How to back up 35,000+ photos?

[Luv2Scrap]

I moved (not copied, but completely moved them... so they wouldn't eat up all the memory on the computer) all of my 35,000+ photos to a 1 TB external hard drive a few months ago, because I don't entirely trust my computers. Now I am hearing about people's external hard drives failing. I hadn't thought about that possibility because I thought it was a one in a million thing.

How much do I need to worry about this? How can I back up my photos so I can feel secure that they will be there for years to come? I can't see putting them on discs, it would take me years!

I know I don't need every one of these photos, but I really can't stand to make decisions about which ones to get rid of.

So how do you keep your digital photos safely backed up?

 

[plyeng2ff]

Backed up to many locations. My pictures are on at least two different harddrives and my music files is on three different harddrive.

I try to keep one of the harddrive somewhere other than my house. To protect against the unknown. I am probable this way because I am a volunteer fireman and I have seen what happens when tragedy strikes.

 

[zackiedawg]

Harddrives are getting pretty cheap, so there isn't any good reason I can think of to not just use multiples. The odds of your computer's HD failing might be 1 in 10,000 - but when it's everything you've ever snapped, you want security. You loaded yours to an external HD - if you didn't erase them from the computer, then you have two copies of all your photos - so that very much decreases the odds of both failing at the same time. Why not get one more external HD and back them up to that too - now you've got 3 locations - the odds become fairly infantesimal of a failure of all 3 - and if you can, keep one at a separate location like work or a safe deposit box - that way in the long-shot event of a fire, water damage, or other catastrophe at home, you've still got a safe copy.

If you have a fast connection online, you can also consider off-site online backup - there are dozens of companies for a monthly or annual charge that will store your stuff on their megaservers offsite, with their own mirrored and redundant backups. It may take monster time to load all your photos to them initially, but after that, you just have to regularly upload whatever's new.

I have a mirrored HD on my computer (Raid 1) and backup my entire computer to an external drive, and my photos onto 2 external drives.

 

[ukcatfan]

I have one more thing to add to what Zackiedog said. With ANY hard drive it is not a matter of IF but instead WHEN it will fail. It is a mechanical device and will not last forever. Consider it good if you get five years out of one and great if you get ten.

 

[boBQuincy]

As ZackieDawg noted, redundancy is the key. That, and separation. Our two keys are....

For example, if a drive has a 1% failure rate then two identical drives in tandem will have a 0.01% failure rate. Three drives drops the failure rate even more.
However, if there is still a single point of failure (such as three drives in one PC, where one power surge can take them all out) then the system is still not robust. Get at least one of the drives offline or better yet, offsite.

 

[C&B Young]

How much do I need to worry about this? How can I back up my photos so I can feel secure that they will be there for years to come? I can't see putting them on discs, it would take me years!

I know I don't need every one of these photos, but I really can't stand to make decisions about which ones to get rid of.

So how do you keep your digital photos safely backed up?

You mentioned everything I do. I've got all of my photos on 2 separate external drives (I don't have anything on the actual computer's hard drive, it'd be full 5 times over by now!). I also back up to DVD's every 2 months or so, depending on how much I shoot. Another important step is to be selective as to which photos you keep. I was guilty of keeping everything I shot, and didn't realize the redundancy and wasted space I had created until recently importing all of my pictures into Lightroom. I might take 3 or 4 (or 11 ) shots of the same thing, by only keeping 1 or 2 it'll take up less space in the long run (especially if you're shooting RAW!).

 

[Docarino]

I have broken 2 external harddrives- they both dropped- one from the table to the floor but another just tumbled gently onto carpet from about a foot high. I have since started using an external hard drive that is connected to my wireless so I never ever have to touch it or move it and this is holding up well. I save everything to this drive and then I also burn 2 DVD of just my select, final JPEGs.

 

[klmall]

I agree with backing up on external hard drives. I have my pics and important documents on 2 different ones right now; in fact just finished backing up on the second one. Putting close to 30,000 pictures on that second drive probably took all evening but was well worth it!

My experience has been that backing up regularly but not keeping the drives connected constantly to a computer is best for me. I did lots of reading online a couple of months ago and it appears that the highest failure rates were found on units that were hooked up to computers and running constantly (makes sense).

I also have many of my favorite and best pics hosted online but that is incidental and more for convenience than anything else.