Inspired by another poster: Where do you store your pics?

[Mickey Fliers]

I usually leave them on my computer for awhile and then back them up onto CD. After I have backed them up, I delete them. Is that bad?? I am starting to wonder if I should have a back up to a back up.

Tell me, how do you back up your photos?

 

[DebbieinWA]

I do the same thing as you right now (on the pc then copying to CD's). I'm wondering too if there is a better way to store photos that would be more permanent/archival.
On a side note, my DD's name is Amie too

 

[elizke]

I use two external hard drives (one for backing up everything, including pics and music, and one for backing up just the pics and purchased music up again. They are never plugged in unless I am backing up.

Also all edited pics are uploaded to Smugmug, so I consider that extra backup.

I used to use CD's but external hard drives are quicker and can hold so much more. And they cheaper in the long run.

 

[Mickey Fliers]

I do the same thing as you right now (on the pc then copying to CD's). I'm wondering too if there is a better way to store photos that would be more permanent/archival.
On a side note, my DD's name is Amie too

How funny! I hardly ever meet another Amie.

I use two external hard drives (one for backing up everything, including pics and music, and one for backing up just the pics and purchased music up again. They are never plugged in unless I am backing up.

Also all edited pics are uploaded to Smugmug, so I consider that extra backup.

I used to use CD's but external hard drives are quicker and can hold so much more. And they cheaper in the long run.

Thanks! I might look into that. Sounds like a better option.

 

[mikamah]

I back up mine to cd, and then delete them off the camera. Once I have printed out the ones I am going to print, then I'll delete them off the computer to have more space on the computer. I do have some pics uploaded to snapfish, and some on photobucket too. I have a lot of cd's now, but haven't been able to figure out how to save them to dvds. I do have dvd burner, but can't seem to get the picture files to burn to dvd for some reason.

 

[alan]

All are saved on the local hard drive
Nightly backup to another hard drive inside the same PC
Also, nightly backup to NAS disk
And finally nightly backup to www.mozy.com

Three disks, two continents... I still feel vulnerable

regards,
/alan

 

[Code]

This was already said on the thread that inspired this one, but not here yet.

Having one copy of your photos (all your important digital stuff for that matter) is a recipe for disaster.

Every hard drive will eventually fail, and CDs & DVDs have a shelf life.

Also, if you want to be truly protected, you need more than just a backup at home... you should also store at least one somewhere else.


I have 4 copies of my documents and photos at home: (desktop hard drive w/ backups to laptop and 2 external HDDs) and 2 elsewhere (mozy.com, and occasionally I sync them to my parents' computer using Hamachi and SyncBack)

6 copies total.. paranoid? Maybe, but I've already been stung badly by a hard drive crash once in my life and now I'm fairly sure my important digital stuff will be with me forever.

 

[Pea-n-Me]

There have been threads on this subject before (which is what made me in the first place).

Those in the know say that hard drives will eventually fail (looks like mine has already, and it's just two years old or so - fortunately we have all photos backed up on CD). And also that CDs will fail.

Not sure I have answers further than that. Let's hear what the techies have to say.

 

[elizke]

I've never heard of Mozy. I'll check that one out.

I have read recommendations for this one but I haven't taken the plunge yet.....

http://www.carbonite.com/

 

[alan]

I believe that Mozy and Carbonite are similar; the reason I went for Mozy is that it tries to back up open files - eg my Outlook database. I wouldn't place a lot of reliance on that - I used to be a file system engineer - but there might be something that could be recovered from that.

There is a problem with both these systems, though. To use them, you need to (1) do a complete backup to their server of all your data, and then every night your PC automatically runs a backup of everything that has changed since the last backup.

So:
The very first backup you do is huge. I have recently been forced to re-install everything on my PC, and the size of the first backup is approximately 110GB. That's maxing out my internet connection for around three weeks...

Also, you need to leave your PC on to make sure the backup happens.

So, you pays your money and takes your choice. I normally leave my PC on 24x7, so that's not a problem, but I am champing at the bit for a faster uplink!

regards,
/alan

 

[Code]

I don't use Mozy for complete PC backup, only my documents and pictures (though the initial upload on that is still 56 gig). I do keep a complete backup locally though (using Acronis True Image).

 

[Groucho]

The most important thing about keeping your data is redundancy. If you're not running out of room on the drive in your computer, don't delete them. You don't really gain anything by keeping a large amount of free space on your hard drive.

My usual technique is burn two DVDs; one stays in a big CD wallet and the other goes in my fire safe. I've recently been converting all my old CDs (including 10+ year old ones) and had extremely few fail due to age; I think that fears of all your CDs and DVDs becoming unreadable after a couple years are overblown. As long as my discs last long enough for the next disc technology, I'm happy. I'm sure I'll be redoing my DVDs onto BluRay discs in the next few years.

I use two external hard drives (one for backing up everything, including pics and music, and one for backing up just the pics and purchased music up again. They are never plugged in unless I am backing up.

Also all edited pics are uploaded to Smugmug, so I consider that extra backup.

I used to use CD's but external hard drives are quicker and can hold so much more. And they cheaper in the long run.

Hard drives are absolutely, positively the least reliable storage method. Even if they just sit on the shelf. And external drives can be especially troublesome as it's more difficult to notice when they're going bad, and most hard drive scanning tools don't like running on a USB drive. Having multiples alleviates much of this but ultimately, your hard drive is going to be the first thing to fail. There's a reason why hard drive manufacturers have mostly gone to one-year warranties instead of the three-year that used to be the norm. (Seagate is the primary exception, with five-year warranties across the board.)

As for cheaper... well, DVDs can hold around 4.35 gigs for maybe 20-25 cents... that's about 4.6 cents per gig. The best bargain in hard drives is a 500g for usually $110 or so, more for an external, that's about 22 cents a gig. You can burn four DVDs and it'll still be cheaper than hard drives. And in the long run, even if you have something insane like 5% failure rates (you're probably looking at less than 1%, really), you still have the vast majority usable, but when your hard drive fails, it's useless unless it still has a warranty on it.

 

[fitzperry]

I've never heard of Mozy. I'll check that one out.

I have read recommendations for this one but I haven't taken the plunge yet.....

http://www.carbonite.com/

We use carbonite for on-line backup. I also back up to an external hard drive and periodically burn dvd's, most of which are stored at my parents' house, although we recently bought a larger fire safe so I suppose I could start putting them there instead. No doubt some would consider all that to be overkill, but once you have a system in place it takes little effort to maintain it. Having had to resort to my back-ups on more than one occasion, I'd say it's well worth it.

 

[MarkBarbieri]

I pretty much agree with Groucho on everything that he said. The one thing I'd suggest differently is storing the multiple DVDs in different locations. Like he said, redundancy is the key.

I start by using a camera that writes the pictures to two cards at one time. I follow that by using software that copies pictures from one of those cards to two locations - one on my computer and one on my NAS. Even though the NAS has some redundancy (it can survive the failure of any one of the four disks), I still keep the copy on my local machine until I burn the pictures onto a pair of DVDs. I store one DVD in my home office and one in my company office. When I burn the DVD, I burn my RAW files, any PSD files I've made, and my JPGs.

From the moment I take the picture, I always have at least two copies of every picture.

 

[Groucho]

I pretty much agree with Groucho on everything that he said. The one thing I'd suggest differently is storing the multiple DVDs in different locations. Like he said, redundancy is the key.

Thanks Mark. I did say though that I store one DVD in an easily-accessible CD wallet and the other in a fire safe in the basement. Both are in the house but theoretically the fire safe should protect one set if there's some disaster. So we really are in total agreement.

 

[AlphaMale]

I back mine up on CD/DVD and have two external hard drives with full back ups of my iphoto library (16,500 images).

I am seriously considering some on line storage as well. If all of my back ups were to fail, my wife would not be happy about losing all the pictures of our kids.