If it all disappeared ...?

Quicksnapper

Quicksnapper

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My OH read recently about a guy who backs up his images onto 2 separate external hard drives which are kept chained to the wall of his house. The idea being, I suppose, that any passing burglar could remove his laptop but not the hard drives.

Pretty extreme measures to prevent the loss of his accumulated body of images, but it made me wonder how upset I'd be if someone took my computer and the attached back up hard drive, and thus took away every digital image I've ever taken. Thinking about it, on a scale of 1 (a bit of a pain, but pretty ok about it, they're only photos) to 10 (totally devastated, my whole life is is in ruins), I'd be about a 5 (upset but I'll pick myself up and start again: the most precious images are burnt to disc and safely stored away).

So, how upset would you be if your entire output was stolen?
 
The only secure option is off-site back-up. We keep a HD at the office that I bring home once a month or so. All our computers are backed-up (incremental) and I take it back to the office. This is in addition to the hourly incremental back-ups to separate HDs at home.

Another option is the "cloud" services. I tried Backblaze, but found the initial back-up far too slow (backed up for weeks - and then my trial expired before it was 1/3 done - and that was only one laptop). I had all the settings maxed-out so it hogged our upload capacity. We likely need to step-up in bandwidth before that really becomes an option for us.

My Flickr site has most, if not all of my most precious shots. That's a form of back-up, too, but doesn't have the master files or raw files.
 
Seriously though, if he is that paranoid (cautious) then cloud or off site storage is also required on top of these measures.
Something we all need to consider if we cannot or do not wish to risk losing them.
 
Winkyphoto said:
The only secure option is off-site back-up. We keep a HD at the office that I bring home once a month or so. All our computers are backed-up (incremental) and I take it back to the office. This is in addition to the hourly incremental back-ups to separate HDs at home.

Another option is the "cloud" services. I tried Backblaze, but found the initial back-up far too slow (backed up for weeks - and then my trial expired before it was 1/3 done - and that was only one laptop). I had all the settings maxed-out so it hogged our upload capacity. We likely need to step-up in bandwidth before that really becomes an option for us.

My Flickr site has most, if not all of my most precious shots. That's a form of back-up, too, but doesn't have the master files or raw files.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't trust flickr with my hi res images tbh, perhaps its me thats paranoid?
 
Quicksnapper said:
My OH read recently about a guy who backs up his images onto 2 separate external hard drives which are kept chained to the wall of his house. The idea being, I suppose, that any passing burglar could remove his laptop but not the hard drives.

Pretty extreme measures to prevent the loss of his accumulated body of images, but it made me wonder how upset I'd be if someone took my computer and the attached back up hard drive, and thus took away every digital image I've ever taken. Thinking about it, on a scale of 1 (a bit of a pain, but pretty ok about it, they're only photos) to 10 (totally devastated, my whole life is is in ruins), I'd be about a 5 (upset but I'll pick myself up and start again: the most precious images are burnt to disc and safely stored away).

So, how upset would you be if your entire output was stolen?
Click to expand...


It would be 10 for me... hence the insane measures I go to in order to protect my data.
 
I've backed everything up, right back to my first photos in 1985, to Google Drive, and update it with new photos almost as soon as i've processed them. Same for my external drive. It's a bit of a faff to do, but it's part of my workflow now, and has given me peace of mind.
 
9-10 for me, hence the number of backups I have. Cloud storage is out due to the size and number of images I have. No pint just keeping small jpegs ( which I have some on the web) you need the raws as well.
 
10 for me too and I also have several external HD's - one of which is kept at home in a fireproof box and updated weekly to mirror the ones at the studio. I lose sleep over what would happen if I lost the RAW images from a wedding before the final proofs have been delivered to the customer <shudder>
 
Off site is the main way to go.

Google drives have dropped in price enormously in the last few days too.

I have a terrabyte google drive for £7 something per month. All non-delivered recent clients .jpegs are there.

Mirrored to your desktop then it doesn't protect you from CryptoLocker unfortunately, but I heard Google are working on a solution to that.
 
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I'd be beyond gutted if I lost all my images, which is why I keep 2 carbon copy backups at home and a third where I work in Leeds in case anything happens to the house. I can't imagine how it would feel losing all those memories!
 
I have an Rsync script running on my PC which backs up the ingest folder to an external drive every hour or so.

I then have one which backs up my completed work folder.

Once every couple of weeks I back this drive up at another site.

Finally, once a quarter I back up my finished images on Amazon Glacier - which is cheap as it doesn't give you immediate access.
 
if it all went.. I would stop worrying about it
 
st599 said:
Finally, once a quarter I back up my finished images on Amazon Glacier - which is cheap as it doesn't give you immediate access.
Click to expand...

Be careful of the download charges too.

Google drive is now level with Amazon glacier per gb and offers continuous access.
 
Steve-T said:
Seriously though, if he is that paranoid (cautious) then cloud or off site storage is also required on top of these measures.
Something we all need to consider if we cannot or do not wish to risk losing them.
Click to expand...
What if the cloud storage place gets hacked and all things wiped lol.
 
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