KISS principle is lost on a lot of the Windows world.


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## unpopular (Jul 26, 2015)

MacOS really does have the best backup system out of the box.

It is literally a matter of hooking up a drive and pressing a button.


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## curly (Jul 28, 2015)

I ended up selling my old MacBook and bought the stuff for the new build. The build will commence this weekend. Will add larger drives later, but this currently matches the storage I had on the MacBook (which was only about half-full) - will backup on external hard drives for now. 

AMD Quad-Core 3.7Ghz
Samsung EVO 250GB SSD
Sapphire Radeon R9 270X 4GB graphics card
16GB of RAM
...

Total price: ~$885 after tax

Can anyone recommend monitors that are around $200 or less?


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## AlanKlein (Jul 28, 2015)

Offsite backup?  If your house burns down, you'll have more to worry about than your photo files.


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## floatingby (Jul 28, 2015)

AlanKlein said:


> Offsite backup?  If your house burns down, you'll have more to worry about than your photo files.


And loosing a lifetime of photos will help, right.


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## unpopular (Jul 28, 2015)

AlanKlein said:


> Offsite backup?  If your house burns down, you'll have more to worry about than your photo files.



As it sits right now, if my house burns down I would be literally fckd. Two years of work product would be gone. My career would be _seriously _compromised.

Insurance would, hopefully, cover my computer, display and audio monitors. But all that work would be lost. It would be extremely difficult to rebuild.


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## AlanKlein (Jul 29, 2015)

I was referring to an amateur photographer.    No different than all  those film shots I have in photo albums in my closet.  My relatives have enough shots in frames that life will go on if mine burn up.  When I switched to digital and made slide shows of family, trips and vacations on DVD's for showing on HDTV's, I've given copies to other family members living elsewhere to see and enjoy so coincidentally they have my backups.  The rest of the digital photos are junk or duplicates anyway.  Why would I need those?  Of course, if you're in a photo business, reliable and secure archiving is a necessity.


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## KenC (Jul 29, 2015)

AlanKlein said:


> I was referring to an amateur photographer.    No different than all  those film shots I have in photo albums in my closet.  My relatives have enough shots in frames that life will go on if mine burn up.  When I switched to digital and made slide shows of family, trips and vacations on DVD's for showing on HDTV's, I've given copies to other family members living elsewhere to see and enjoy so coincidentally they have my backups.  The rest of the digital photos are junk or duplicates anyway.  Why would I need those?  Of course, if you're in a photo business, reliable and secure archiving is a necessity.



I too am an amateur, but that doesn't mean I'm not serious about this or that I would not be extremely upset if electrical, water or fire damage destroyed all my files.  It's true that in the days of film one could only have negatives in one place and was stuck with that limitation, but now we have a choice.  I know someone who lost ten+ years of artwork (mostly paintings and drawings) when an electrical fire destroyed her apartment and she was very depressed about it for a few years afterwards.  As photographers, we are lucky that our work can be backed up, and I have a portable HD at work which I bring home overnight for back-up once every couple of months.


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## AlanKlein (Jul 29, 2015)

I understand.  In a way I back up all my stuff too.  My last computer got overloaded from time to time with photo files.  So I was forced to move them out of the computer.  What I had been doing is burning two DVD copies based on the advice that DVD's sometime go bad.  But I still keep both copies stored together.  I probably should give one copy to my daughter for safe keeping.   

Regarding film, I moved a couple of years ago and took everything.  Slides, albums, etc.  A few months ago I went through everything; I had no place to store everything.  Many of the pictures, albums, and slides were from when I was married to my first wife.  Also of my girlfriend between wives.  My current wife gave me a look about saving all that stuff, if you know what I mean.  I pulled the best shots of only me and my daughter and threw out the rest.  Now I'm in the process of scanning the slides and assorted, non- photo album prints I kept, a relatively small quantity.  It's been sitting on my desk for 6 months already.  Scanning is like mandatory exercising.  Boring and a pain in the neck.


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## floatingby (Aug 1, 2015)

Bryston3bsst said:


> Since there is a gathering of computer heads here I wonder if you guys could help me.
> 
> I have two outboard hard drives.....when I save to them I have to save to one then to the other. Is there a way to save to both simultaneously?


Mac, Window or Linux? And, more importantly, why?


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## table1349 (Aug 1, 2015)

Bryston3bsst said:


> Windows 8


How to configure Storage Spaces in Windows 8

Two way mirror (Raid1)


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