How are you backing up your photos?

[shyoon]

As terrible as it sounds, I don't actually keep any backups. I know I should, but luckily I've yet to have a hard drive failure.

I will eventually get around to running a multi-bay RAID setup, though.

 

[andersju]

not to discourage, just pointing out that there are extra steps to long-term digital archiving that haven't happened to us (yet) so much in the film world - likely since the introduction of proper archival negative sleeves.

Archiving is not the same as backup, though. Different purposes, different tools/techniques/etc.

I will eventually get around to running a multi-bay RAID setup, though.

RAID in itself is not a backup solution. It only protects you from a certain kind of hardware failure.

 

[v_roma]

It's bound to happen. Do yourself a favor and at least order an external HD for backing up. They're cheap. Much cheaper than paying for a HD recovery service once your disk dies...

As terrible as it sounds, I don't actually keep any backups. I know I should, but luckily I've yet to have a hard drive failure.

I will eventually get around to running a multi-bay RAID setup, though.

 

[kshapero]

I use Carbonite. It backs up my hard drive on a continuous basis. I can access Carbonite on my IPhone and IPad for display purposes. What could be better for $50 a year?

 

[Dr Gaspar]

I send my digital files to NASA, they copy the files to a Jaz Disk and a Zip Disk, and send them to a space station that orbits around the Earth.

My negatives on the other hand, are kept in a box under my bed.

 

[doolittle]

Good thread this. Reminds me that I need to start rotating external hard drives for off-site backup.

My current strategy:
Photos stored on PC on RAID1 mirrored hard drives.
External hard drive attached by USB and use SyncBack software to handle the copying.

I think my next step is to get another external hard drive and do a back up once a week and leave it in another location.

I have toyed with the idea of selecting my absolute favourite photos and uploading them to the 25Gb of free on line storage on microsoft skydrive

 

[Dr Gaspar]

Damn, that's gotta be expensive. Sounds secure though.

What about the monsters?

I also keep those in a box under my bed.

 

[kuzano]

"In the Cloud"... and then into Bankruptcy....

"In the Cloud"... and then into Bankruptcy....

In my time working with computers as a consultant, (20 years), I have seen three on-line solutions simply disappear from the "cloud", ie internet. One was soliciting and storing files for professional photographers. One, I personally had files stored with.

Interesting thing about hosts and storage sites that fail on the internet. They commonly do so without notice and are simply one day no longer available. Have you ever tried to run down the owners of a web site that disappears from the internet?

Sorry, but for me, the "cloud" which is simply a new moniker for the good old semi reliable internet, may be conveniant, but it is not secure by the standards I would demand in my own business.

Show me a web site that will divulge their financials to me and give me a tour of their "redundant" systems and I will show you a web site that I will actually consider for storage. For security.. well, hmmmm?

BTW, the last failed photo storage system I encountered was about 5 years ago as I recall.

 

[visiondr]

I send my digital files to NASA, they copy the files to a Jaz Disk and a Zip Disk, and send them to a space station that orbits around the Earth.

My negatives on the other hand, are kept in a box under my bed.

LOL... You, sir, owe me a new keyboard. I just spit my coffee all over it!

 

[willie_901]

1. Upon import to Lightroom, a back up copy of every RAW file is stored on an external drive. RAW files are converted to DNG upon import, but the back up is stored as NEF (D700) or RAF (X00).

2. Internal drive is backed up hourly with Time Machine. The Lighgtroom Catalog (database) is backed up as well.

3. The external drive in step 1 is backed up to a yet another external drive.

The Lightroom Catalog is backed up to the Cloud.

The third external drive is in step three is physically cycled to off-site storage when it fills up.

Recently I decided not to buy any more lenses or bodies for a while. I will use the money to make
9X13 or 12X18 prints.

I do not worry at all about file formats becoming obsolete. Everything is in jpeg or DNG format. Both are open-source formats. This means someone, somewhere will sell a translator when jpeg or DNG becomes obsolete.

 

[visiondr]

I have an external HD backed up wirelessly in my home. Two partitions on the drive: one is for twice-daily "Time Machine" backups, another is for thrice weekly bootable backups of the entire system. I need to figure out a workable off-site storage system. Perhaps, as others have said, a second ext HD backed up weekly, then schlepped to the office for storage there. I tried "CrashPlan" cloud backup. But the damned thing was painfully slow to make the first upload (I was working at a rate that would take nearly two weeks to complete!). So, I ditched that (they gave me a refund) and am stuck with my in-home system.

 

[PatrickONeill]

1) upon importing into light room, it makes two copies on the hard drive. the whole drive is backed up via Time Machine. that makes a total of 4 copies on two drives.

2) then once a month I backup the lightroom files to a separate drive and stored in a different location of the house.

3) high ranking files and choice pictures are constantly uploaded to flickr privatly (last resort backup)

I should bug one of my buddies who works at a huge server warehouse and set myself up with a server and r-sync the files there. that's the 'last mile' I need for enough coverage.

OF COURSE YOU NEED TO IMPORT THE FILES INTO LIGHT ROOM IN A TIMLEY MANNER!

unlike last week, were I failed to import and reformatted my CF card and overwrote the previous pictures... once in a lifetime pictures too of course! *shakes head* that was a real big disappointment for me.

 

[Avotius]

I don't know how this flew past me, and noticed it when Avotius mentioned it. I really hope this was tongue in cheek...

Hell, I've got over 4,000 photos in my online gallery alone - nevermind what I've got in the archive offline. And that's mostly just the digital stuff.

Yeah now that I have read my reply again it may have been too harsh, just blind sided me ya know?

Heck, its income, I would never dream of culling my photos, so many times something has come up where I just happened to have something that I shot years ago that paid off my this or that.

 

[v_roma]

While this is a valid point and I would never use an online service as the only point of storage, for me, the idea of backing up is not the same as long-time storage. As long as whatever on-line company you have your pictures with does not suddenly disappear without notice while your house is burning down taking your local copy of the pictures with you, you should be ok.

In my time working with computers as a consultant, (20 years), I have seen three on-line solutions simply disappear from the "cloud", ie internet. One was soliciting and storing files for professional photographers. One, I personally had files stored with.

Interesting thing about hosts and storage sites that fail on the internet. They commonly do so without notice and are simply one day no longer available. Have you ever tried to run down the owners of a web site that disappears from the internet?

Sorry, but for me, the "cloud" which is simply a new moniker for the good old semi reliable internet, may be conveniant, but it is not secure by the standards I would demand in my own business.

Show me a web site that will divulge their financials to me and give me a tour of their "redundant" systems and I will show you a web site that I will actually consider for storage. For security.. well, hmmmm?

BTW, the last failed photo storage system I encountered was about 5 years ago as I recall.

 

[mathomas]

Time machine and Aperture "vault", on different drives, at home.

Time machine at work, also.

One computer moves between these environments. Pretty well covered. I've lost drives before, but never photos (yet).

 

[sykotec]

Archiving is not the same as backup, though. Different purposes, different tools/techniques/etc.

agreed - I'm somewhat challenged for a specific common reference in this case, as I see archiving the one 'original' in the case of a negative as a rough equivalent of effecting availability of a copy (unaltered) of digital images.

if you accept a digitized image of a negative as equivalent to the negative itself, then the same means can be applied from that point on - archiving and/or backup. otherwise you've only got one original in one case, and generally keep only copies of the original in the other.

i think the amount of work I put into data availability in my day-job alone could keep me from ever wanting to involve computers in my photographic workflow!

RAID in itself is not a backup solution. It only protects you from a certain kind of hardware failure.

exactly. further comment for the OP - RAID lets you survive a failure of a drive or drives, however it doesn't prevent many possible forms of corruption, nor does it provide you with copies in separate locations. this last part is an advantage of digital, again, unless you accept something other than the original negative as viable.

 

[tbarker13]

The most important files are kept on my main hard drive. Backups are kept on an external drive. And they are backed up daily to an online storage site - in the cloud, so to speak.

 

[dct]

I use an iomega StorCenter NAS as primary device and backup on tapes, which I bring once a month to my bank safe.

But I will change backup procedure with a second NAS to mirror the data.

 

[Bruin]

I have an Original Archive folder on my data drive, a copy of that on another disk, and a second backup to an external HDD. Likewise for my Working folder (which has my Lightroom catalogs), Derivative Archive, and Movie Archive. I really should add an external HDD dock so I rotate a couple of disks to an off-site storage location.

Within each Archive folder, I organize files by subject then put them in DVD-sized buckets (which I can collect to Blu-ray sized buckets someday). I rely on Lightroom for all my categorizing and collections based on metadata.

Whatever strategy you pick, make sure you use a copy utility that verifies file integrity after the transfer. I use Teracopy for quick stuff and Syncback for my automated archiving. It's surprising how much file corruption can happen during transfers, especially over a network.

 

[furcafe]

2 Drobos, each about 2 TB, 1 dedicated solely to photos & the other just for backing up my desktop Mac Pro, which is where most of the working files are located. Right now, I'm screwed if there's a fire/flood/earthquake/evildoer attack, but I plan on eventually putting negs & slides in a different location for archiving once they've been scanned.

I use Backupify for flickr, FB, Twitter, etc.

So it occurs to me that having my photos on two different hard drives is not really enough to be a real backup so I am wondering what solutions the Rangefinder minded folks are using.

Yes yes film and all that but I have thousands of dollars in scans and hundreds of thousands of digital photos.

I have seen there are online solutions but in fact where they claim unlimited storage (such as carbonite) they dont really give you that, if you go over what they consider a large amount they arbitrarily cancel your subscription. Not to mention our upload speed is caped at 60kps and we rarely get that speed anyway.

DVD's are not a choice for me because I have seen far too many data DVD's go bad over a not very long time and also I would need a bazillion of them and a place to keep them, plus the humidity problem here etc etc etc.....

I have been considering some sort of hardware backup like a Drobo or the sort. Also been thinking about one of these network storage things but dont really understand how they work yet.

Anyway....how are you dealing with this problem?