Ultimate Home Redundancy – 4 Great Plans for Home Data Backups

“It will never happen that soon” you tell yourself.  Or you just keep pushing and pushing this off.  And you know absolutely without a doubt that it does and can happen at any time.  You know it’s a ticking time bomb waiting to happen.  What am I talking about?  The fact that your hard drive or those backup CDs that use use to back up your important pictures and other precious home data to could fail at any time.  A natural disaster (fire), you name it. 

If you’re like me and many others, it has bitten me more than once.  Whether it was pure stubbornness & laziness on my part, or telling myself it’s not worth it to invest in data redundancy for the home, in the end I lost.  Even though I know better being in IT, I was lazy or thought that it was too expensive.  You finally get to the point where backing up to 2 sources does not let you sleep at night.  Using CDs in combo with a RAID array somehow still seems unsafe.

I was stubborn.  I lost so many of my treasured moments, and to me this really sucks.  Those times I spent in CA taking oh so much care and workmanship taking pictures in Napa and all throughout CA gone.  That wonderful trip I took with my wife to Thailand to see my friend get married, 70% of those pictures… gone.  And the chance that I will get back to Thailand again is most likely not going to happen.   How many hours I spent taking those pictures…concentrating and lost is a shame.

It is the time you spend taking those pictures and the memories that you can’t reproduce  that you will not allow to be lost .  You can’t go back.  Once this data is gone, it’s gone.  And once you realize it, you realize how stupid it was not to address the situation.  While some people are not “picture people”, your kids may be and wished you were a “picture person”. 

With digital images now, there’s no excuse not to take lots of pictures of the times you had with your children, friends, and relatives.  And while we may not like all our relatives, this is not about just “you”, it’s about family history and it’s very cool to have a shitload of pictures to pass on or just enjoy looking back at yourself at times.  I recall how excited I was recently to see cool toys I had received for Christmas and to actually see them again as they were (Sega Genesis when i was so excited to get that thing, Transformers, my mini drum set, play trucks I remember playing with, etc.).  It’s just cool to look back and SEE things again after all those years.

I know in my family, we have over 2000 pictures and I love it.  I love the fact that my dad took time and money to create them (with film)…they are irreplaceable and taught me a lot about my family’s history, what people looked like, and what activities they took part in.  I got to know them more than I know them now through these historic pictures.  That to me, is invaluable and why you should start to be a “picture person”.  If it’s not for you, let your kids and grandkids inherit this insight to your family that live on through your extended family later and into infinity.

There’s not an excuse anymore to tell yourself that you can’t spend a bit to build up and save a little to protect those non-materialistic items which we find we value so much, when we take a step back from technology and cherish life.  Through these memories, we are able to calm the soul.  We think a hard drive is going to be safe and we’re wrong.  We think CDs are safe and we are wrong.  Some still fail to realize is you need a combination of things in place to make your data safe.

And if you know how valuable it is to retain code examples (previous jobs) that you spent hours coding up and could most likely save hours reusing that same code at a later job for related functionality, then you know how valuable your personal data is…and we tend to have a lot of it these days lingering around on our rusty hard drives.

Today especially, it is cheaper than ever to setup data redundancy in your home.  Off-site backup is amazingly cheap with new providers such as Amazon S3.  I’ve used other providers like Elephant drive and they have poor tools or slower upload speeds.

A truly redundant solution employs both a local (at home) and off-site solution together hand and hand.  This is well known.

Here are my 4 Suggested Redundancy Plans for the Home

Extreme Home Redundancy Plan

% of Data Safety: 95-100%  (most reliable)

Approximate Initial Cost: $825

Description: I know this is very extreme plan and cost prohibited for the average homeowner.  The average household is not going to implement this.   However I feel this will definitely let you sleep at night.

It employs off-site storage through multiple channels…not just through one ISP or one Image site (such as Kodak or Picasa).  Employs local storage through multiple channels at the home.

To Buy / Establish

    a) Buy a RAID 1 external SATA backup enclosure($300)

             Buy 2 SATA drives to fill that box.

             Ensure it’s a quality box.  By Quality I am talking about a $250-300 box, not something like you see at Fry’s Electronics such as a $50 Nextstar drive.  It’s not reliable at all.

    b) Buy a Blue-Ray DVD-RW Burner ($170)

    c) Add all Data to Blue Ray DVDs : Buy some Single-Layer Blue-Ray Data DVD-Rs  ($150 for 10)

             The reason for Single-Layer (25gb per DVD) as opposd to Dual-layer (50gb per DVD) DVDs is because I personally believe the more mechanical parts or layers increases reliability..

    d) Add the most important subset of your data to Archival grade DVDs  ($75 for 50)

             By top tier I back up the top 10% most important from your entire backup set. 

             These currently around $1.50 a CD and are quoted to lasting up to 100+ years before starting to degrade.

    e) Establish a safety deposit box at your local bank (about $30)

    f) Establish an account with Amazon S3 for off-site storage

             Pricing is here  (varied cost.  For example I’m assuming you are going to upload 500 gigs of data so $75)

             Note: I’ve tried services like Elephant Drive but the software and upload speed is poorly implemented as compared to S3.

   g) Establish an online account with a quality online photo album site 

            (could be free to $25 depending on if you need to purchase extra space)

           “Quality” in these online album services is critical here as it fits into part of the the overall redundancy picture.

            If you plan on truly using your photo album storage as a true data redundancy point in addition to just albums for your family & friends to ponder, I suggest not going with sites such as Facebook, Kodak, Shutterfly as your primary photo viewer for friends and family if you think you want to use the viewers as a form of data redundancy.

            Instead, go with sites that allow you to upload sizes close to as possible to the original picture size such as Picasa.  Why?  because the run of the mill sites that do not specialize in photo albums itself and the features around maintaining and uploading them (the admin tools to do so).  They in return auto compress your uploaded files leaving them in a low quality state.  This is not beneficial to you as you care about the redundancy of your original quality picture.  By using those types of sites, you loose the quality and thus you fail at the goal of redundancy.  If you have compressed images made for the web, then you have unprintable pictures or at least lower quality because the resolution is now set to be much lower than your original picture file.  This is not an advantage to you if you cherish those photos.

           You want to be able to download those original picture file sizes so that you can print quality picture files but more importantly be able to manipulate them again in a program such as Photoshop without a huge pixel loss.  The more pixels you have to work with (file size), the better your picture will remain looking free from noise as you lighten, darken, sharpen those pictures in the future that you re-downloaded from your online album’s website.

To Implement:

    The goal obviously is to create as man redundant “points” as possible.

    Based the above requirements, do the following steps (Order of Importance):

    1) Backup all your critical data to Amazon S3 first 

             Why?  It takes a long time (weeks) to get the initial data uploaded to Amazon.  Use a software program such as CloudBerry Explorer.

    2) Create Your Initial Set of DVDs 

             Burn a set of Blue-Ray DVDs of your important data. 

             Then create another stack of Gold DVDs with your top tier most important data (a subset of the data of your entire set).

    3) Make an extra copy of those DVDS.  Give the second set to a family member who lives elsewhere

             This is another off-site redundancy point.  They will have a set if anything happens to your set as an additional backup source.    

    4) Make sure you upload original file size option in your online photo album (or the biggest size they will allow). 

             If you have albums which have compressed images (low-end quality and small file size) up there already, replace them with newly uploaded photos..using largest files size/best quality option.

    5) Take the initial set of DVDs & lock them in your bank’s safety deposit box

    6) Wherever your current data resides that you wish to back up, copy it over to your new External Drive

        Keep the local copy on the drive you initially had as well.  Now you have 2 more redundant points.  Now you have a copy on your original hard drive as well as your new external redundant RAID drive.  Obviously you may   not be able to keep all the files on your local drive anymore but try to keep some of the most important files as it’s going to serve as some extra backup in case of a disaster.

      Now obviously in the end, you have to maintain this.  You control the frequency and what.   I do not personally use software based backup tools other than Imaging a PC, because I just don’t trust them.  Sometimes they override things or do not give me the granular control I need and I end up just copying things myself by hand to the external drive & burn to my DVDs.  But if you had to pick a back-up program, I’d choose Norton Ghost which also provides backup tools.

      Considering that it costs an average $2000-$6000 to get a home data recovery service to retrieve data off a failed hard drive, $800 to ensure you never have to use one of these services is a drop in the bucket.  And half the time the data recovery services can’t get your data off.  I had this issue with one of the best Data Recovery services out there (Seagate Data Recovery) when they were not able to get my Thailand or CA pictures off my hard drive so I lost all of my data even after taking it to this service.

Standard/Recommended Home Redundancy Plan

% of Data Safety: 85-100%

Approximate Initial Cost: $750

This the option I think all households should have at a minimum if you care about your pictures and other data.

    To Buy / Establish

    Based off a subset of the Extreme Home Redundancy Plan

    a) Buy a RAID 1 external SATA backup enclosure ($300) 

    b) Buy a Blue-Ray DVD-RW Burner ($170) 

    c) Buy some Single-Layer Blue-Ray Data DVD-Rs ($150 for 10) 

    d) Establish an account with Amazon S3 for off-site storage 

             Pricing is here  (varied cost.  For example 500 gigs of data so $75)

    e) Establish a safety deposit box at your local bank 

             (get the larger box if an option) about $30

    f) Establish an online account with a quality online photo album site (free to $25/yr)

     To Implement:

            See related points/description stated in the Extreme Plan.

Minimum Required Home Redundancy Plan

% of Data Safety: 75-100%

Approximate Initial Cost: $530

    To Buy / Establish

    Based off a subset of the Extreme Home Redundancy Plan

    a) Buy a RAID 1 external SATA backup enclosure ($300)

    b) Buy a Standard DVD-Rs Writer ($30)

    c) Buy some Standard DVD-Rs ($100 since it will take a lot more DVDs vs. Blue Ray for backup)

    d) Establish an account with Amazon S3 for off-site storage

             Pricing is here  (varied cost.  For example 500 gigs of data so $75)

    e) Establish an online account with a quality online photo album site  (free to $25/yr)

     To Implement:

            See related points/description stated in the Extreme Plan.

Budget Home Redundancy Plan

% of Data Safety: 60-100%

Approximate Initial Cost: $400

    To Buy / Establish

    Based off a subset of the Extreme Home Redundancy Plan

    a) Buy a RAID 1 external SATA backup enclosure ($300)

    b) Establish an account with Amazon S3 for off-site storage 

             Pricing is here  (varied cost.  For example 500 gigs of data so $75)

     c) Establish an online account with a quality online photo album site  (free to $25/yr)

     To Implement:

      See related points/description stated in the Extreme Plan.

Low-Income Home Redundancy Plan

% of Data Safety: 40-100%

Approximate Initial Cost: $100

    To Buy / Establish

    Based off a subset of the Extreme Home Redundancy Plan