Photo Backup Storage

[woodlandsparty]

What do you guys use for backing up your photos???

I have a huge fear of losing all of my photos due to a virus or hard drive crash. I thought about getting an external hard drive and then just sync'ing it up with the photos stored on my computer every so often. But....that doesn't really cover me should we have a fire or something like that either. Lot's of priceless memories that I would hate to ever lose!

 

[JR6ooo4]

DVDs, external HDs and smugmug. Unlimited file storage.

Mikeeee

 

[MarkBarbieri]

My primary storage is on a RAID 5 NAS. If one of the 4 disks in it fails, I can replace it without losing any data. I also back up the pictures to DVDs, which I replace every 5 years. I keep two copies of the DVDs, one at home and one at the office. I also keep most of my photos on a web hosting site called Smugmug, which I could use as a recovery site of last resort (recovering only the JPGs, not the RAW files).

Basically the same as JR60004.

 

[Jeanne B]

I bought a Western Digital 250GB external hard drive this summer but it's still sitting in the box!! I REALLY need to get it hooked up because I have the same fear woodlandsparty has. I have some stored on cd's but I need to get them to my office or on a photo website along with getting my hard drive hooked up.

 

[Miss Kelly]

I concur with the posters above. I have mine backed up on DVD and stored on an external hard drive. I'm considering smugmug now for additional backup.

 

[Groucho]

Individual hard drives are useless for backup as hard drives are the most unreliable current storage media out there. External hard drives can be particularly difficult to check for errors as several of the usual diagnostic tools can't work with USB-connected hard drives.

Multiple hard drives (either in a RAID setup or just duplicates, like keeping all your photos on your main PC plus an external) are usually fine as long as at least one of them is checked fairly regularly, so you don't find that both have failed. This is how my usual backups are run - my FreeBSD server FTPs its .tgz backups to another PC on my network - every night it grabs the SQL databases and a few other critical files, and weekly it backs up all the unique data. Meanwhile, my PC runs a simple batch file nightly that I created that uses RAR to grab all my important stuff then copy it across a mapped drive to the same PC. Every now and then I'll grab the backups and burn them to DVD.

For my photos, those go both on my usual backup DVDs plus are duplicated on photo-only DVDs. The latter DVDs go into our fire safe. Of course, many of the "good" photos are also on one of my web sites in one form or another, so even if I lost everything, they'd still exist in some form, if not the original file straight from the camera.

When the next generation of disc backup comes along and is affordable (BluRay or HD-DVD), I'll reburn everything to that, and that'll give me new backups from all the older, existing ones.

I think that no matter what else you do, DVD burners and blank DVDs are so incredibly cheap that it's crazy not to burn DVDs in addition to any other method you use.

 

[MarkBarbieri]

Sounds like a few common threads are appearing here.

1) It's good to have an online backup of some sort. That makes it convenient to do backups and restores. The lowest cost approach is an external drive, but it suffers from a single point of failure (the disk in it). While hard disks are reasonably reliable, just about everyone who uses computers for a long time will have one or more fail on them.

2) It's good to have an offline backup of some sort. DVD burners are extremely cheap and effective for this. DVD's aren't subject to crashes like hard disks. They do get scratched, but if you are just using them for archive purposes and not handling them, that is unlikely. The one downside to burning DVDs is that they degrade over time, so your backup will start to fail after some number of years. I've heard estimates vary from a few years to 10 years. I've also seen special discs advertised that are supposed to last for a very long time.

3) It's good to have an offsite backup. This can be done by creating offline backups like DVDs and storing them at a place other than where your main computer equipment is. You might split them between your house and your office, your house and a friends house, or your house and a safety deposit box, etc. Another common method for offsite backup is a photo hosting site like Smugmug.

To recap, having an online backup is great for easy access, having offline backup is protects you from equipment failure, and having an offsite backup protects you from a catastrophic disaster (fire, flood, theft) at your house.

 

[Ratpack]

I have all my photos on CD / DVD, on my hard drive and now an external hard drive. I plan to keep the external hard drive in my fire safe just in case.

 

[WillCAD]

My first line of defence is syncing all my data files between my desktop and laptop PCs.

My second line of defence is to back up all my important files periodically to DVD and store the DVDs outside my home (in my case, at work).

I also upload all of my photos to my web site, which gives me an additional backup of my photos, but not the rest of my important files.

 

[Groucho]

On DVD reliability... DVDs are generally pretty reliable as long as they're not scratched, but there's always going to be one or two duds. I recently found that a Fuji DVD-R I burnt (which is a rebadged Ritek, a respected name) actually started to come apart near the edge. Fortunately it wasn't a huge deal as I got off most of the stuff (it was a Mythbusters compilation I made) and the two episodes that were lost were rebroadcast on Christmas, so I can recreate it. But this is the first time I've seen that, and I burn MANY hundreds of DVDs. (I probably burn ~50 a month or so, sometimes more - and yes, all for myself. )

Make sure that whatever you use to burn with has "verify" turned on! It's rare but you will occasionally have a burn that fails verification right off the bat. When that happens, you can safely toss the disc in the trash (or dispose of it however you want) then burn another, and you'll have the peace of mind of knowing that every disc is 100% good, at least to start with.

One other thing one can do if one is REALLY paranoid about DVDs failing is to create parity files (usually .PAR files) and burn those to each DVD as well - those will check all the other files to make sure they're error-free and correct them if they're not. I don't go that far, but you can...

I have all my photos on CD / DVD, on my hard drive and now an external hard drive. I plan to keep the external hard drive in my fire safe just in case.

I'd lean towards storing DVDs there instead - a hard drive can go bad just sitting in a fire safe, and if you have everything on one drive, that means you've lost everything.

 

[MarkBarbieri]

DVDs are generally pretty reliable as long as they're not scratched,

They start that way, but they degrade over time. Here's a quote from the National Institue of Standards and Technology (NIST):

Due to the organic nature of the dye, degradation and breakdown of the transparent portion of dye layer will occur over a long period of time as a natural process. This process, which has its roots in chemical kinetics,
can take several years in normal environment conditions [3]. Higher temperatures and humidity will accelerate this process by increasing the thermal and kinetic energies of the dye molecules.

http://www.itl.nist.gov/div895/gipwg/StabilityStudy.pdf

So store your DVD's in dark, dry, cool places and don't assume that they'll last forever.

 

[Groucho]

They only need to last until the next generation of disc storage becomes affordable.

The vast majority of my 10+ year old CD-Rs that I burnt are still working 100% correctly... I don't doubt that they won't last forever, but they're certainly not dropping like flies yet, either.

Naturally, storing them on your dashboard during a June trip to WDW will definitely not to good things to their reliability, though.

 

[DueyDooDah]

So, you're all saying my system of storing files on 5.25" floppy disks on the floor in a corner by the oil furnace is not sufficient?

BTW: What does it mean when the computer says "Disk full"? It happens when I copy my pictures to the disks.