So what do you put ur pictures on for back-up?

[funhouse8]

So I want to make Copies of my pictures onto CD's I think that is the term. Or would it be DVD's sorry no sure. What should I buy to upload my pictures onto so I have back-up. Can you tell me what size will hold the most photos too. Thanks as you can tell I am clueless, any advice would be appreicated.

 

[Super]

The cheapest method is to put them all on a hard drive in an external drive bay. It's fast (firewire/esata or usb2.0) and all you have to do is be careful not to drop/hit/shake the thing when its running or not running

1 gigabyte these days on hard drive is about 20cents worth (USD) on average and a hard drive enclosure is pretty cheap

 

[Master Mason]

The cheapest method is to put them all on a hard drive in an external drive bay. It's fast (firewire/esata or usb2.0) and all you have to do is be careful not to drop/hit/shake the thing when its running or not running

1 gigabyte these days on hard drive is about 20cents worth (USD) on average and a hard drive enclosure is pretty cheap

I back everything up to an external Hard drive, I burn them to DVD's and I use smugmug as an offsite back up.

You definately want to use DVD's as they hold a lot more information, so you will need many fewer disks than CD's.

As for what you need, does your computer have a built in DVD burner?

 

[Experiment_626]

You definately want to use DVD's as they hold a lot more information, so you will need many fewer disks than CD's.

Yep! I'm eager for the day we'll have Blu-ray burners on our computers.

SSB

 

[MouseHouseUK]

All my pictures are on an External HDD - about 250GB in total. I have all my collection pictures on there

 

[broberts]

I agree with Master Mason. I would put them on the external hard drive and then I would burn them to dvd (just in case). With the cost of the dvd's, it makes sense to take this added measure. The cost of going to Disney is what, a couple of grand? Also, hard drives go bad all the time. This is just my $.02 worth.

 

[dr_zero]

DVD hold the most of the compared to Cd's and with the price of a DVD burner down to $24 everyone can afford to one for backups.

The external HD's are good and I use one but they are still a HD and will fail so be sure to back up files to more than one media type and consider some type off site storage.
Off site can be as simple as giving a copy of your DVD of pics to a relative or friend to hold onto. Those poor folks in Texas lost everything but with a little planning not only their photos but copies of documents could have been saved.
When you back up your pics consider another disk with stuff life tax info birth certificates etc to put off site.

Online storage is another option through several places that will do photos and other files. You can even use your gmail account as file storage!

 

[DueyDooDah]

I use a RAID 5 array and CD/DVD. My RAW files go on DVD, my wife's JPG files go on CD (at least until I run out of CDs, then I'll switch her to DVD's also).

 

[MarkBarbieri]

I was using DVDs, but I've started using external hard disks. I got a drive in my computer that you just slip a 3.5" SATA drive into without a caddy. I make two copies of everything (one for home and one for the office). I also keep everything stored on a RAID5 NAS.

I'd like to start using an archival system again, but DVDs are too small and Blu-Ray disks are obscenely priced.

 

[JR6ooo4]

I use a RAID 5 array and CD/DVD. My RAW files go on DVD, my wife's JPG files go on CD (at least until I run out of CDs, then I'll switch her to DVD's also).

All are great options for hardware failure. But also factor in theft. 5 hard drives do no good if all five are gone! Hehehehheee Maybe not an issue at home as much as my work.

I send the best pics to smugmug, all pics to DVDs, and all files on my computer are mirrored to www.carbonite.com. But once deleted from the computer carbonite only saves them for 30 days.

Mikeeee

 

[amandamousebeat]

I usually back up on photos on DVDs and then I upload them to my online album at Flickr. It is free (up to a certain amount of space, they tell you on the site) and you can make it private if you want. There are also other online albums like Picasa (free) and Photo Bucket (free). The online way is a good option (but should not be your only one... always have two forms of back up if they are really important is my moto) because then you can share them with family and friends easy.

 

[handicap18]

I back everything up to an external Hard drive, I burn them to DVD's and I use smugmug as an offsite back up.

You definately want to use DVD's as they hold a lot more information, so you will need many fewer disks than CD's.

As for what you need, does your computer have a built in DVD burner?

This is what I do (I have 2 external hard drives). I also don't format a memory card until those image files are burned to a DVD.

I don't put all my images on smugmug, but I do have about 1/3 of the images I took with my D50 over the last 2 1/2+ years (just about all my Disney and the best one's of the others).

 

[Anewman]

Multiple hard drives, I agree that DVDs would be more secure but I just never get around to it. Just got to hope that they dont all fail at once.