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About this tool
Size a 3-2-1 backup plan for your footage library: drives needed, cloud cost over time and how long a full restore takes.
The 3-2-1 backup rule says keep three copies of your data, on two different types of media, with one copy off site. This planner applies that rule to a footage library that is still growing: it projects your storage in TB over a chosen horizon, adds free-space headroom, works out how many drives each copy needs, prices the cloud copy month by month as the library grows, and estimates how long a full restore would take over your drive bus and your internet link.
Open Creator Backup 3 2 1 Planner on AltFTool — it loads instantly in your browser.
Add your input to the workspace.
Adjust the options until the result looks right.
Copy or download the output and put it to work.
Capacity is projected forward with your growth rate and includes free-space headroom.
Monthly cloud spend is summed month by month as the library grows, not charged at the end-state size.
Shows how many hours or days a full recovery takes locally and over your connection.
Three copies of your data, on two different media types, with one copy off site. It was popularised by photographer Peter Krogh and is echoed in US-CERT guidance, and it works because it survives the three common failure modes: a drive dying, a machine or controller failing, and a fire, theft or flood at one address.
No. RAID protects against a disk failing, not against deletion, ransomware, corruption or a controller taking the whole array down. It replaces copy one in a 3-2-1 plan; you still need the second local copy and the off-site copy.
Around 20% is a sensible default. Both spinning disks and SSDs slow down and fragment as a volume passes roughly 80-90% full, and a target with no headroom cannot absorb the next shoot without an emergency purchase.
At 100 Mbps you move roughly 45 GB an hour, so a 20 TB library takes about 440 hours — over two weeks of continuous download. That is why most providers also offer a physical drive shipment for large restores, and why the local second copy is the one you actually recover from.