purchased an external desktop hard drive

[kgreen]

Thinking to myself.. Why didn't I do this before now? I have backed up my photo's to cd's/dvd's for years. Which has been very costly, time consuming, & takes up so much space. Often it takes several cd's for just 1 set of photo's, or videos. And I have been a bit slow sometimes to get them backed up, worried that I could loose them. Not to mention hunting around for that 1 photo from 2 years ago, digging through the mass of cd's.

So tonight I went to buy cd's to get my photo's backed up, & a guy recommended this 2TB desktop external hard drive. I think it was $80.00, & I can easily spend that much in no time for cd's/dvd's. So I though why not, & I bought it instead.

I am loving this, I transferred all the photo's currently on my computer, some videos, & documents. It was so easy, just drag & drop.. wait & done! Then you can disconnect & put your external drive some where safe. I was thinking this will come in handy on Disney trips too! So I just wanted to give a good recommendation, wish I would have done this long before now.

 

[photo_chick]

A single external HDD is not a good long term backup. There's too many things that can take out both HDD's (theft, power surge, natural disaster....) But it is good for a quick, immediate backup.

I also used to do DVD's as one of my backups. I got a blu ray burner. It still takes a few discs though.

 

[disneyfaninaz]

I back up my photos from my laptop on an external hard drive and I also burn them to DVD.

 

[Shutterbug]

I back up onto two hard drives.

 

[MedicBill]

I'm paranoid about losing my old pictures. I keep copies on my desktop computer, my laptop an external drive then just to be safe I have everything synced to Dropbox.

 

[kgreen]

A single external HDD is not a good long term backup. There's too many things that can take out both HDD's (theft, power surge, natural disaster....) But it is good for a quick, immediate backup.

I also used to do DVD's as one of my backups. I got a blu ray burner. It still takes a few discs though.

Good point! After I transferred them to the external drive, I put the drive in a safe place away from the computer.

 

[kgreen]

I'm paranoid about losing my old pictures. I keep copies on my desktop computer, my laptop an external drive then just to be safe I have everything synced to Dropbox.

Yep I do the same! Good to have several places with backups. About 5 years ago, my niece was on my computer & she managed to delete all the photo's I had taken that year. I couldn't recover them, but thankfully I had a backup. You never know what could happen!

 

[clarkshel]

Good point! After I transferred them to the external drive, I put the drive in a safe place away from the computer.

That is still not a good plan for a long term backup. What if your computer died, and you go to use your ext HD, and it doesn't work. You would lose everything.

All my photos, videos, docs on my iMac are backed up to an external HD using Time Machine. I also have everything synced to Dropbox and Crashplan. I also have a 4 TB NAS hooked up to my router to store movies and TV shows. This is setup with raid, so if one drive dies. I don't lose any data. Just replace the drive and all of the data is copied over from the other drive in my NAS.

 

[photo_chick]

That is still not a good plan for a long term backup. What if your computer died, and you go to use your ext HD, and it doesn't work. You would lose everything.

This is sort of what happened to me. I had 2 copies of my music library. One on my laptop, one on a small media server. We were robbed, they stole my laptop but not server. In the process of copying things to my new laptop the media server crashed hard and was dead. Luckily I only lost about $30 worth of purchased MP3's in the deal. It could have been much worse, like irreplaceable image files.

Backup. Backup again on a different media. Then back up one more time off site.

 

[kgreen]

That is still not a good plan for a long term backup. What if your computer died, and you go to use your ext HD, and it doesn't work. You would lose everything.

All my photos, videos, docs on my iMac are backed up to an external HD using Time Machine. I also have everything synced to Dropbox and Crashplan. I also have a 4 TB NAS hooked up to my router to store movies and TV shows. This is setup with raid, so if one drive dies. I don't lose any data. Just replace the drive and all of the data is copied over from the other drive in my NAS.

Thanks for the insight. Up until this last upload to the external drive, all of my photo's are on cd's. They are on my computer, laptop, drop box, & zip drives. My external hard drive also has the option of online storage-(cloud) for a subscription. So I can do this too, & I can continue to burn them to cd's. I also have plenty of memory cards for my camera, so I never delete the photo's from my cards until I have them safely backed up in all the different spots. Thanks for all the help, I know it's better to be safe than sorry.

 

[garytam]

After seeing the Japanese tsunami couple years ago. I decided to have my photos backup to flickr and use google drive to backup my family video and scan of documents that are important.

The process of uploading is slow but I know they will have a more comprehensive backup than what I can afford.

 

[cisobe]

I agree with everyone else. I have a Network attached storage device on my home network that has 2 hard drives running in raid (mirrored). I also upload all important images (trip photos, familiy photos, etc), to my smugmug account as my offsite storage. Luckily my smugmug account has unlimited storage, and allows me to batch download entire galleries, so its easy for me to retrieve (although the downloads do take a while).

 

[manning]

I back up onto two hard drives.

Smart. I also do that. I was copying my inlaws old photos. Spent an evening doing it. I went to back them up onto DVDs and the external hard drive failed. The frustrating thing about it was the drive was brand new.

I now save to two HDs a little at a time.

 

[justinlauck]

I use backblaze. Automatic backup to the cloud while my machine is idle. There are a few others out there like carbonite, mozy, and crashplan.

 

[Atlas722]

I have a 500GB external hard drive that I sometimes use to back up photos and videos. I edit the photos when necessary, and then I burn them to CDs and DVDs.

I don't use online storage, and once they're on discs, I delete the photos and videos.

 

[wiigirl]

I back up onto two hard drives.

 

[manning]

I back up onto two hard drives.

Ditto

And I don't save a lot at a time. Once I saved about 100 pictures (scanning) to a new external HD. I passed to back it up to a second drive. Yep the drive failed. Now I do about 20 at a time then back up.

I' just getting into windows 8. I think I read that you can save to two drives at the same time.

 

[manning]

Yep I do the same! Good to have several places with backups. About 5 years ago, my niece was on my computer & she managed to delete all the photo's I had taken that year. I couldn't recover them, but thankfully I had a backup. You never know what could happen!

sounds like she knows Murphy.

 

[MICKEY88]

Yep I do the same! Good to have several places with backups. About 5 years ago, my niece was on my computer & she managed to delete all the photo's I had taken that year. I couldn't recover them, but thankfully I had a backup. You never know what could happen!

unless she did a military wipe of your hard drive, good recovery software should have recovered them for you

 

[MICKEY88]

Smart. I also do that. I was copying my inlaws old photos. Spent an evening doing it. I went to back them up onto DVDs and the external hard drive failed. The frustrating thing about it was the drive was brand new.

I now save to two HDs a little at a time.

did the drive fail for sure, or would the pc just not recognize it.

external drives often get dropped for some reason, and the solution is to go into disk manager and reassign a drive letter on occassion I've not been able to do that, and I have a program that will do it when disk manager fails