secure backups

[photo_chick]

Long story short.. our house was robbed. They stole my laptop. Luckily they didn't take my backups so I've still got 99% of my images. But people in our area have recently been cleaned out. I can't help but wonder what would have happned if they'd done that to us? My online backup is woefully out of date, so I would have lost more.

Thankfully they didn't take any of my cameras. But even if they had, things can be easily replaced but those images cannot.

Secure back ups. If you don't have one, get one.

 

[LordAthens]

This is a good PSA photo chick!

Carbonite is fantastic for me. It's flat rate and unlimited. Nearly everything on my file / media server is backed up, including a few hundred gigs of photos. The big bonus with Carbonite is that it runs in the taskbar and constantly keeps everything on their server-side backed up.

 

[Marlton Mom]

Sorry to hear of your troubles P. C. I'd be interested to hear what online back up services others use.

Conventional wisdom says that you need to have your photos saved in 3 different locations to assure safety. I know that when I use an external hard drive to back up it takes forever due to the massive volume of my files (6 + years of heavy shooting).

Does any one have any tips for backing up picture files using hardware at home that are moving towards a half a terrabyte in size?

Thanks,
Marlton Mom

 

[ChiSoxKeith]

Yikes! Sorry to hear about that photo_chick! I'm glad that everyone is unhurt.

I have not used any online service. I know it's manual and intesive....but I bought two identical 1TB drives. I copied everything off the local Hard Drive onto the two drives. It was long and a hassle the first time, but once it was done it was done.

Then I took one of the drives off to my safety deposit box.

First saturday of the month I make sure any pictures I took that month go onto the drive I kept in the house. Then I switch that drive with the one in the safety deposit box.

Worse case I could lose a month's worth of pictures.

 

[WilsonFlyer]

I use a product called SnugUp for SmugMug. I just fire it up at night when traffic is low and have it set to shoot up any changes to my masters pictures share on my server. It's also triggered to make everything it puts up private until I act on it differently.

As far as I know, there is no limit on the size of my SmugMug account, as long as I pay it every year. I have the package just short of the top one where you can sell and stuff.

Having all my photos on SmugMug has given me a great sense of peace about it all. I think it was about $60/year? Small price to know my photos are protected somewhere else in a Level I Datacenter.