Storage Strategy (the infinite conundrum)

I’m frustrated by my current document storage strategy, need a new game plan.

Revising original post (which was too complicated)

I want to archive my documents and video files. Currently, I have about 60gb of files I want to archive, should I consider an online storage solution? Right now I’m using OWC SATA docks and 1TB hard drives as a “big floppy” solution. Not confident in this strategy….

Banter appreciated….

I’ve been doing a bunch of research on this issue, as I am struggling with the same problem. I had written out a very lengthy analysis, including many fancy 3D bar charts, but in the end, it seemed to me this all comes down to economics. Let me repeat. This is not a technical problem, but an economic problem — how much are you willing to pay to store, backup and archive your data? In other words, how much is your data worth to you?

What I hear the most is that data isn’t really worth anything, until you lose it in some sort of unfortunate circumstance. Then suddenly, you are willing to fork over thousands of dollars to send your crippled hard drive to a data recovery company. So at one end of the scale you are paying nothing for backups, and at the other, thousands and thousands. I propose finding a happy middle ground.

First, you need enough primary storage to store your stuff. If you don’t have enough storage, you can’t generate more stuff. To me, this is the easiest part to solve. Figure our how much you need to store, and buy enough hard drives to cover that amount.

Second, you need to back up your primary storage. This is where economics jumps in. There are an endless number of solutions here, including online options. Some of these options can get very pricey. Again, how much are you willing to pay to backup your data? My solution is to backup your primary data to a second set of drives that mirror your primary storage. Again, there are a number of ways of doing this. In the Macintosh environment, simply running Time Machine backup solves this problem very simply.

Lastly, archiving — and ideally an offsite archive. My solution? Find a friend that is willing to house a few drives at their house, and sync your backup over the Internet with these remote drives. You can do the same for your friend, and in the end, all you’re paying for is some additional storage. On the Mac, Carbon Copy Cloner offers the option of securely copying your selected data to another Macintosh on your network (or anywhere on the Internet for that matter).

I’m going to give this a try, and report my findings. Tom, expect some hardware coming your way…