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Thanks for the info mate. please upload some more vlogs, your old ones are certified classics.

Glad I still unplug my NAS every time I've used it. Only use for backup though.

Great insight and information on backing up ones files.Thank you

One thing I have learned over the years after various disk drive failures - the best media storage is CD! It is portable, so you cab grab it in an emergency and it doesn’t need electricity and external cd readers are cheaper than hard drives…. Not only is there incompatibility between Microsoft and Apple, there is also the problem of 32 bit to 64 bit software incompatibility, software version incompatibility/migration and even suppliers going bankrupt or leaving the market or being bought out. I hate NAS (they are proprietary and keep changing the operating system) and only use it in conjunction with external disk drives. I simple use 2tb rugged drives by Silicon Power for backup and have loads of them. Keep them unplugged until you use them and store them where they wont be subject to flooding. Not much you can do about a house fire. Always use a UPS and surge protector for your NAS and computer and any permanent disc drives.

Great to have you back. I knew that you had it bad from your update video but you really did get bent over. Great video, I knew some of the stuff you talked about but learnt a bit here and there. Certainly a good video for those unaware of these types of technology. I find and I don't know what you think about this, that the storage advancedment progression is quite slow. What I mean by this is the storage capacity and it's ability to process, plus the price for this storage. It has gone down a bit over the last few years but I remember SSD cost several hundred just for a TB.

Once again, thanks Will for an absolute brilĺiant video...you are a great Legend...👍

Superb vid buddy, answered a lot of questions. Top stuff 😉👍👌

You have really a "thing" with lightning! The second video on this channel from "four years ago" was when you told us you hadn't picked up a camera in 5 months, as you recovered from your electrocution. Apparently lightning does not strike twice in the same place b/c this time it wasn't you that got electrocuted but your media. That's a trade-off I'd make any day.

An excellent review Will, of the whole process and detailed comments as to why some of the processes and choices are important. I have been following your Lightening strike nightmare and is good to see that you getting to the end. Time to get out with Basil again!! Regards Pat

Thanks for a great video. I have watched a lot of your videos and this is a slightly different one but very informative. I am sad you had to pay the schools fees but happy to learn at your expense.

I really enjoy your videos and I'm so glad to see that things are getting better for you! Do you use a UPS/battery backup (like a Cyberpower or APC device for your computer and electronics)? I don’t have the severe power issues that you have in South Africa, but they are a tremendous help when the power goes out or there are surges. It’s nice to keep working for 35-45 minutes when everything else loses power. The batteries do have to be replaced every few years, but the peace of mind is tremendous. I’ve been using a Cyberpower CP1500C since 2013 and replaced the batteries in 2020. It powers my desktop PC, cable modem, router, monitor and a secondary router; so quite a mix of items with an estimated 40 minute battery run time. You could also use a secondary unit for the security system. Best of luck and thanks for all your work and effort to share your videos and work! P.S. I am not affiliated with any companies mentioned, just what I use and have experience with/spent my money on.

hi will. sorry to hear that. sure u got the better solutions for your local conditions, and lots of wise and experienced people answered below. ide go for the simpler approach. does all we shoot need saving? up to yesterday (...), i had a big files camera. files got stacked, though i actually get say 1:250 really good shots- something worth saving and publish, maybe contest or selling. most of my pictures are nice, but not worth everlasting saving. so the actual backup size really needed is smaller. that can go with a cloud. the other best option i know is, if an external drive is disconnected and stored in a drawer- its reletevly safe. ssd is kind of water proof. a weekly, or monthly, buckup for that should work. and some cd copies for the best stuff, if u want put in a fireproof home safe. might melt though, if the house burns. i also have the habit of a protective switch for power jumps or waves. wont do much if a lightning hit, i suspect. for that, i belive u need a special main fuse buildup. and a lightning metal bar. twice in my life i had lost computer backups. eventually i found out it was not that important. sure, i do miss the translation for the poem 'if' by Kipling i worked months on: but, i do not let the backup dictate my life, nor take too much time, mony, and effort. its important, sure - but if lost, i let go. so i would suggest 'the reasonable effort approach', only for the important stuff. hope i helped, and wish u well in those conditions.

My day job is handling backup systems. It was interesting to hear about an in-the-wild example of the type of stuff I work on for a living. A few thoughts: RAID can be hardware OR software-based. I've got a Linux system at home, that is Software RAID 10. Software RAID gets around the whole "the hardware is discontinued so Now my data is lost" issue. along the same lines is ZFS. This is actually a filesystem designed from the ground up to be RAIDed. It's universal and more streamlined than regular software RAID; and like other software RAID, As long as you have a config file, working drives, and a linux/BSD machine w/ ZFS capability, you're good to go. this is what I see in most business/enterprises. I'm a BIG proponent of having at least 3 copies of all your data: one online, one offline, and one offsite. That's the trifecta of tranquility.

Great overview Will. Thanks. You didn't mention Dropbox. Their unlimited plan with 3 users is quite reasonably priced.

Excellent video.... I use a 4 bay drobo where 1 drive can fail and I can rebuild the drive plus everything is also backed-up/long term stored on blu-ray disc/DVDs/CDs and 3rd copy of all my zoo photography work off site on a hard drive that I replace every 2 years with a new copy. I have been using the 2 different media option for the last 8 years just in case one medium fails I can access another. For me I only save my final edits not the original files and the edits etc. I have approx 10TB of total files (99.5% stills; .5% video). Also just in case my next machine doesn't have a blu-ray burner built in I bought 2 external units for the future.........

Really good discussion and information Will. Wow, that big 10GBe adapter you showed - the M1 Mac Mini has a built-in 10GBe option for extra $150AUD, and today's release of the new Mac Studio are by default 10GBe.

Is rooftop solar a reasonable option for you? RAID is built for reliability, not speed. If your raid is simply writing data to two disks, that takes longer. Probably not twice as long, but longer. RAID protects against hardware failure, hardware failure is the least likely way you will lose data. Last week, I accidentally deleted a virtual machine. I don't have anything important in virtual machines, fortunately. RAID would not have helped me. A backup to another drive would have. Those cheap "my cloud" and similar devices run Linux. My DVD recorder runs FreeBSD,. Those would be the major options for RAID devices, at least at the lower end. Mind you, I'd not be surprised if storage sourced from IBM runs Linux. For me, duplication and off-site storage is probably the best option. On the east coast, people need to be careful. There are often huge storms, and they're feeling the effects of climate change. 600 mm+ of rain in 24 hours in hilly Brisbane isn't going to hang around. Around south eastern Queensland and north eastern NSW, the rivers have overflowed and are have been burying or carrying away houses. In the 70s I worked for a government department and pur computer in Brisbane was in the basement. Came the flood, and the computer was sitting in escaped sewage. Caused a right stink. Hopefully, expensive computers now live in high buildings and on the tops of high mountains.

I deliberately avoided the R5 due to file size. Went down the Sony route and have slowly been building up the Glass and use a third party Cannon Lut for my image. File sizes are a lot smaller and I use Raid and Hard drive for backup.

Great work on this video. I use NTFS for all my backup devices. Even though macs read NTFS, I use a product called NTFS for mac from paragon software for the volume of devices. Have you ever looked into Amazon Cloud services or AWS. I know that my backup plan is OK for me but I don't have the volume that you have. I really enjoyed this video.

You realy tought this trough Will, there is a lot of stuff to think about here. I hope that I will never experience the amount of trouble you had to face after that lightning strike. I recently had some back up trouble myself. My 4tb nas has 2 hdd in it and one had a failure. So I ordered a new hdd but unfortunatly the second hdd crashed before i installed the new one leaving me with nothing... lucky for me I backup on seperate external ssd but it got me thinking... why do i even have a nas if shit like this can happen? So frustrating... I hope you sorted everything out now and can look to the future again. How is the covid situation doing in sa? Grt guido

I have a degree in IT and studied backup (BU), advised, set up, etc. for many years and I was able to recover a few times. Still have the majority of what matters but it is also down to luck. As you can never cover all angles/risks and especially for the majority of us that don't do photography as a living it is exceedingly difficult/costly to justify 1K a year for cloud storage, or >1K every 5 years for RAID or a NAS, etc. iDrive is USD 80 a year (for the first year) for 10 Tera and then goes to 150, Adobe for the creative cloud is USD 60 month.... very quickly you have bills and you haven't taken a single photo. :-) So the issue is to decide what risks you can afford to manage, mitigate, etc. E.g. If my whole house burns down my digital photos maybe the least of my worry. There are so many other more valuable things that I will never be able to get back. And we don't do anything about all those other things. All of what Will says is true, there are however, a couple of things I would highlight/advise that he didn't pick upon and could potentially save $1000s and hrs of hassle: 1) get an uninterrupted power supply (UPS) it's is like a small battery combined with a surge protector. Plug the UPS to the mains and then your computer and HD/SDDs, NAS... to the UPS. It is a plug and play/plug and forget system. With a UPS you have peace of mind from thunders, and dodgy grid spikes, etc. Your machines will work better anyway even under standard operating procedures. UPS is relatively cheap, for a moderately sized system. I have my UPS for more than a decade. 2) whatever solution one opts for (i.e. risks decide to manage) -> automate your BU procedures. Automating is key, because even the best and most expensive systems if you don't follow it means nothing. And it is very difficult to eliminate human error, etc. Even the crappiest BU system if it is automated it will have more chances of recovery than a better system that depends on you doing something at particular moments in time. I have no perfect solution (not that any exists). Learn to distinguish the differences in the circumstances; e.g. out in the field (cause you need a separate BU/file management when in protracted assignment somewhere away from home) vs back home/business as usual. Volume of data and for different data, these also make a lot of difference. E.g. all my videos from VHS days I store digital copies at my father's house. Of course they need to be played otherwise they degrade. Even DVDs degrade (everything degrades its called entropy :-) And technological systems change, suddenly your computer cannot read what you assumed it was always going to be able to read or doesn't recognise the external device, etc. You have to spend hrs troubleshooting... That's my two cents.