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For off-site backup–clones or disk images?
Hi folks,
I use Superduper to back up my hard drives to clones on site and make additional backups to keep off-site in a safe deposit box.
Is there any reason not to back them up to disk images for the off-site? Would this save any drive space?
I know hard drives are “cheap” but they’re not free.
Is there any reason not to combine two identical hard drives into a RAID 0 for off-site back up?
These are used purely for backup once a month so I am not too concerned about security of these backups from day to day since the files are also backed up on site.
Thanks for your thoughts,
RobertRobert Withers
Independent/personal/avant-garde cinema, New York City
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5 Replies
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A disk image does not allow incremental backups of just the new material, which is a tremendous timesaver. So, it’s not necessarily hard drive space you should be concerned about, but rather the amount of time necessary to do your day to day backups.
With regard to creating a RAID 0 for speed, that’s certainly no issue if it’s just for backups of material you have stored elsewhere. RAID 5 would be a bit more safe, but since it’s just a backup it’s not such a big deal.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss ProductionsDavid is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.
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I pay under 70 bucks for 1TB SATA drives from mail order companies. If your data for your show that you make a living with, is not worth 70 bucks, to prevent you from losing your show, then something is very wrong. $70 bucks per show is NOTHING. Do you have auto and medical insurance ?
Bob Zelin
Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com -
Dear Bob,
I don’t make a living with these movies . . . they are my personal art productions. I pay for them with my freelance work. I am heading beyond few TB for my backup needs. I can buy a 2TB WD USB 3.0 drive for $99 but my off-site safe deposit box is limited in size and I like to be thrifty.
If you can contribute any information about relative disk space used for clones vs disk images, which was my original question, I would greatly appreciate it.
I’m not concerned so much with speed of backup since I don’t do the off-site copies every day.
Thank you,
RobertRobert Withers
Independent/personal/avant-garde cinema, New York City
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Clones will be slightly more space efficient than disk images. Mac Disk Images (aka .dmg files) have the advantage that they are a single object that represents a disk volume, but there is some overhead in creating them. Additionally, they have to be smaller than the volume on which you save them and you have to create them at some defined size which you may not completely fill up.
Just remember that hard disk drives stored on the shelf and not regularly spun up, will eventually not be able to spin up. Normally 6 months or a year isn’t a problem, but we have heard of situations where it has been.
Tom Goldberg
TGCS
30201 Rainbow Hill Rd.
Evergreen, CO 80439
mailto:tomgoldberg@gmail.com
https://tomgoldberg.net -
Thank you, Tom. I found it really hard to research this technical information, and of course your experience has the answer. So it’s time to pick up a couple more drives to stuff in my safe deposit box. I make these clones for off-site back up so they’ll get spun up once a month.
Robert Withers
Independent/personal/avant-garde cinema, New York City
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