Back-up digital photos with ______?????

[dpuck1998]

As has been said, the best solution is several solutions. I keep all my photos on my PC hard drive, the get backed up nightly to an external hard drive, I back them up monthly onto my laptop hard drive and bi-monthly onto DVDs that I take to my office and put on my work hard drive. My pictures and video are the most valuable things I have, besides my children/wife!! They are un-replaceable!

 

[Groucho]

A hard drive can go bad just sitting there, too... anything with moving parts is going to generally be less reliable than something with non-moving parts.

I do double DVD backups, one copy goes in the fire safe, plus most exist on my hard drive. One of these days I'm going to pick up another hard drive to be able to store all my RAWs online. I also will pick up a BluRay (or HD-DVD if that wins the format battle, but I'm pulling for BluRay due to more storage) burner when the prices come down and re-burn everything on those.

One thing that's often overlooked with burning CDs/DVDs is to verify after burning, this is an option is any respectable CD burning app. Nero has it as a checkbox during the burn, I believe all the Roxio products have it as an option in the project properties. This way, you know for sure that the burn is at least correct to be begin with.

 

[shancan911]

Sorry to have stepped on toes wit my logic about the external hard drive. I will say I do also have my pics on disc, and every holiday season, reburn the whole lot of them. I have to say though, I have never had a hard drive crash. Maybe we're too easy on our computers. Also to add, the only time the EHD is turned on is to update photos. But all in all, I concur with mostly everyone here, a few different places is best

 

[Groucho]

No worry about stepped toes, everyone's entitled to their opinion.

But, hard drives can certainly fail even if treated with kid gloves, and when they're old or new. Banging them around will certainly increase the chances of damage, but there's no way to avoid hard drive failure.

 

[boBQuincy]

A study recently done by Google shows that all hard drives are scary, some fail early and those that don't can still fail at any time. The study also showed that after three years the rate of failure goes up dramatically.

Unfortunately I haven't found such a study on CD-R and DVD-R.

 

[dpuck1998]

Sorry to have stepped on toes wit my logic about the external hard drive. I will say I do also have my pics on disc, and every holiday season, reburn the whole lot of them. I have to say though, I have never had a hard drive crash. Maybe we're too easy on our computers. Also to add, the only time the EHD is turned on is to update photos. But all in all, I concur with mostly everyone here, a few different places is best

We techies have a saying about hard drives...

There are two kinds: Those that have failed and those that will fail.

Keeping it on two hard drives should be enough, since chances are very slim that both hard drives will fail at the same time. As internet speeds increase online storage is becoming a viable option. I use it for work right now, but prices will come down and make it viable for the home market soon.

BTW, Don't worry about toes ;-) We all just like to toss in our 2 cents also!

 

[dburg30]

A study recently done by Google shows that all hard drives are scary, some fail early and those that don't can still fail at any time. The study also showed that after three years the rate of failure goes up dramatically.

Unfortunately I haven't found such a study on CD-R and DVD-R.

Those were on drives that were being used? Or just stored? If using an external HD it would'nt be running if you only used it for backups. Now, that said, NON use can sometimes be as bad as constant use.. So I just didnt know what the study was based on.

I have CD's DVD's, drives, copies that family has, copies that I've put in other places, etc etc.

 

[Anewman]

Those were on drives that were being used? Or just stored? If using an external HD it would'nt be running if you only used it for backups. Now, that said, NON use can sometimes be as bad as constant use.. So I just didnt know what the study was based on.

I have an external on my main PC, plus one external network drive. Plan was that I would only plug them in when backing up or accessing RAW files, I would guess that worked the first few times and they have been online since. I do an semi annual DVD back up, but other than that I feel that the 3 Hard Drives(including internal) will not all fail at the same time.

here is the Google study http://labs.google.com/papers/disk_failures.pdf

 

[Taqwus]

As a former IT guy I know one option that has not been brought up yet since it is a cost per month solution. In my opinion it is the best
You can get a webspace on a remote server, they back up daily to tape, most are running RAID setups with at least 1 level of fault protections
Just off a quick search you can get smugmug.com for abotu 40$ per year, this is a photography based website already. Also you got hostmonster.com at 6$ per month, with 300gb storage and 3tb transfer rate (this can be real important if you show your pics a lot)
Also if you do the website solution you can show your pics to other people real easy
CD's, DVD's, Hard Drives, USB Drives are all decent low-level solutions, but they have no fault tolerance.
If you want to go with self back up the only real way to do it is a tape back up, with offsite storage. Though this will probably be a lot more expensive

 

[dpuck1998]

As a former IT guy I know one option that has not been brought up yet since it is a cost per month solution. In my opinion it is the best
You can get a webspace on a remote server, they back up daily to tape, most are running RAID setups with at least 1 level of fault protections
Just off a quick search you can get smugmug.com for abotu 40$ per year, this is a photography based website already. Also you got hostmonster.com at 6$ per month, with 300gb storage and 3tb transfer rate (this can be real important if you show your pics a lot)
Also if you do the website solution you can show your pics to other people real easy
CD's, DVD's, Hard Drives, USB Drives are all decent low-level solutions, but they have no fault tolerance.
If you want to go with self back up the only real way to do it is a tape back up, with offsite storage. Though this will probably be a lot more expensive

I did mention that a few posts ago. I didn't mention any names however. The only issue right now is moving that much data "across the wire". uploading my photos in high-res and raw format would take a considerable amount of time even with high speed. It is a viable solution though to keep you photos safe at an offsite backup center.

 

[loveysbydesign]

So..... what type of extra hard drive is best, where is the best place to purchase one and how much do they cost???

 

[LMarge]

What about places like Costco and the Kodak Easyshare Gallery? When you upload photos to the site and then print or share them, how long to they keep them on file before dumping them offline? Just curious - I also keep everything on my hard drive and CD/DVD backup. But I was wondering about these places as I've uploaded lots to both of them - one for printing (love Costco!) and one for sharing with the outlaws (Kodak - as they don't all have Costco accounts!) My goal is to reburn my entire harddrive and put it in the safety depost box, I just have to sit here with a cup of coffee and an enormous stack of CD's!!

 

[boBQuincy]

So..... what type of extra hard drive is best, where is the best place to purchase one and how much do they cost???

A recent test by Google shows they all fail, and the failure rate gets higher after about three years. Western Digital is good, as are some others. All the major electronics stores have them, for example a 320GB goes for about $80 on sale.

And this is no-tax weekend in North Carolina!

 

[safetymom]

You should keep up with technology when archiving your images. Does anyone use 5 1/4 floppies anymore? I have mine backed up to CD, DVD, and external hard drives.

Also use the Sharpie designed for CD's not the regualar one.

 

[dpuck1998]

You should keep up with technology when archiving your images. Does anyone use 5 1/4 floppies anymore? I have mine backed up to CD, DVD, and external hard drives.

Also use the Sharpie designed for CD's not the regualar one.

I'm still using reel to reel, I don't trust those new fangled floppy things!!

One note, the 500GB external HD seems to be the best price point right now. The 1000GB(terabyte) is more than twice the price for some reason.

The problem with most online sites like kodak, etc. The store your images in low res format. I'm sure there are some that don't, but then your back to what I said earlier, it takes forever to upload them. Just for the month of July my photos took up 4.1 Gig of space. Thats a long upload...

 

[WillCAD]

When it comes to backup, too many copies is ALMOST enough.

I have my photos on my main HDD, my laptop HDD, uploaded to my web page, and copied on two sets of DVDs - one at home and one at work as an off-site backup. Once in a while I burn a third set and leave it at my parents' house.

If you have more than one computer in the house, there's your first level of backup right there. Use the router that you most likely have for sharing your cable or DSL internet to network the computers together, and synchronize your files between them.

The best way to do this is to make sure that all the folders on both computers are named the same and in the same place, then it's easy to get some kind of a simple backup utility that you can use to keep the files in sync. This procedure can also be used when using an external HDD to backup your files.

One more piece of advice - try to get some partitioning software and a computer-savvy person to use it to create a second partition on your computers; the second partition will become your D: drive, and that will be where you store all your data files - music, pics, videos, documents, whatever. Having all your data on a separate partition gives you a little extra protection in the even of a Windows meltdown; having a completely separate HDD in the machine as your D: drive is even better, because it will protect your files from physical HDD failures, too.

 

[scottny]

I burn them onto cd's and now dvd's and have no problems. i have checked ones form over 3 years ago and still r fine. I do check but maybe I will make other backups now

 

[WillCAD]

I burn them onto cd's and now dvd's and have no problems. i have checked ones form over 3 years ago and still r fine. I do check but maybe I will make other backups now

As others have mentioned, it's not a bad idea to migrate your backups to newer media periodically. Some of my oldest CD backups are approaching 8 years old and still work fine, but if the files were important enough i would combine a bunch of older CDs onto a single DVD to save space in my storage drawers and restart the clock on the backup's lifespan.

With my digital photos I take a different approach - they still all fit on a single DVD, so each time I make a backup, I simply copy the entire lot onto a DVD, giving me a complete and brand-new copy of them.

 

[YetiSlayer]

What about pictures taken that day at the parks? I take a ton of pictures and cull after we are home. I download to the laptop after we return to the room and immediately make back up cds. I always want two copies at all times. Any other sugestions?

Does anyone have a recommendation for a good sd card storage case? Would the idea of putting a storage case in a zip lock baggie (for wet rides and rain storms) worry anyone? How sensitive are flash cards to static electricity that might build up inside the plastic bag?

Thanks to all for the back up storage ideas.

 

[dpuck1998]

Okay, the backup while traveling issue. This is a tough one for me. In the past I just brought my laptop with me and dumped my photos to that each night. Well, my HD died in Florida once and I lost only a few photos, but got scared into leaving my photos on my memory card while traveling. So now I copy them to my laptop and leave them on the memory card also. I carry 2- 4 gig Flash cards, so I haven't used more than that yet. Of course I could back them to CD/DVD also, but I have yet to do that.