How do you back up your pictures? - Is your HD about to fail?

[Seltzer]

Just wondering what everyone's personal preference is on making sure everything is backed up so when a hard-drive fails not everything is lost. Personally I have a stack of DVDs on my desk that rarely get touched, as well as my computer and my wife's computer that have a RAID 1 mirroring to two drives each... if I would ever copy files to her computer that would be helpful I'm sure.

[kristin]

i burn to dvd. i label the dvd's by date, and whenever I make a print of the photo i put the dvd title on the back of the print for reference.

labeling them by the date they were burned makes it easier to reference down the road when you need to re-burn. dvd's & cd's have reburn dates because they have a limited lifespan.

i probably would store more on my computer if i didn't shoot in raw... but the file sizes are so big..

[Nicole]

I personally backup on DVDs, an external harddrive for my Mac, and also onto my desktop computer. I really need to consider keeping a spare copy of everything off-site in case anything ever happens to my home.

[NaturesPixel]

i have second 80Gb drive in my computer i try and remember to move images over...lol i do burn all my sons photos to disc tho :)

[sagelike31]

I could never understand why people back up to DVDs when hard drives are so cheap.

I use Cobian Backup 8 to transfer all of my files to an external hard drive once a week automatically.

[PnwGuy]

I too have two hard drives. I store all my data on the main drive and run auto backups 3 times a week to the second drive. I copy my business data to a flash drive and keep it in a fireproof safe.

As a computer technician, I cannot tell you how many times I've had to tell a client their data was gone and unrecoverable. Photos, music, documents, all gone. I've seen people cry. Often times data can be recovered but it's a very expensive process, starting around $2000 and going up steeply from there.

ALL HARD DRIVES FAIL. They have a 100% failure rate. You may get 8-10 years out of a drive but they can also fail at any time without warning. I built a new system in Aug. and my main drive failed in Nov. I replaced it, and the replacement failed two weeks later. Instead of a disaster it was a minor inconvenience since I do regular backups.

Tips:

* Always have a copy of your important data.
* Use an external USB drive which will run you around $100 or so
* Get a backup program or use Windows Backup to automate your backups
* For offsite, price some online backup services as prices have been dropping
* Keep important/backup CDs/DVDs in a fireproof safe
* If you're getting a new PC, have a second drive installed and configured to mirror the first one. Everything that is written to the main drive automatically gets written to the second drive.

Ben

[Saralonde]

Good advice, Ben. There are some things you mention that I need to do. Right now all I do is keep pictures on both my laptop and desk computers plus backup discs.

[mikem12188]

One thing about keeping backups in a fireproof safe. My neighborhood fireman tells me that CDs and DVDs will melt because it still gets pretty hot in those safes. You might be better off keeping very important information in a bank safe deposit box.

[smc1377]

One thing about keeping backups in a fireproof safe. My neighborhood fireman tells me that CDs and DVDs will melt because it still gets pretty hot in those safes. You might be better off keeping very important information in a bank safe deposit box.

Some newer safes now will protect CDs and DVDs. I was looking at safes the other day and about half of them say that they will protect CDs and DVDs from melting though you're right that a bank safe deposit box would be much safer.

Example of one...
http://www.officemax.com/max/solutions/product/prodBlock.jsp?BV_UseBVCookie=yes&prodBlockOID=536992618&expansionOID=-536907760

[Seltzer]

Well, as it is, best case scenario is that everyone should have an "off site" storage location anyway, this could just be a matter of taking stuff to a friend's house in another part of town. If you back up to rewritable media I recommend rotating through a few different pieces of media so if one fails you should be only a little bit further behind. For example, if you are backing up weekly it's easy to just have 4 different back ups going and just rotate every week. Try to keep at least one extra set of backups, not to say make multiples each time but just don't throw away the previous one when you back up again if you are doing full backups each time instead of just cumulative of backing up the new or changed info.

[PnwGuy]

I've found that if a backup system is too complicated, or requires a lot of hands-on, people are much less likely to use it. In a perfect world we'd have a great rotation system in place with full backups every day and a copy off-site. But who has the time to adminster it?

I have set many home clients up with an external USB hard drive and an automated backup that runs anywhere from once a week to every night. All they have to do is leave their computer on overnight and periodically check the date on the backup file to ensure it's being backed up.

For the clients that wanted off-site, I used a second USB drive. They rotated the drives, keeping one with a relative or in a safety deposit box and the other connected to the computer, swapping them out every couple of weeks or so.

It's hard to protect all your data all the time, but at the very least you want to minimize your losses in case of an issue.

It's also a good idea to test restore from your backups once in awhile to ensure your backups are good. Don't restore the entire backup, just a couple of folders, and restore them to an alternate location on your computer, then make sure you can open them.

There are many many ways to back up your data. Just choose one that works best for you. Sorry for the long post. You get me to talking about computers...watch out. :-)

[gwm1952]

Sounds like most people are in agreement on how to back up their pictures. I load everthing on the hard drive on my computer and label each folder according to what the project is and what date the photos were taken. Then I copy everything to my external drive. Same filing system used as on the internal drive. All media files on the external drive get backed up automatically once a week. Then everything gets backed up to a DVD. These are all the pre-processed photos. After making sure that everything is backed up I wipe the storage card from my camera. Processing is usually done on the external hard drive.

[heliot]

dvds, usb drive and an external hard drive.

[Triglav]

This thread is a good read.

I use an external drive. It is easy and they are not expensive anymore.
Only thing is that I wish I was a little more consistent in backing up.

This summer we had lightning hitting the computer. Not directly, but my graphics card and motherboard were busted. The PC wouldn't start and I was just back from the World Equestrian Games with almost 2,000 pics. At such a moment you think: OMG, when did I last back up..is the hard drive busted too..o please, nooo. I can assure you, there sweat drops on my forehead.

Luckily the hard drive was ok. And human as I am, I still don't back up regularly..:eek:

[Morca007]

I'm somewhat of a hypocrite. I am the techie in our house, and I harp everyone to backup often.

I don't.
Not even a little.
I am a bad person. :(

That said, I think my data is relatively safe, my OS/program are all on my primary (old IDE 30g drive), while all my media (including pictures) are on the newer SATA 250. Though, they will probably have a significantly shorter lifespan than most hardrives with all the activity (torrents, etc.) that they see.

[Seltzer]

I'm somewhat of a hypocrite. I am the techie in our house, and I harp everyone to backup often.

I spend most of my days on the phone with customers explaining why they need to back up.. I'm the same way. I read it more as "I'm too busy". Which is utter BS when it comes to backing up my computer, but I suppose it helps me live the illusion a bit more. The truth is that I spend a lot of time on my computer when at home (read: minimum average of 2 hrs a night if I have other stuff going on that day). I even started grabbing some DVDs one day to back up to and was opening my pictures to get them backed up, then got distracted by something shiny and forgot again. Another time I got ready to just drag everything to my wife's computer that I had just built with a mirroring RAID 1 just about a year ago and still never did it. Then about 2 months ago my HD died.. whoops.. not everything was backed up, I lost a lot of original images there and some images all together that weren't already on my website or somewhere similar, like the ones from my honeymoon.
Now I have my RAID setup to mirror on my drive, and me being the lovely human that I am, still don't back up to any external source.
This is why I started this thread. Maybe some other people will be reminded to backup otherwise and maybe it will remind me to do so as well.

[EricF]

I haven't heard anyone comment on the limited lifespan of DVD's and CD's.

According to what I've read, the typical CD/DVD has a lifetime of 2-5 years, depending on how it's stored. Delkin Devices makes an "archival gold" line of optical media that's supposed to have a 300 year lifespan, but it's pricey.

I've heard some people backup to CD/DVD but then backup THAT media every 2-5 years, to make sure they have a good backup.

On another note, it's possible that in 10-20 years the software/hardware that wrote the backups won't be available anymore (anyone try to get data of a 5.25" floppy lately?). Of course, you can hold on to old hardware indefinitely to insure you can ready your old backups, but it also makes the backing-up-your-backup strategy above more appealing for when everything is Blue-Ray (or maybe some solid crystal media) and DVD's are a thing of the past.

Comments?

-Eric

[shanewoodall]

I always have 3 copies: My Desktop, My laptop (which is always with me) and an External Firewire Drive. I sync them 3 or 4 times a week.

[MomOf6]

There's one site I've found with guaranteed, life-time storage. I love it because I can access my photos anywhere there's an internet connection. Plus it has toll-free customer support in the U.S. and Canada (or online for everywhere else).

I understand backing up to CDs...but I have concerns over if anything were ever to happen to my house...or just to the CDs! I have a friend who lost everything on a bad CD and didn't realize it until it was too late.

Here's the site: www.PicturePrincess.com

Let me know how you like it!

Mom of 6

[Seltzer]

Online storage is great, depending on restrictions. From what I have found most online sites won't allow RAW upload (I did not log in and try this from PP). One thing I did notice though is that PP has 5gb storage, which is quite a lot for standard picture uploads, but they seemed restrictive on what size they would print so I don't know if that also restricts what size the upload can be and displayed in. They also had some restrictions on what content was allowed to be uploaded. This makes sense for a family site but some people may have issue with that.
If a website like that works for you then that's great, sounded like they had a good guaranteed backup and you could do more than the 5gb for a fee if so needed.
Another option for such an upload site aside from other photosharing sites (flickr, smugmug, etc...) is using a Gmail account and a firefox addon called Gmail Space (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1593/). This allows you to use your 2.8gb and growing Gmail storage as an online harddrive and upload files directly without restrictions.

[andy206uk]

It's strange that this has popped up this week as my backup drive failed this week (it was using the harddrive from my old windows machine (nearly five years old!) from before I bought a mac). Luckily, my main drive is still ok and I have a new external drive on the way.

My main form of backup is to do a daily sync of my whole hard hard drive to a partition on the backup drive using a program called carbon copy cloner. I normally leave it to run overnight.

I also back up full size versions of my pics to my iPod and also where possible I'm uploading as much as I can to Flickr. I would seriously HATE to loose my photos - nothing else matters, but if I was to lose my photos I would be devastated!

If you take your photography seriously it's ESSENTIAL to back up your hard drive to more than one place - one off site. Most people would forget to pick up their external hard drive if their house caught fire during the night and if they don't perform an offsite backup would loose everything!

[magnus9]

I have a Raid 1 mirror for my photos and files as well. I've been meaning to build myself a little file server for backups, among other things, but I just haven't gotten around to it yet.

If you're going to use GMail Space I'd be careful. It violates Gmail's TOS and you can get your account suspended. So if you use it be careful and go slowly. Limit your upload daily to less than 512 MB or so, but for this reason it's probably not the most reliable of backups.

[Seltzer]

Well, it's been over a month and sage's loss has reminded us all once again that it's time to backup! I'll try to update this thread on a monthly basis to remind us all. People can sign up for the RSS feed on this if they want that notification or pm me with an address that I can send reminders to if people want that bit of help.

[Saralonde]

Also alissasanderson mentioned on the same thread http://digital-photography-school.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1073 she backs up everything each month. Sounded like a good idea to me. At the end of each month, back up everything you took. Easy to find, easy to remember to do.

[Triglav]

Once a month? I would strongly advice to back up once a week at least!
As photographers we all make dozens of photo's a week. Or am I the only one with "shutter happy fingers"? It is not that hard, lot of photosoftware like ACDsee for instance have a functionality to sync one directory or even a partition to another. So I use that. Just hit the button, it will look for images on your source dir that are not on the goal dir and 5 minutes later you are done. When you do this once a week, the process will be faster too then when you back up once a month.

This topic will always be a good topic for discussion, i love it

[Seltzer]

oh, I fully agree.. once a week is much more optimal, but, yeah, for me my pictures are usually limited to weekends, or at least that's when I have time to take them off my card and put them onto my computer... I like the idea of backing up every time you copy to your computer but again, some of us can't do that, once a month is still a decent barrier for most of us as a maximum.. as I said, I can setup a backup reminder list to go out once a week or once a month if people want to pm me with their info.
As it is, one touch backups will always rock, but they are a bit more pricy sometimes for the units that come pre-setup.. getting much cheaper with harddrive prices going down.

[Triglav]

I found some software that might be very handy. I am not sure as I have not tried it yet, but one thing it does is making a backup as soon as you download your pictures from your card. I intend to give it a try, but I am not sure when I have time for that.

ImageIngester and ImageIngesterPro do more than just copy images from your camera or card to your computer: They automate tedious, but important, steps in your workflow that you'd otherwise have to do manually, every time you ingest. Steps like making a backup, verifying images, renaming image files and arranging them into folders, applying metadata, and converting to DNG.

http://img91.imageshack.us/img91/7097/flowpp5.jpg

For more info:

/http://imageingester.com/ImageIngester/index.php

[hitkaiser]

This imageingester seems great.. the only reason I dont use a media card reader is that I like how canon's utility downloads to a special folder with a click of a button, i will def. give this a try when I get home (thanx!)

The way I backup my photos:

First the photos go from camera to a secondary partition on my laptop (the non windows one) where I work on the RAW files, once that is done and I have my JPEGs all nice and ready I banish the original folders (the folders are automatically by date) to a folder I call "Archived RAW".

I then manually remove the contents of this folder to my external hard disk every now and again which has a folder called "Archived RAW" (surprise surprise"). When this folder reaches around 4.7GB, it gets burned on a dvd (which I leave at home abroad), and whatever gets burnt remains on the external as a "DVD Image" file just in case (it's a 500GB disk, I can keep a copy of everything I burn for now : ) )

The actual JPEGs which is what I use 99% of the time all stay on my laptop hard disk since it is more convinient to view them anywhere, so this folder gets automatically copied to my external once a week (or I prompt the backup manually right after I've produced a large number of photos.. such as 300+) Then this folder again goes through the 4.7GB per disk treatment as before.

[AZ4Runner]

There has been some interesting papers published lately (notably from Google and Bianca Schroeder of CMU's Parallel Data Lab) regarding data storage myths.

Of note, Ms. Schroeder has found that there is little to no difference between consumer grade storage devices and the enterprise level devices. Her statisitics show that the device life span is more of a function of environment and care than the components that make up the drives. Additionally, she found that "infant death" on drives is more of a myth than fact. She also reports that RAID clusters are seemingly more robust due to the downtime associated with rebuilding a corrupted drive, however, she points out that cost associated with RAID and the time required to just build an array of regular drives points towards the array of drives being the better redundant storage solution. And most notably, her research shows that the mean time between failure (MTBF) of the drives is actually about 1/3 of the time reported by manufacturers (300,000 hours vs. the 1,000,000 hours indicated).

Check out StorageMojo (http://storagemojo.com/?p=383) for more details.

[Triglav]

I found another piece of software that might become handy. It is a online backup tool that will automatically backup your pictures on the internet. If i understand it correctly that is. I think the first 5gb is for free, I could not see what happens after that lol Maybe better take a look your selfs

http://www.sharpcast.com/products/photos

[Seltzer]

Well, I'm only a little behind on bumping this thread back up.. reminders to everyone that it's time to back up again if you have been lax about it as I have.

[Seltzer]

today's User Friendly was rather appropriate to this topic... http://www.userfriendly.org/cartoons/archives/07apr/xuf010212.gif (http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20070412)

[Nicole]

That's too funny! :D I know that one a bit too well... which is why I'm spending the next couple of days doing a very essential backup / cleanup of my harddrive... I won't even go into how full it was :p

[jiminyClickit]

Nicole,

More than 7 gigabytes of photos?

[Saralonde]

Thanks for posting the reminders. I have a really bad habit of forgetting to do this.

[Nicole]

Jim, you're gonna have to multiply that a few times... more like 4.5x your guess :o I'm really bad at culling shots, and they've been building up for the last year + :p What, what's wrong with having to backup 30GB of photos? ;)

[Saralonde]

Jim, you're gonna have to multiply that a few times... more like 4.5x your guess :o I'm really bad at culling shots, and they've been building up for the last year + :p What, what's wrong with having to backup 30GB of photos? ;)

I bet a lot of us are guilty of that. I can never delete shots of my kids, good or bad, not to mention all the ones I think I can save if I ever get proficient at Photoshop!

[Nicole]

I feel better now knowing I'm not the only one guilty of saving pretty much everything. I know the feeling about saving them in case I ever get proficient at Photoshop too! :p

[jiminyClickit]

Nicole/Saralonde,

12-step program in the birthing stage? Or a new service online: "We Cull Your Stuff! Send us a thousand photos, we'll pick 10 that don't suck - problem solved! (Not responsible for loss of treasured keepsakes)"

[Seltzer]

Thanks for posting the reminders. I have a really bad habit of forgetting to do this.

that's kinda why I do it.. of course it doesn't help me to remember.. *sigh*

Jim, your concept is intriguing, I'd like to sign up for your newsletter.

[mikem12188]

On a slightly different take on this subject (this one's for you Saralonde) what do you folks do with the original after you are done fixing a photograph. Do you keep the original or delete it? I tend to keep the originals even though I'm done with them.:confused:

[Nicole]

I keep the originals, just in case I ever want to do something different. I mean, you never know when you'll actually be able to use Photoshop well enough to make something actually look better... maybe that's just me :p

[Saralonde]

I keep them, too, for the same reason as Nicole. I figure when I die I'll just let my kids deal with them all ;) :D .

[beckywithasmile]

I do the same thing. Plus I don't know how to do much editing yet, so I have slightly edited photos. Does this make me a computer pack rat?

[Saralonde]

There seem to be a lot of us. Maybe we should start a new group, Computer Pack Rat Anonymous. Hi, my name is Saralonde, and I'm a Computer Pack Rat.

[Seltzer]

There seem to be a lot of us. Maybe we should start a new group, Computer Pack Rat Anonymous. Hi, my name is Saralonde, and I'm a Computer Pack Rat.

then maybe not backing up isn't such a bad idea.. gives a reason to start fresh.. ;)

[Seltzer]

*bump* Whoops, I'm a bit over a month for bumping this thread again, get to your backups people! :)

[Sime™]

optical media dies... evil

first (working) copy on second sata disk (only Seagate)
second copy (first master) on third sata disk
offline copy (second master) on external USB drive (only pulled out of cupboard for update when new files added to library)

39000 images... think i'd slash up if I lost them...

Keep all orig's :)

[Seltzer]

monthly bump as a reminder to everyone to back up their stuff! :)

[Seltzer]

Wow, it's been a while since I have bumped this.. backup everyone! (thanks Sara for the reminder).

[kirbinster]

I periodically make DVD's of important data, just incase. I have a neat program running on my computer called SecondCopy you can get it at secondcopy.com for about $30. You set up files or directories you want it to watch an what actions you want to take. I have it set that anytime a file is written or changed in those directories that it immediatey makes a copy to another physical hard drive. This way I always have full current back ups of all important data without the need for me to even think about it.

[Moe]

I found another piece of software that might become handy. It is a online backup tool that will automatically backup your pictures on the internet. If i understand it correctly that is. I think the first 5gb is for free, I could not see what happens after that lol Maybe better take a look your selfs

http://www.sharpcast.com/products/photos


I like this idea! Does anyone use this Sharpcast software? What is the upgrade cost and could you tell me the pros and cons.

I also am guilty of preaching "back-up" and don't do it myself. But, I do store my photos on an external hard drive. But, again, If that fails, I'm doomed. So should I backup my external hard drive? I could see myself crying if I lost all of my children's memories. I don't print every photo I take, but I keep the digital image of every photo. (photo pac-rat)

[Jargon]

I have a backup of my internal hard disk on an external hard disk. My external hard disk is actually an internal SATA2 hard disk that I placed inside a Vantec NexStar 3 hard disk enclosure with eSATA (External SATA) and USB 2.0 interfaces. Using the eSATA interface, I could access the external hard disk at the speed of an internal hard disk! Now that's extremely high-speed backup. The USB 2.0 interface allows me to connect the external hard disk to my other computers that do not have eSATA ports.

[Nicole]

*bump*

Recent computer problems in the family reminded me to bump this thread. Thankfully it was not my computer, but definitely reminded me.

[Pernod]

Hard drives fail, we all know its only a matter of time.

When did you last back up?

So... consider this a friendly reminder that its time to take 20min out of your day to do a backup. Do it now, before its too late.

I've just done mine for the first time in months, and thought everyone could do with a little reminder as I assume I'm not the only one who forgets these things :D

[Nicole]

So... consider this a friendly reminder that its time to take 20min out of your day to do a backup. Do it now, before its too late.


Yours only take 20 minutes? ;) I must have waaaay too much stuff on my computer then :p

[Pernod]

Yours only take 20 minutes? ;)

Hmmm, 20 min might have been a small white lie.

I have just done 7 DVDs, plus 7 further backup backup copies (to store at work), + copying to external hard drive for every day use... so 2 days is more accurate :rolleyes:

[kirbinster]

Mine only takes 30 seconds. Well sort off. I have an HP computer with 2 internal 300 gig drives and a removable personal media slot. I normally keep a 300 gig drive in the slot. But before I go to sleep (when I want to do a backup) I just insert another one and do a complete image of the "C" or "D" drive. Only takes me about 30 seconds and it does its thing while I sleep.

[Bo_]

Real men don't take back-up
- Real men cry…

I use an external hard drive - and therefore it also quite fast.

Thanx for the reminder - I am starting my back-up a.s.a.p.

[Dr. WooD]

I lost over 11K pics a month or so ago. I had some backed up on CD's, and about a 1000 on smugmug.

Bought a new HP, and now burn everything to DVD, plus I have a external hard drive with a my pics on it.

Makes me sick to think of all the unreplaceable pics I lost.

[sunsetter]

Thanks, I just backed mine up the other day, but had not done it for some time.

[Pernod]

I just insert another one and do a complete image of the "C" or "D" drive. Only takes me about 30 seconds and it does its thing while I sleep.

I do the same with a hard drive copy. What takes the time is that I also like to store a copy off site so I have a hard drive copy + 2 sets of DVDs.

The reason for my sudden reminder is that I currently have a computer on the lounge floor in peices from a work mate who lost everything in the recent flooding here in the UK. I have tried everything I can to save the data but have managed to get nothing off the hard drive at all. Flood damage is rather unforgiving.

While hard drives are convenient for day to day backups, I cannot recommend enough to consider an off site backup as well as when fire or flood does hit, its the things you can't replace like family photos that you will really miss.

Depending on how paranoid you are, CD's/DVD can also end up with errors over time as they oxidise (ever had that dreaded 'cyclic redundancy check failure' on a cd?). Because of this I personally store two sets of DVDs in two different places. Actually I go as far as DVD's from different batches/manufacturers... but I'm a little bit of obsessive compulsive some of the time :rolleyes:

[Pernod]

In case it helps give some motivation... heres the 'sludge' covered hard drive full of family holiday pics... I have spent 3-4 nights working on it with no success.

http://s2.co.nz/pics/hard_drive.jpg

[Nicole]

Ewww, that does not look like a happy hard drive.

I did have one hard drive in a laptop that managed to kind of warp itself, but I didn't take pictures of it. :p

[tom]

Are you a smoker? I've nothing against smokers, but their computers are the worst nasty messes I've ever seen.

All my pics are on a RAID5 with a hot spare. I've lost enough crap over the years that I don't waste time anymore. Additionally, I make backups onto DVDs as I shoot enough pics to necessitate them.

In case it helps give some motivation... heres the 'sludge' covered hard drive full of family holiday pics... I have spent 3-4 nights working on it with no success.

http://s2.co.nz/pics/hard_drive.jpg

[Sime™]

Hey Shane... it'd prob only be the mainboard on the disk that's fried - disk would be ok.. so if ya can find a second hand disk exact same model and swap the main board - you'd possibly be "cooking with gas"...

OK, backup scenario... please keep in mind that this is what I do for work and I have had a mate lose ALL his digital photos from the last few years... just once...

I have a mirrored pair of 180gb disks as D and E... all my lightroom files import directly to them. C drive is used for NOTHING...
D and E are Raid One Sata... they are backed up after each import to ext1 (a 500gb Lacie) which is then mirrored to another 500gb Lacie (yes... ext2) and then once a month I take an offline copy (the actual disk is removed from caddie and placed in electrostatic bag in bottom draw... of everything.... auto / overnight... incremental...

works a treat!... Disks fail - but so do dvd's / cd's...keep em in a dark box (no light)

told you not to ask!... geeks rule - high five!!.. (ok, going to get coffee!!)

[peeperita]

i'm one of those folks who cried like a baby when not one but 5 of her back up discs corrupted...ignorant girl....thought she knew everything about everything.....

my fallible system is to back up all original files to disc and external hard drive....well, okay.....edited and original files....then i reburn my discs every three months....plus i have an old clunker of a computer that isn't in service any longer except for storing my shots.....

i swear i have more discs than my mister fabulous and i still don't feel safe

peeper

[daylebo5]

I have a mirrored pair of 180gb disks as D and E... all my lightroom files import directly to them. C drive is used for NOTHING...
D and E are Raid One Sata... they are backed up after each import to ext1 (a 500gb Lacie) which is then mirrored to another 500gb Lacie (yes... ext2) and then once a month I take an offline copy (the actual disk is removed from caddie and placed in electrostatic bag in bottom draw... of everything.... auto / overnight... incremental...


:eek:
Man that's one major backup plan !!! I do moi backups on moi external hdd...

by the way.. just a tip to everyone.. test those backups once in a while.. just to make sure they are still working and in good condition.. or it might just happen when u need them......................

[neilwood]

In case it helps give some motivation... heres the 'sludge' covered hard drive full of family holiday pics... I have spent 3-4 nights working on it with no success.

http://s2.co.nz/pics/hard_drive.jpg


I have to say there is no point in trying to resurrect that drive. Unless the seals have worked perfectly, that sludge will get everywhere and the platter will be damaged. Even if the seals survived, i would reckon the amount of sludge woould cause damage to the various exposed circuits/connectors.

I had been backing my entire system up to an external drive but in the last 2 weeks i had forgot but this is a very good reminder as to why to do it!

[Seltzer]

i'm one of those folks who cried like a baby when not one but 5 of her back up discs corrupted...ignorant girl....thought she knew everything about everything.....

my fallible system is to back up all original files to disc and external hard drive....well, okay.....edited and original files....then i reburn my discs every three months....plus i have an old clunker of a computer that isn't in service any longer except for storing my shots.....

i swear i have more discs than my mister fabulous and i still don't feel safe

peeper

but do you have an offsite backup? ;)
oh, sorry, perhaps I shouldn't mention that to one that would take me seriously.. (not that it's a bad idea actually)

[prrs4me]

Kind of makes you think about the big box of Great Aunt Tillies photos found in the attic. You don't know who the people are in the pictures but they have lasted 50 years in the attic without elaborate back ups. I often wonder where my pictures will be 50 years from now and if anywone will be able to view them.

[UK_tomcat_fan]

I do the following:

Burn the photos to 2 DVDs per assignment one goes to work with me, the other goes to my storage area.

whilst the files are copied onto my pc they are being copied onto a media pc and my website server.

and if i wish i send another set of dvds across to Florida where my GF takes care of them and drools over the pics ive taken :D

[Seltzer]

ninja thread merge!

[Pernod]

Nice thread merge!

Ok, for anyone interested, my workflow/backup plan is:


I download all my cards to an Epson P2000 40gb card.
I copy card onto PC using an app called DIM (http://www.alanlight.com/dim/Dim.htm) (this renames them by date and time)
Dim auto downloads them into the following file structure: YYYY/YYYY_MM_DD/Digital_Negatives/
All Raws are converted into TIFFs into a floder called WIP_Tiffs alongside the Digital_Negatives folder
Edits are then done (or not) and the Tiffs are converted to JPEG in the root YYYY/YYYY_MM_DD folder
The entire WIP_TIFF folder is then deleted. Likewise any unneeded RAW files are deleted.
Any I want to upload to the web are converted to a Web_Version folder (resized, border applied)
This leaves me with 'final' pics in YYYY_MM_DD, plus subfolders for /Digital_Negatives (originals) and /Web_Versions. Nice and easy to follow.
This is copied wirelessly to my main 300GB drive. I have an FTP server running with a 300GB drive, I use NetDrive (http://www.acs.uwosh.edu/novell/netdrive.htm) (freeware) to map this as a 'standard drive' on my laptop. Allway sync (http://allwaysync.com/) (also freeware) is used to copy them automatically overnight.
Once I have a new 10G or there abouts, I back this up to two DVD's which are stored offsite.
Only at this point do I delete them off my Epson drive.


The system works well... I keep all originals separate and untouched, I keep final versions in JPEG.

Using the Epson as a 'on the fly' solution is great - I keep looking at it and going 'oh my, its getting full', but I'll never delete data off it without having a backup on DVD... so it literally forces me to back up semi regularly.

I use Imatch to database my folders and it copes easily with keeping track of where all the files are :-). Of course I also do an Imatch database backed up along with my photos. Because its a database, I generally keep the last 3-4 versions of the backup as well.

Ok, so a bit of a novel... but thought I'd share ;)

[NJHeart2Heart]

I just got back from a week-long vacation in Maine. Had a great time, but was appalled when I realized I had very little space left on my laptop to transfer my photos from their SD cards (a 1 Gb and a 512 mg) to the hard drive. I was very fortunate to have found an extra partition which I was able to (just) save my photos, but with deleting during the day, I was still keeping 1.5 Gbs of files (fine Jpeg format).

It brought me to the question of where you all back up your photos to? I have been thinking of getting an external hard drive and would like to know what others use for backups, and/or storage during trips when a large enough hard drive is not accessible.

Also, on the side, is this typical for vacation photography? 1.5 Gigs? I am going to work on going through my pics again today, and tagging the best, but how do you all decide what to keep and what to delete?

Thanks for the advice!

NJHeart2Heart Dawn

[kirbinster]

I guess it depends on if you are shooting RAW versus jpeg, and what level of jpeg quality. I can easily fill one of my 2 gig cards with raw photos in a day of shooting.

If you are shooting jpeg you might want to consider carrying a card reader with you and then you can just upload them to something like Flickr while you are traveling if you ave access to the internet.

I am starting to worry about handling my photos as well. I just checked an my Lightroom data directory is now over 40gigs in size. I have backups on a portable drive, but I have only been taking pictures with my D40 for about three months now. This may start to get too big. Then what????


Where in NJ are you located?

[Drax]

Hi, NJHeart2Heart!

I think it is best to invest in a good external storing drive. I am using LC-Power EH-25BD which is a Photo & Data Center. I loaded it with a 2,5 hard-drive of 120 Gigabytes. Through a LCD screen i have an overview of things.

Nothing is more annoying as a lost card packed with precious memories or a card with no more space at the very moment you need it the most? (Did you never notice hat good shots occasions have the annoying habits of coming up specially when you are out of space, batteries, or things like that.;))

About the deleting lines, I don't delete pictures. They are saved in a special file. it will be good to keep the "spoiled" pictures with a bit of training and experiences they can become a "piece of art"..in the future.:)

[mattdm]

Remember, it's not really a backup until it's in a different building. Ideally in a different city.

[Nicole]

Remember, it's not really a backup until it's in a different building. Ideally in a different city.
That's not true :p Then it's an off-site backup. But a backup is still a backup even if it's in the next room over ;) While not ideal in all disaster recoveries, in many cases, such as a hard drive crash, it is enough to have an on-site backup.

[mattdm]

Okay, not strictly true, but true enough that if you really value your data (like, family photo albums), it's important to think about.

[odark30]

I use a LaCie Rugged All-Terrain Hard Drive. I also download to an Epson P 4000 for viewing.

[mattdm]

If you have reasonably upstream bandwidth, an online backup service like http://mozy.com/ or http://carbonite.com/ may be a good option. Not perfect, but they're not very expensive all considered, and fulfill the requirement I mentioned above.

(Note: I don't use either of these services but I know people that do and are happy.)

[Joe Hoetzl]

I backup to a hyperdrive Space, and then copy that to my local hd.
That in turn gets copied via scheduled script to an external 320GB usb drive.

The hyperdrive gets purged when all the processing is done...and backed up.

When that has less that 100GB free, a different scheduled script tells me to run this (http://www.rawworkflow.com/products/archive_creator/index.html).
for $60 it does a fine job. And I write to DVD+R's, which are "marginally" better than DVD-R's for the job.

I've actually recently switch to a different 320GB USB drive, so now, I have two "hard drive" copies, and the dvd's (which I keep at my office, which happens to be miles away from home).

[kirbinster]

I am always leary about things that automatically span media, I have been burned by that in the past. I rather use a program like Acronis True Image that will let me create chunks that are exactly 1 DVD in size with no spanning, that way nothing slips in the cracks.

[Sime™]

Funny, I think we had this conversation last week too? (one can never talk too much about backup) mattdm - yep, you're right... but, most people are not going to go to that trouble (I run disaster recovery for a large media company..amongst other things) ...anyways... Home PC.... uh... picture is easier...

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/visper/1356065139/" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1306/1356065139_c7e2e6e6ef.jpg" width="500" height="333" alt="backup?" /></a>

I have (matt) a seperate 500gb cold in my drawer in the other room and another at work with all my important stuff.. (I update it bi-weekly)

[Joe Hoetzl]

Wow, acronis, I have it and never thought to use it for that purpose...hmmm.

Thanks, must go look into it.

[phlyersphan]

I have 2 hard drives in my computer, so my photos are first stored on my main hard drive, then backup on import to the 2nd hard drive. Then, once a week, I do a full backup to a third drive - an external Western Digital MyBook. My best photos and family photos are also up on Flickr (off-site). I don't put all of my photos on Flickr, but I upload the original sizes of those I'm most likely to want to keep.

[Nicole]

That sounds pretty similar to my backup plan too Shelly :) I really need to start uploading my whole photo library to Flickr as a private backup, just in case, but the bandwidth limits I have make it sort of prohibitive. But I do also backup my photos onto my iPod... (which will be a much easier task when my new one arrives ;)) and also, that's kinda an off-site backup because if I'm out of the house, so is my iPod :p

[phlyersphan]

Nicole - ya know, somehow my photo folder on my iPod got corrupted, and it won't sync photos anymore. :-/ I have no idea why - but then again, I haven't tried very hard to fix it! But that definitely does count as backup!

[Nicole]

Aw, that would suck. I have my iPod in disk mode because I use it with a PC and Mac (the PC has more storage for most of my music library), so I wind up dragging photos to the ipod into a folder I appropriately call "Backup" lol If all else fails and you still have everything on your computer, you could always just reformat the iPod and see if that helps with the syncing problem. I've had to do that once.

[daylebo5]

Funny, I think we had this conversation last week too? (one can never talk too much about backup) mattdm - yep, you're right... but, most people are not going to go to that trouble (I run disaster recovery for a large media company..amongst other things) ...anyways... Home PC.... uh... picture is easier...

Sime are you into DR professionally ?? coz me too in to DR stuff.. keep helping my client in Diaster Recovery but never end up doin it moi self... always forget to take my backups.:p

[rediguana]

The best thing for backups is to try an automate them so you don't have to remember. As a Mac user, I'm really looking forward to the Time Machine functionality in the next version of OS X to help with the backup situation.

[Sime™]

Sime are you into DR professionally ?? coz me too in to DR stuff.. keep helping my client in Diaster Recovery but never end up doin it moi self... always forget to take my backups.:p

Yeah mate, ours is almost all automated. we have a 100mb wan and three sites (London, Oxford and Wales) so the exchange servers replicate between each other throught the day and the file severs during the night.. Works quite well... Gotta say though, bored of it all... want to go take photos of smiling babies for the rest of my life... (and screaming ones!) ...so much more fun than DR / IT... :)

[neilwood]

Sime - thats one heavy duty storage system youve got.

My back up system - 250gb on board (system drive) imaged to 250gb external drive. Also photos are uploaded to Flickr once i have processed them.

[kirbinster]

I have a window's program called Second Copy that will automatically monitor a directory or file and make backups each time there is a change made all in the background with no user input needed.

[sdjl]

I guess I'm lucky. I managed to get myself a Mac Pro with 2.25TB of hard drive space in it. A little excessive, maybe, but quite useful!

I use Aperture that stores its library on one hard drive. I then wrote a small script that takes advantage of the inbuilt OS X maintenance scripts to automatically backup certain folders to another hard drive.
It's quite dynamic as it only backs up what's changed, therefore eliminating the need to copy files over that already exist. (Not that I need to copy them, OS X does it all for me!)

It's quite a lengthy read (http://www.sdjl.co.uk/2006/04/05/how-to-backup-mac-os-x-with-rsync/), but is rather useful (and free) if you're using a mac.

I do have an external drive that I use very occasionally, but don't really have much need at the moment!

David

[Nicole]

Sweet, I'll have to look at that a little closer :)

[daylebo5]

I guess I'm lucky. I managed to get myself a Mac Pro with 2.25TB of hard drive space in it. A little excessive, maybe, but quite useful!

I do have an external drive that I use very occasionally, but don't really have much need at the moment!

David

David.. with 2.25Tb why the hell would you need a external drive.. :confused: .. lol
I think its time for me to upgrade moi hdd... running out of space...

[NJHeart2Heart]

I have a window's program called Second Copy that will automatically monitor a directory or file and make backups each time there is a change made all in the background with no user input needed.

That sounds like something worthwhile researching! What does it cost? And does it backup to wherever you need it to?

[NJHeart2Heart]

David.. with 2.25Tb why the hell would you need a external drive.. :confused: .. lol
I think its time for me to upgrade moi hdd... running out of space...

Maybe his external is portable. And even if he has huge space, I would think it's still good to make backups (though he probably doesn't have a backup drive large enough to handle the Mac drive :) )
My two cents.
NJHeart2Heart

[kirbinster]

check out www.secondcopy.com (http://www.secondcopy.com) for the program. It will backup to anything. Not sure about the price but I'm sure they list it on the website.

[Seltzer]

*bump* about that time again.. has everyone backed up lately?

[Sistog]

i backup my photo on external HD.. Bakup of Backup on DVDs and recently i begin also to backup photo online (on divshare.com) in zip folder with password..

[inkista]

I finally got around to doing bare minimum backup this weekend. I was at Costco, and saw they had the Western Digital 500GB MyBook for $150. Dual firewire ports. Yeah, they had the 1TB drives, too, but I'm cheap. Besides, my MacBook's only got a 250GB drive in it. :) Besides, I can use the extra space for when Leopard (OSX 10.5) comes out with the Time Machine (http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/features/timemachine.html)/incremental backup stuff built in.

I'm using CarbonCopyCloner (http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html), since it saved my old G4 iBook back in the day when I stuffed the hard drive so full the system couldn't breathe any more and I had a major crash--being able to boot off an external hard drive and run disk repair programs in that situation is a lifesaver. I will also mention here that doing an occasional erase and full restore from backup with OS X is a Very Good Idea, because you also get the side benefit of defragging the drive while you're at it, with a lot less head wear than you would with a defragging programming.

[Seltzer]

*bump* guess I should get around to doing this when I get home tonight....

[PnwGuy]

I recently discovered and have been using a free backup program. You can schedule automated backup jobs or run a backup with two clicks of the mouse. The best thing is it will back up only changed files or new files.

This means the first time you back up it may take half an hour to a couple of hours, depending upon how much data you have, but after that the backups will take only a few minutes.

http://www.rdcomp.net/ezbackitup/

Since my last posting on this topic I have encountered about 20 new instances of hard drives failing. Luckily I was able to recover the data from about 15 of them without a lot of hassle and expense. The good news is all of those people now have a backup system in place.

[Tparr]

Portable hard drives are inexpensive, fast & easy to move.

[PerJr]

I'm running Windows Vista Ultimate and there's a build-in backup program. So every sunday at 12.00 it backups all image-files in my "Document" folder and saves it on a external harddrive.

[Sime™]

there is backup built into most windows os from 2k upwards... click start, click run... type ntbackup and follow the prompts...

GO ON...OFF YOU ALL GO!... it's BACKUP O'CLOCK :)

[peeperita]

i know there's been plenty said in the past about backing up your images, but after my experience last night, i think it bears a reminder.....

the first time this happened to me i was devastated....i thought i was smart and had been backing up files to cd.....just that....nothing more...then, as i was trying to access a disk, i realized the damned thing was corrupted....and so were about four others.....so, i cry, wipe my tears, and trot on out for an external hard drive....that and disks and i felt reasonably safe....backing up every few weeks.....

long story short, i got complacent about my back ups...i felt that if i protected my originals i could easily replace my edited files.....so, i let too many month's worth of edits build up on my external and i had just dumped a couple of cardfuls of originals there too.....then a car hits a light pole and the power goes out.....too busy retrieving my husband from a darkened basement, i didn't think to unplug everything......the resulting power surge a few hours later turned my external into a chatter box of useless wires......

i lost close to a thousand edits and six week's worth of original files....

don't let it happen to you if you can do something today to prevent it....

thanks

peeper, the dumbest girl on the block....

[Nicole]

Oh, you poor thing! Though unfortunately I'm laughing slightly just because that is some bizarrely terrible luck that just as you were restoring your backups a car would hit a power pole and kill the hard drive :p It sounds like the sort of bizarre bad luck that would happen with me or other people in my family. Still, I'm sorry that all happened. :(

[Saralonde]

So sorry that hapened to you. I think a lot of us could easily be in the same position. Always a good reminder!

[Jamesc359]

That's a real bummer. You have my sympathy. :(

peeper, the dumbest girl on the block....
We all get busy with life, things happen. There's no need to say or think such harsh things about yourself. :)

.....

That reminds me, I've got 600+ images I've yet to back up... I've never had a hard drive fail on me yet though.
Now where is the little smiley that's got his foot in his mouth?

[Kpclark1959]

I am sorry to hear that. Although I do believe it was a power surge, that hard drive can actually be recovered by a service. You may want to check this out.

http://www.drdus.com/recovery.aspx

[Darryl]

'the dumbest girl on the block'- I can't agree with that. The fact that you were willing to share this with us suggests that you're capable of learning from your mistakes, and humble enough to share your human frailty. These qualities don't fit that moniker.
Besides, you have the same camera as me, so you're cool. :)
I have had the same thing happen recently, not with so much data though. I failed to save my work often enough (ok, not at all) during a pre-print creation. A brownout took the project out completely. Only a few hour work for me, so not such a big deal in my case.
I did lose many weeks worth of photos that I burned to disc, then couldn't read the disc later. This was particularly frustrating because I DID save the data.

This is a very good reminder, and I'm going to add this- check your discs from time to time to make sure they can be read. If you have to burn another one to replace a bad disc, do so while you still can. I lost my stuff during a reinstal of windows. I could have prevented it by checking my discs before I hit the format command.

[PHugger]

Thanks for this great reminder. I'm really sorry for your loss. I manage large amounts of data for a living. To me, backups are like breathing. Backups are what allow me to sleep at night. My company realizes how valuable this data is and they are willing to spend whatever is needed to keep it safe and accessible. I’m constantly amazed at people who tell me that they never backup their personal computers – ‘I don’t have anything valuable on it.’ Maybe that’s true or maybe they aren’t thinking hard enough. You need to stop and think about the data on your machine. What if it disappeared right now? What are you willing to lose? How much are you willing spend restoring or redoing it?
Pictures
Videos
Emails
Contacts
Links
Configuration settings
Graphics
Documents
Databases
Personal Information
Passwords & Program Keys
General Data
(I’m NOT including program files as they are often faster to simply reinstall than to recover)
Some of these can be replaced at the cost of time – some are irreplaceable. It makes me sick every time I hear about a disk failure, theft, or accident……. It’s always counterproductive to ask if they had backups or not (they just get mad). This needs to stop – your time and work is too valuable to simply trust it to a single disk drive. There are tons of free backup applications out there. You can even start with the one that Microsoft includes with Windows – Excellent Tutorial HERE (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/learnmore/bott_03july14.mspx). You need to develop a strategy – there are millions that can work:

Backup files to -
Another machine on your network
CD/DVD/Flash/Floppy
Dedicated Disk
Remote server on the Web
Backup applications can help you to develop a good strategy. You will likely forget something important that the software will remember. You can schedule your backups to run automatically (mine are completely unattended – purge after 4 weeks). You may never need it, but it’s foolish to be a poor steward of your data when it’s so easy to do it right!

Here are some lists of (mostly) free backup applications –
http://www.hsinlin.com/software/backup.html
http://www.thefreecountry.com/utilities/backupandimage.shtml
http://free-backup.info/backup-software.htm
http://www.sofotex.com/download/PC_Utilities/Back_Up/
http://www.nonags.com/nonags/diskbk.html
http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/Search/backup_software.html

Here are some commercial programs you may already own that can do the job –
Nero Burning ROM (http://ww2.nero.com/enu/index.html)
EZ Media Creator (http://www.roxio.com/)
WinZip (http://www.winzip.com/)
Some recommended by others -
Retrospect Express (http://www.emcinsignia.com/) (OEM - free w/ disk purchase)
(check when you buy a new disk they often give you a backup application free)
Karen's Replicator (http://www.karenware.com/powertools/ptreplicator.asp) (free)
Cobian (http://www.educ.umu.se/~cobian/cobianbackup.htm) (free)

Drive imaging software -
Acronis True Image (http://www.acronis.com/)
Norton Ghost (http://www.symantec.com/home_homeoffice/products/overview.jsp?pcid=br&pvid=ghost10)
DriveImageXL (http://www.runtime.org/dixml.htm)
This is what I use –
Genie Backup Mananger (http://www.genie-soft.com/solutions/backup_home_users.html)
(with the File Access Manager for open files)
Here are some reviews –
http://www.backup-software-reviews.com/
http://www.pcmag.com/category2/0,1874,4798,00.asp
http://data-backup-software-review.toptenreviews.com/
(you can see why I chose Genie)
My personal preference is to backup to a separate disk. It’s faster and very reliable. Build an external Firewire/USB2 drive and you can even use it with your laptop.

Check out these external drive enclosures –
http://www.newegg.com/ProductSort/SubCategory.asp?SubCategory=92
(buy a disk on sale anywhere)
The next step for me was NAS – Network Attached Storage
It’s basically a tiny Linux box running Samba that you can place on your network. It’s accessible to anyone and perfect for backups. It might sound beyond your means, but a simple external NAS enclosure can be had for little more than a 1394/USB2 enclosure. You can spend more on features like RAID, Striping, and Print Serving, but the basic 'disk on the network' model is around $70 (without the disk of course). I have one that I use to backup 3 of the four machines in my house. It works great for my XP, Win2k and Ubuntu machines. My personal machine has it’s own external firewire drive. I do a full backup every week and an incremental every day. I can keep 4 weeks of backups on the disk and it automatically purges the older sets. A full week of backups is around 65gB or so. I generally backup large video files separately. An occasional DVD copy is also a great idea (once or twice a year).

Here is that DIY $70 external NAS enclosure –
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817146067
(buy a disk on sale anywhere)

Some 'store bought' NAS solutions (disks included & features galore) -
HP Media Vault (http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopping/product_detail.do?product_code=PE591AV%23ABA&aoid=20715&cs=I-search%20(Froogle))
Western Digital Net Center (http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=150)
Maxtor Shared Storage (http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/Maxtor/menuitem.5d2b41d3cef51dfe29dd10a191346068/?channelpath=/en_us/Support/Product%20Support/Network%20Storage/Maxtor%20Shared%20Storage%20Family/Maxtor%20Shared%20Storage)
Seagate Mirra Personal Server (http://www.seagate.com/products/personal/mirra/index.html)
Lacie Ethernet Disk (http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10594&gclid=CPSF3_rDrYgCFUcyGgodcGNu1Q)
Hawking Net Store (http://www.hawkingtech.com/products/productlist.php?CatID=38&FamID=91&ProdID=242)
Netgear Storage Central (http://www.netgear.com/Products/Storage/NetworkStorage/SC101.aspx)
Iomega Network Storage (http://www.iomega.com/direct/products/family.jsp?FOLDER%3C%3Efolder_id=26891287&ASSORTMENT%3C%3East_id=26890319&bmUID=1162649224609)
Linksys (http://www.linksys.com/servlet/Satellite?c=L_Product_C1&childpagename=US%2FLayout&cid=1115416945617&pagename=Linksys%2FCommon%2FVisitorWrapper)
Triton Simple NAS (http://www.trittontechnologies.com/products/nas.html)
SimpleTech Simple Share (http://www.simpletech.com/commercial/products/simpleshare.html)
QNAP Turbo Station (http://www.qnap.com.tw/pro_detail_feature.asp?p_id=67)
Yellow Machine (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1945382,00.asp)
Buffalo Terastation (http://www.buffalotech.com/products/product-detail.php?productid=97)
Infrant Ready NAS (http://www.infrant.com/products/compare.php)
On last word of advice - anything you can do to automate your backup plan will payoff with higher compliance. Something that you can simply turn on and forget is perfect. This means using a backup program that can automatically delete your oldest backups. Make sure your program can email or notify you if something goes wrong too. I'm sorry about this long post, I just feel it's really important.


Hope this helps,
PCH

[peeperita]

now, i feel like the grieving widow.....which in a sense i am.....but, i sorely appreciate all of your kind words and suggestions....

wanna know the first thing i thought of when i knew it was lost?....that i have been too cheap to invest in my flickr account......i could have been storing a ton of original and edited files there for a little more than a pittance....i could've and would've had i been thinking.....

and kp?....thanks for the recovery link.....after a sleepless night on my behalf, the best decision of my life, the mister, was up and astir bright and early packing up the external to them with hope that all is not lost.....he's a good man, that guy......i'm pretty sure i'll keep him.....

anyway.....i'm off to recreate a few of the proposed christmas gifts i had in mind this year.....

be well all.....and thank you again

peeper

[Nicole]

Good luck on the recovery peeper :) And perhaps an investment in Flickr should go into your stocking this holiday season.

[peeperita]

i have an in with santa this year....you bet your nikon it'll be there.....:)

[aetnajojo]

.....he's a good man, that guy......i'm pretty sure i'll keep him.....

Too bad, some of the really important things you cannot do a backup....

[Kpclark1959]

Good luck on a speedy recovery. I will keep my fingers crossed! :)

[neilwood]

That has just made me think about getting surge protection for my computer!
It just goes to show how easily things can (and do) get screwed up even when you think you have a good backup plan.

Sorry to hear about your misfortune - hopefully they can be recovered.

[Seltzer]

*ninja thread merge* sorry, been a couple of months since I have bumped my backup reminder.. My wife's RAID 1 mirror started getting data corruption as well.. fortunately one of the drives seems alright but it's not a hardware mirror so software corruption can harm it. So much for that as an all around solution *breaks out the DVDRs again.

[Nicole]

Timely since I've just decided to totally organize my computer and my backup plans. I have 2 external hard drives, but they're a mess with trying to get things organized. So I'm almost done getting rid of the duplicate (and triplicate, and quadruplicate) pictures, so that were in the photo library, and then I can delete off the multiple places they are sitting (with those extra copies) and actually have an organized backup plan that can keep everything organized and backed up.

I've also just started uploading copies of all my pictures to my Flickr account as private just in case something happens to one of the external hard drives or the computer.

[Seltzer]

*bump* it's that time again... everyone remember to back up? I know I have about 17GB of files from our trip to Disney World a couple of weeks ago to back up somewhere.

[PHugger]

Backups are like breathing to me. It's what let's me sleep at night. I'm a database administrator for a certain VOIP company. I've put a lot of thought into my home LAN and personal backups. I looked at a lot of different software and was always wanting some of the feature in the Enterprise Backup solutions that we use at work (Veritas NetBackup, now owned by Symantec). I checked a lot of reviews and finally settled on Genie Backup Manager. I have a 1TB eSATA 4 drive array (RAID0) that I use for my personal workstation. I do a full data backup (I prefer to reinstall programs if needed) every week and incrementals every day. I try to keep around 4 weeks worth on line. I also backup my photos to DVD and should really think about storing them in a different location. The rest of the machines in the house get backed up to my 1TB NAS drive which also acts as our media server. The rest of the family has a lot less data than I do. I've been investigating Jungle Disk which use Amazon's S3 servers and may just decide to store my image backups online. Have I gone overboard? I like knowing my data is safe and you can never have too many toys....... (c8

I have a decent rant about backups over on my blog. You may find some new software (mostly free) that interests you. I'm not wed to my tools and feel that any backup is better than none. The Fool On The Hill blog post about backups is HERE (http://hugger.us/wordpress/?p=30).


PCH

[netbymatt]

I've been investigating Jungle Disk which use Amazon's S3 servers and may just decide to store my image backups online.

Good to hear someone mention Jungle Disk (http://www.jungledisk.com). I use it for my offsite backup, in addition to having the photos on 2 different computers at home. It's rather cheap at $0.15/gb per month, and it's got some nice features to help automate the backup process.

[Ham1]

Just wondering what everyone's personal preference is on making sure everything is backed up so when a hard-drive fails not everything is lost. Personally I have a stack of DVDs on my desk that rarely get touched, as well as my computer and my wife's computer that have a RAID 1 mirroring to two drives each... if I would ever copy files to her computer that would be helpful I'm sure.

I don't think it is smart to put your stack of DVD's next to your computer. If there was a fire or flood or something they both are in the same room.

If you use SmugMug, we make & keep multiple copies of your original high-res images across multiple data centers.

Thanks,
Markham

[rediguana]

And just a reminder, you need ideally two backups.

1. On site and disconnected - easy access, easily updated, and easily recoverable.
2. Offsite - for those cases where your onsite backup is lost.

Cheers Gav

[Car2n]

As I read through 13 pages of replys I can't help think of how many people would loose everything if they encountered a natural disaster. A fire, earthquake, hurricane, tornado or flood will not care how many external hard drives or DVD's you have.
Online backup services like Carbonite or Mozy will keep a copy of your data safe and backups are automatic. Never give it a second thought. I have whole drives covered. Not just photos, everything important.

[KimberleyPhotography]

Yet another sad day this past Sunday I may have lost about 6 months of pictures, data, school projects... It is currently at the computer store trying to be restored.

REMINDER - Make a backup now!!!

[Ham1]

Yet another sad day this past Sunday I may have lost about 6 months of pictures, data, school projects... It is currently at the computer store trying to be restored.

REMINDER - Make a backup now!!!

Oh wow sorry to hear that, keep us posted. :( That is why a lot of people buy SmugMug. Unlimited storage and you can get your originals back for free anytime.

We keep multiple copies of your photos in multiple data centers backed up on Amazon's S3 service.

Markham

[UK_tomcat_fan]

is there a way of archiving pictures, for instance if you could use Lightroom to burn the pictures to the dvd and the thumbnails are stored on the pc if you clicked on the thumbnail it would prompt you to insert that cd / dvd, anyone have any ideas?

[DarrenT]

i keep one copy of all my pics on my HD, one copy on a networked HD and one on a DVD RW. as the collection grows its going to be more time consuming but i wont get caught out!

[UK_tomcat_fan]

ok here goes my current archive strategy:

1 copy goes to my laptop
1 copy to my media server
1 copy to my photo website
1 copy to my archive hard drive on my server

soon to be 1 copy on DVD with archives

[rodrigo]

Not sure if someone else mentioned (couldn't go through all 14 pages) but it is very important to have a backup off-site, i.e., in a different place than your computer and regular backup. This is due to the "my office burned down" situations where one could lose their computer and the backup DVDs and external HDs lying beside them. So, from time to time, it is a smart idea to backup on DVDs and ask a friend or relative who lives somewhere else to keep it for you. Just remember that recorded DVDs are not eternal media, so it's good to make new copies of the same backups every couple of years to be in the safe side.

Another good solution is to use online backup, services like Jungle Disk (http://www.jungledisk.com) (which uses secure storage provided by Amazon) are quite affordable.

Another excellent backup solution, at least for your top photos, is to use the good and old printed copy :)

[cgammonsjr]

I know this is a very extreme process for someone who takes tons of pictures but for files that I have wanted to save in the past that I couldn't bare to lose I would email them to myself. I know that would mean resizing like crazy but I have folders in my email account that have files from as far as 5 years ago that I can pull up from the attachment link. So for me that is a cheap online backup that I have created for myself.:D I don't know if I would have the patience for it with pictures especially if they are RAW. files but it is another way of backing up files and it's free.;)

[briandee]

i have 2 500 GIG hard drives on a dlink <router/ftp server> in my garage. all pictures get stored on that and the 2 hard drives mirror eachother. i also keep a copy of all pictures on my maint work/play computer that has a 500 GIG harddrive also. so all 3 would have to fail at the same time for me to loose my pictures.

and if the house was burning down i would get the wife&kids then the portable dlink <the size of a football> out of the house first :>

[charliere]

I put my pictures on my office desktop and my laptop. and when i have 10 or 20 Gb i burn them on dvd's. the last year my desktop computer crashed, and thanks to my dvd's I didn't lose any picture. but from this day I saved them on the laptop too.

[Canadian Mum]

I have an external hard drive... and then I burn them to DVD's.
Which I need to do again!

[ditch_azeroth]

kim... ouch! that smarts. me, i always keep raw copies of my photos in dvd's - everytime my gallery gets to 4gb or so, i back it up... and delete it from my machine (i only have 120gb in there after all...). the dvds, i keep them in a cd case that i always keep in a cabinet with lots of charcoal in it... to avoid any moisture build-up.

[PhotogMom]

well considering our hard drive did just crash I definitely relate to this LOL! luckily my husband is a computer geek! :D

We have all the files recovered but just trying to get the HD back in working order. What we plan to do is have a 2nd harddrive to just strictly use to back up all of our documents from the working computer. Also I plan to load them all online somewhere that will store them as well as put them all on DVD. And the DVD's I can put in my firesafe and if anything ever happens to the house, hopefully they will survive in there, or at the LEAST if I am home and something happens, I can have time to grab that and take it with me and know all the important stuff is in there.

I also plan to try and get all my film/negatives digitized at some point in the near future so I will add that to the mix as well. Next I plan to scan our wedding photos as well (we only have those in print).

So my backup is going to be...
~Initial Hard Drive
~2nd Backup only Hard Drive
~Dvd (and placed in Fire safe)
~Online Storage in High resolution

[PhotogMom]

Yet another sad day this past Sunday I may have lost about 6 months of pictures, data, school projects... It is currently at the computer store trying to be restored.

REMINDER - Make a backup now!!!


That's a bummer...They should be able to retrieve the files first before worrying about recovering or fixing the hard drive...yeah we just did this..luckily my dh is a computer geek. ;) But just so you know most ANYTHING can be recovered from a hard drive, it can be costly if it is too far gone but it can be done if you find the right person.

I hope it all works out for you though! Good luck.

[BlueSage]

I back up things regularly on CDs / DVDs. I also back up everything on thumb drives - one I keep in my house, and one I keep in a safety deposit box at the bank, in case of fire, etc. so all of my backups aren't in the same location.

[i_luv_ph0tos]

I burn them to DVD+R... unlike Flash Disks and other storage devices.. it's less likely to fail and has longer life...

[InvisibleBlack]

Wow.. you are all on top of things! I agree and I use two 500 gig hard drives and also a DVD back up of all photos. you cannot be too careful.

Pat C

[chrismar]

I use Mozy and do periodical test restores to make sure things are working properly.

[Car2n]

I have all my files on the local disks and I have an image of the whole computer backed up on an external drive using Acronis True Image (updated daily) and all my files are backed up online with Carbonite as soon as they are created.

[KimberleyPhotography]

Sigh of relief! They recovered everything! And now I have to start making better backups, I am considering keeping online copies, I have read all the pages in this thread and there are some good resources. What a wake up call though... I hope I never go through that kind of panic ever again!

[PhotogMom]

Sigh of relief! They recovered everything! And now I have to start making better backups, I am considering keeping online copies, I have read all the pages in this thread and there are some good resources. What a wake up call though... I hope I never go through that kind of panic ever again!

Oh that's GREAT news!!! Yeah I sighed a big one too as soon as I knew all of our files were transfered over to our laptop....now I need to go ahead and copy all those to a disk but our laptop is only a dvd reader so I don't know how many cd's it will take me :eek:.



For those who store pics online, what is your favorite place to store photos, that's easy to use and you can store in high resolution, and hopefully FREE :D

[mattdm]

I burn them to DVD+R... unlike Flash Disks and other storage devices.. it's less likely to fail and has longer life...

I wouldn't count on that beyond five years or so. Make sure you have multiple copies.

[mattdm]

For those who store pics online, what is your favorite place to store photos, that's easy to use and you can store in high resolution, and hopefully FREE :D

For something as important as this, I think free is a downside. You want to have a reasonable expectation that your pictures will still be available tomorrow. Storing a lot of data reliably costs money, and if you're not paying for it, the stakes are a lot lower for the provider.

[PhotogMom]

For something as important as this, I think free is a downside. You want to have a reasonable expectation that your pictures will still be available tomorrow. Storing a lot of data reliably costs money, and if you're not paying for it, the stakes are a lot lower for the provider.

Yeah true, I see your point there ;)

But there are alot of sites, like shutterfly, snapfish, photobucket, flickr etc... that everyone seems to be loading their pics up to nowadays, and those are pretty reliable, even if they get bought out usually your data is usually still safe and is transferred over or you they give you a chance to move it if you need to (I know Yahoo photos did this recently).

I know there are some hardcore sites you can pay to load all your data to but I am not ready for that right now. :cool: :)

[krypticide]

I'm using Foldershare to sync up with my dad's computer. I have a local copy, and a portable HD I backup EVERYTHING (not just pictures) to the drive every few days. He also has a local copy, and backs up to one active hard drive. Another backup sits in a safe deposit, and the two backup drives are refreshed and swapped about once a year (or will be, we just started with the safe deposit backup).

I also upload to Flickr pro account.

[Doc Holliday]

I could never understand why people back up to DVDs when hard drives are so cheap.

I use Cobian Backup 8 to transfer all of my files to an external hard drive once a week automatically.

I burn from magnetic to optical because, no matter how careful you are, magnetic will, eventually, fail. It isn't an "if," but a "when". Magnetic drives have gotten cheaper, but, to me, buying blank DVDs is still cheaper and more reliable.

So, I burn to DVD with a written index...