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backing up digital pictures?

John Daugherty

John Daugherty

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Location
Oliver Springs, TN
Like many I have acquired a boat load of digital pics that are saved on my hard drive. Hard drives being what they are I would like to back them up to a more permanent media. How do you back up your digital photos?
 
I've been using DVD's, but have also started using Google's Picasa (uploading to their website). Picasa is limited to 1 GB of space and I just bought a new Canon 10 megapixal that I'm shooting mostly in RAW format. The file sizes for RAW on it are basically 10 MB each, so been looking at using SmugMug's site ($30 per year) for storage, which is "unlimited".

If you choose to use Picasa, it gives you the option to resize your photos upon upload, so can easily manage the space you have, beyond that it's $20 to upgrade to 10GB (per year). The web album also works well for integration into websites or if you simply want to send someone a link to the album. It's also free.

here are the links:

http://picasaweb.google.com

http://www.smugmug.com
 
back up

at work i deal with many pics and files aswell that we need to keep at hand for the futur.. we used a dlt tape back up but since then it alsolike hard drives arent everlasting.. so we know use three methodes one the job goes on a cd or dvd,,dvds hold much more and are easily made on most modern computers..then we have a exteranl hard drive that has mirror feature which for most is over kill but has its place depending on what your wanting to hang on to.. the dlt tape drive has a retrieve feature that allows us to retrrieve the files we want threw a software program..as for the simplist methode i would go for the dvd..one draw back though tis that you might be restricted to making one back up and not adding to it later..therefore not using the whole disk efficiently
 
Lots of ways of doing this but here is mine.

I install a second hard drive in my computer. They are cheap and it's fairly easy to do. Hardest part is working inside the case on most computers. I was just pricing drives and you can pick up I think it was 200 gig HD for $50!

I use a piece of software called SyncBack. No longer free but only about $30 I think? WELL WORTH THE PRICE!! It is a little tricky to set up because it will do so much. But it runs in the background and and you do nothing.

I set mine up to back up my critical files every 15 minutes. It checks the folder(s) I specify and after the first run, it checks for any changes. If I have altered or added a new file it will copy only the changes to the second hard drive. You don't even know it is running. And the odds of two drives failing at once are pretty slim too.

I also take this one step further. Because I am required to keep my work files for 5 years and I save everything digitally now backups are critical. I have an old very slow computer in the shop that is mainly a music player. I added a second drive to it too. SyncBack will work across my network so I do backups to this computer too. All my data files are on three drives now. Only way I will loose all three drives is going to theft of the computers more than likely.
 
I lost several years pics to a hard drive crash a couple years back, so I guess I overdo it a bit ---

  • Second internal hard drive
  • External hard drive
  • DVD's

I back up the second internal drive very often, back up the external every couple months depending on how many pic's I've taken. I'm slowly working on sorting, organizing and transferring to DVD's. They are external, copy-able, and transportable. Hopefully, they are long lasting.
 
I saw a 500 GB external drive the other day for 70 bucks, IIRC. Can't remember if it was a Buy.com email special, or a Fry's ad. Bad thing, that would only save you 50 raw pictures!!! :eek: So it sounds like lots and lots of DVDs are in your future. Be sure to devise yourself a labeling system, and see if you can somehow build a searchable database for retrieving the pictures again later. Maybe something with a thumbnail of the picture for easier identification? :type: I'm pretty sure most DVD software will let you choose during the burn if you want to be able to add to the disc. At least Nero does. A basic version of Nero came with the Pioneer DVD burner I got LOML last summer. Do far, very happy with it. On sale at Frys it was 39.99, and free shipping IIRC. Jim.
 
Lots of options these days. You can pay for off-site storage space. Use DVDs or CDs. Or use a USB hard drive as someone suggested. I was talking with my son about this. He found a 1.5 terabyte hd for only $150.00. I know what a terabyte is but really can't get my mind around the enormous capacity for storage that is. Incredible. That is the route I'm going to go. I have tons of photos stored in my computer and would cry if I lost them.

p.s. 'terabyte' is spelled as spell check told me to do. It doesn't look right. True geeks out there, please advise. :rolleyes:
 
Frank Fusco said:
Lots of options these days. You can pay for off-site storage space. Use DVDs or CDs. Or use a USB hard drive as someone suggested. I was talking with my son about this. He found a 1.5 terabyte hd for only $150.00. I know what a terabyte is but really can't get my mind around the enormous capacity for storage that is. Incredible. That is the route I'm going to go. I have tons of photos stored in my computer and would cry if I lost them.

p.s. 'terabyte' is spelled as spell check told me to do. It doesn't look right. True geeks out there, please advise. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Looks right to me Frank. I believe that DVD and CD's only have a shelf life of about 10 years or so from what I was told recently by some photo pros. There are some 'gold' discs that have a longer life. I think the key though is to keep backups in multiple places and off-site. That is why the hosting site option worked for me.

Also for those saving to more than one disk, you could also look at a RAID type of system. In this type of system the data is striped across multiple disks in the system, so if one disk goes bad, the other disks have all the same data. The bad disk is removed and replace with a new one and the system re-stripes the data back onto the new disk. Again, not a full proof system, since the house could blow away, keep a backup in another place.
 
I went through this analysis a while back. I used to use a USB attached disk and back up to that. The problem is that you can have everything destroyed if you have a disaster that affects your house (fire, flood, etc.). I came to the conclusion that off-site was the only real solution.

I chose a company called Carbonite although there are many offering this service. You must have a high speed Internet connection to use this (DSL or Cable or equivalent).

It backs up files as soon as you create them (how fast is only limited by your upstream bandwidth), the space is unlimited, and you can access the files from any computer (so if you're traveling and find you forgot a file, you can get it). The data is encrypted so no one can intercept it during transmission.

All the backup people provide about the same functions.

Mike
 
Before I delete photos from my camera I make sure they're saved in 3 places:
1) Internal hard drive at home
2) External hard drive at home
3) (Personal) external hard drive at work​
I may have to go the CD/DVD route at some point, but hard drives are certainly more convenient.

If I were really serious about it, I could upload all my pics to my personal webspace. A friend and I share a business-level web hosting account for $10 a month, which currently gives 250GB of storage space and 2500GB of transfer per month ... in addition to web hosting services, etc.
 
Rennie Heuer said:
This is the service I've been looking at. Are you happy with it? any problems with your PC slowing down?:dunno:

Also, I have two laptops in our home. Can I do both on a single subscription?
Click to expand...
I never noticed an impact after I put the backup software on the computers. I don't think you can do two laptops with one subscription unless you copy files to one of the computers. The software runs on the computer monitoring when you save (or change) a file - it backs up files in real time.

Another note - regarding it hogging the bandwidth, it watches your use of the Internet line and only sends data when you aren't using the link. So you never see any degradation in your web browsing, for example.

One thing to watch for - make sure it's backing up your mail and address files. That was not the default.

I've been satisfied but I haven't had to recover yet. There are testimonials on their web site from people who have had to recover, however. I'm sure they wouldn't last long if the recovery didn't work.

Mike

[One other note - I'm running Vista on my computers.]
 
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The thumb drives probably have a better life expectancy than hard drives since they don't have moving parts. However they do have a limited read/write life expectancy, that is why most folks don't re-format them when they clear them. I haven't seen any reports of how long they last without use, but should be a pretty long time.

Frank, there are thumb drives that support password and encryption, as a matter of fact, my company only allows this type to be used.
 
Darren Wright said:
The thumb drives probably have a better life expectancy than hard drives since they don't have moving parts. However they do have a limited read/write life expectancy, that is why most folks don't re-format them when they clear them. I haven't seen any reports of how long they last without use, but should be a pretty long time.

Frank, there are thumb drives that support password and encryption, as a matter of fact, my company only allows this type to be used.
Click to expand...

What brand are they?
 
Mike got it right with Carbonite, works great, but only on Windoze XP not Win 2k, so only one of my machines works with it. They are supposed to come out with a Mac compatible version next year, just in time for me to buy a Mac :thumb:

My main large computer at the L shop has a raid array set up, similar thing to what Jeff described, I have two drives on the array, both mirrored so a total of 4 drives, I had to put a larger powersupply in the machine, but that was it, well the raid card too. Works well, I had the main "C:" drive fail last year, well one of them, I bought a new drive, installed it, rebooted, smashed the mirror, and then rebuilt the mirror from the undamaged drive, all if fine in the world. :thumb:

I also have a large external HD that I back up to, and I have my photobucket page, plus I send most of my stuff that I'd be sorry to lose to my mother, she sends most of the pics to every other relation I have, and I know my mom backs up on CD as well. Perfect, no, it is not but I'd say it is pertty good.
 
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