Photo File Backup

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roscoetuff

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Question how folks are backing up their photo files, negative scans, processed print-ready files? All of that or portions. Local drives, online, or what? I keep filling drives and buying more backup. Seems expensive. How about saving all of this online? So far, all I can find is 1TB per user. Beyond that, you have to buy multiple licenses to exceed that number. Starts to get expensive. Love to find an easy solution BESIDES "do nothing, ignore the problem and shoot yourself if the unthinkable ever happens."
 
Multiple hard drives, each containing the entire archive. I have three copies of my archive. One is in my computer, one is in an external drive dock, and the other is in a safe deposit box at the bank.

Once a week, I bring the one at the bank home and copy to it any new stuff. The purpose of having three is that one can die. Two might even die. The chances of three dying at once is remote. The one kept off-site is for protection in case my house burns down or gets burglarized. This is my life's work, I don't care how much money it costs or how much of a hassle it is to maintain my archives.
 
External 4tb hard drives are $120 or so. How many images, edits, etc. are you generating to be filling them up quickly?
 
I have two back-up copies using external [USB] drives. At the moment I do all my processing on a Win XP system because of scanner drivers... it's a challenge to find external drives that can be used by XP based computers. Recently I discovered that (in some cases) the new external drives with 'two-segment' USB 3.0 connections can be connected to my XP via an old USB 2.0-to-micro cable that I plug into the larger portion of the 'two-segment' female connection (sorry for the poor explaination).

Since I do mostly film, I don't back up on a regular basis...
 
My current backups consist of four portable hard drives for photos that I update regularly and the Apple Airport Time Machine for system backup. This plus my iMac's internal SSD.

I've had several internal and external hard drives fail over the years so I'm paranoid, thus the redundancy.
 
Peter Jennings said:
I use Backblaze cloud backup to back up everything I have. Small monthly fee for unlimited storage.

https://www.backblaze.com/cloud-backup.html
Click to expand...

The problem with those affordable unlimited cloud solutions is long term support/reliability. I don't know how many (it's been quite a few) of those have gone under or suddenly raised prices.

In all likelihood they are using Amazon S3 or Google Cloud for storing the data, you are just paying them for a front-end console to get to your data. If you are going to use the cloud, just go straight to Google or Amazon, they are the big players that will be safe to rely on.
 
Chris: That's taking seriously.. to your credit as always. I'm doing what you are... but without the offsite which leaves me still uncovered in a very real way. That's certainly one option though online would offer a degree of the same without the inconvenience of the safety deposit box trips. Good way to go. If I can find online cheaply, then adding the sneakernet /safetydeposit box route for something infrequent... annually or so, would work to backup the online with local copies. Frankly, there's a combination that makes sense since we rarely change or access files 2 years and older. Have to think about it. Hmmmmm..... but thanks for a very complete post and solution.

Peter: That's up my alley. Good price... fraction of a SSD cost, and unlimited. I've had accounts at DropBox and OneDrive and they all limit to 1TB which between personal files, music files and photo files over a period of 30 plus years... is kind of getting lean. So I'm looking into this. Thanks for the tip.

So to me it looks like something combining these two approaches... online for active use backup and offsite for longer-term backup and quarterly or annual backup would probably work without requiring more hardware.

Thanks... for the pointers.
 
stupid leica (chris?): Good point. Will check those out, too. BTW, if you don't mind the question, I wonder how you got to "stupid leica"? I like it... even if I shoot a (film) Leica from time to time just to put it out of it's misery, keep it from getting jealous, and all the rest. Surely there's a story in there.
 
roscoetuff said:
stupid leica (chris?): Good point. Will check those out, too. BTW, if you don't mind the question, I wonder how you got to "stupid leica"? I like it... even if I shoot a (film) Leica from time to time just to put it out of it's misery, keep it from getting jealous, and all the rest. Surely there's a story in there.
Click to expand...

When i first got into Rangefinders, i lusted after a Leica so bad. I started off with a deal on a Hexar RF, then later tried a Bessa, then a Canon P, then an Ikon. FINALLY got an M2 and it had some issues that people brushed off as normal M2 things... Sold it as I could not afford a DAG/Sherry overhaul, got another M2. More problems, this time harder to pin down. Was extremely frustrating. The cameras were a joy to shoot, when they worked.

I've had half a dozen Canon P's, which are just as enjoyable to shoot, far less likely to have problems in my experience, and cost a fraction of what any camera with the red dot asks. I still drool over a nice M2 or 4 though.

I'm guilty of irresponsible backup practices myself, although trying to find/setup a more robust solution right now.
I currently just send EVERYTHING to google photos, some stuff to flickr. I have a Google Cloud account on another gmail, and could one day set up a semi-automated backup to it, wouldn't cost much as you pay for what you use in storage and network transfer/bandwidth.
I recently got a Raspberry Pi 3 to mess with, and ideally tie into some sort of local backup if I can figure it out lol.

EDIT- regarding cloud backup of non-photo/video media.... if it's available on a streaming service from Google/Spotify/Apple, just do that instead. Why add to your backup burden and cost, if you can let one of the big dogs handle the infrastructure and you pay them a minimal fee (<$10/mo)? I haven't worried about local/physical music or movies in a couple years and I never will again.
 
stupid leica said:
I recently got a Raspberry Pi 3 to mess with, and ideally tie into some sort of local backup if I can figure it out lol.
Click to expand...

if you are handy with computers, consider Nextcloud or Owncloud.
you can run Raspberry Pi at home and have app upload photos to "cloud" = your own machine. it takes some tinkering and also maintenance over time, so obviously not for everyone.

YouTube has plenty of tutorials and best practices for this.
 
stupid leica said:
The problem with those affordable unlimited cloud solutions is long term support/reliability. I don't know how many (it's been quite a few) of those have gone under or suddenly raised prices.

In all likelihood they are using Amazon S3 or Google Cloud for storing the data, you are just paying them for a front-end console to get to your data. If you are going to use the cloud, just go straight to Google or Amazon, they are the big players that will be safe to rely on.
Click to expand...

Backblaze uses their own HDs. Just got a yearly report email going in detail about the #s of HDs they have along with size and model. Currently they are running 93,240 hard drives.
 
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