Please back your photos up.

Oggy

Oggy

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Roger
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I know I should have done this before, but I was busy buying shiny bits and a hundred other feeble excuses.

This morning I came to switch the PC on and there was a "ringdingding" and it refused to see the hard drive.

I felt sick.

It took most of the day to get it going again. As soon as I did manage it, I got in the car and tore round to the nearest source of backup drives. My photos are backing up as I type.

I am sure 90% of people back up regularly, but to the rest - please do it. :thumbs:
 
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Especially when a 1tb external USB drive can be purchased for as little as £50!
 
I'm still confused as to what the best backup media is. By the way I dont think it is hard drives. I have read that if they are not used regularly (ie they are left in a draw because they are being used to archive) the lubricants in them dry up and they stop working.
 
I back up on two portable hard drives. I have one at work and one at home and every month I switch them so that if there is a fire I don't loose everything. (one months work at the max)

Any photo I am very happy with I upload an uncompressed jpg on to a private photoalbum on photobucket. that way I can access it from any computer if I wish.

Glad you managed to get your photos safly backed up!

Stuart
 
One site I read said -

"Apparently hard drives have a tendency to seize up if not used for a few years"

If this is correct then there should be no problem using hard drives as the back up medium.

It depends how important the photos are - a second internal drive is probably the easiest solution - comes on when you boot the machine and no extra wires on the desk, but if your machine gets stolen ....

An external hard drive is a little more secure from theft, if it is stored somewhere away from the PC, but how many people do that - not me for one.

Two external hard drives, one at home and one elsewhere (at work, friends or family) may be the safest solution, but it requires a bit more organisation.

Dave
 
I backup to a home server that has a RAID system so everything is duplicated as well as having them on my laptop. Three different drives with them all on should hopefully be enough though I am considering online storage. Having a backup that isn't at home sounds good to me.
 
External hd's are perfectly safe, I use a 1tb drive I got from novatech and it's been bulletproof so far. I also found an extra 120gb hd in my desktop I never knew existed, lol!
 
I back mine up to two different online storage places. Most of the half decent pics also end up on flickr or facebook so they are saved there too. Not that I'm paranoid ;)
 
Since my mate told me about a friend of his that "lost" a load of pics including "from birth" photos of his two kids and it costing £700 quid to have them recovered (laptop was dropped) I have my pics on 2 seperate external HDDs......

I use a portable 320Gb WD passport drive that they'd loaded to from my memory card (laptop drive's only 120GB so not much use :lol:) and then I back that drive up to 2 separate terabyte drives.

Being the REALLY paranoid type, I am thinking of buying a third external HDD and leaving a backup at my parents or another family member's house.

As said earlier, storage is incredibly cheap so there's no reason not to.
 
I used to back up from my desktop to my laptop via the network connection.

Then the laptop started cutting out and a bit later the desktop got the BSOD.
I realised then that if you only have 2 copies when one of them goes you do not have any backup!

I now also back up to a USB HD which is permanantly connected to my desktop and copies files automaticaaly and to another USB HD which is stored in a fireproof & waterproof safe (quite cheap for a small one at Argos).
 
I use dual external hard drives and back up to archival grade dvd's, you can never have too many copies of important stuff.
 
I'm storing everything on my internal drive, replicating to a NAS drive, and backing up on line with mozy.com in a hope to spread my risk. This strategy won't work for much longer as my drives fill up. I am of the belief that sticking a hard drive in a cupboard for archiving will result in drive failure in a few months due to lubricants drying up in the drive. Drives are designed to move not be left off.
 
I use an external hard drive for my stuff and keep it at work, returning it to the house for updates every month. In between then I put the DNG files on an USB flash drive, just in case.

I run a RAID0 array on my workstation, so if anything does go wrong with any drive I'm snookered. However, RAID is not a backup solution anyway, its just to reduce downtime on servers and workstations (or in my case speed up disk access).

A backup should always be made to an external form of media (tape, DVD, HDD). If a bug hits your computer or server then the RAID won't help, if you delete a file by accident the RAID also won't help etc...
 
Bythesea said:
I backup to a home server that has a RAID system so everything is duplicated as well as having them on my laptop. Three different drives with them all on should hopefully be enough though I am considering online storage. Having a backup that isn't at home sounds good to me.
Click to expand...

i would not count a RAID mirror as 2 drives. if anything happens to a file on one it is instantly replicated onto the other so for deletion/corruption its useless. plus you have the risk of hardware failure.
 
I store on 2 external drives and my latest stuff on internal drive.

I signed up for Mozy a while ago.

One novelty I haven't quite got around to doing yet is actually printing any photographs. I've got the rest of the week of and intend to use some of this time to process and print some photographs.

I really, really feel for those who loose photographs that are not backed up!!
 
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neil_g said:
i would not count a RAID mirror as 2 drives. if anything happens to a file on one it is instantly replicated onto the other so for deletion/corruption its useless. plus you have the risk of hardware failure.
Click to expand...

Good point.... Will start looking at online storage. Already have some webspace so could keep it up there.
 
When considering backups, bear in mind what it is you're protecting against.

For the vast majority, the biggest risk is hardware failure - usually drives give some warning that they're on their way out, but not always. For this, any backup anywhere will be fine - and a second drive that's always connected and backing up regularly (mine does it every hour whenever my iMac is on) will mean the absolute minimum chance of losing anything from hardware failure.

That type of backup won't always work. Sometimes you may accidentally delete something, and if your backup is set to remove files when they're deleted from the primary drive then you're stuck. Again, mine keeps a history of all files, whether deleted or not.

There can also be problems with malware infecting your computer which could be malicious and delete files, or modify them or corrupt them. If that malware has access to your backup drive because it's always connected or perhaps via a network then again, you're stuck. I have a second backup drive that is only connected weekly, or more often if i've been doing a lot of work.

Then there are the major accidents like fires and floods, and theft. For these, you ideally want your backup kept away from the computer, and maybe off-site if possible. I used to leave a drive at work if i was away for an extended period, or else you can view this risk as less likely and so maybe only backup your best photos online (given that for many people backing up everything online could be prohibitively slow or expensive).

So not suggesting everyone necessarily needs to cover everything against all of these risks, but at least have a think through each of them and decide whether you're prepared to accept that risk.

Incidentally, my primary backup drive failed just before Christmas, so currently only got my main drive and the slower offline backup, which has been temporarily promoted! Luckily it failed in such a way that i could have got all the files off it anyway, if required.

David
 
neil_g said:
i would not count a RAID mirror as 2 drives. if anything happens to a file on one it is instantly replicated onto the other so for deletion/corruption its useless. plus you have the risk of hardware failure.
Click to expand...

RAID 0 writes data to 2 drives but splits the data evenly, this will speed up disk read and writes, but not ideal as a backup solution.
RAID 1 writes the same data to two seperate drives. This should be seperate to your computer system drive (Not a good idea to use raid for a home PC, but super for backup).
My set up - C: drive for system
D: drive (seperate hard drive NOT a partition ) where my photos(RAW + Jpeg are loaded to.
Raid 1 USB/Firewire drive where RAW files are backed up to, this drive is only switched on when I write my latest pics to backup.
External storage is so cheap it's a 'no brainer'
Like the original op 'Don't wait until you lose everything' do it NOW.
You know it makes sense.....:rules:
 
dubcat said:
I'm still confused as to what the best backup media is. By the way I dont think it is hard drives. I have read that if they are not used regularly (ie they are left in a draw because they are being used to archive) the lubricants in them dry up and they stop working.
Click to expand...

This is probably true if left for years, current industry advice is to ensure they are used at least every 6 months; and I hope people are backing up more often than that :)

Hard disks are my personal preference; as they are cheap, easy (lots of automatic replication programs out there) and can for more techy sorts can be used to set up some quite advanced features.

An interesting idea would be the use of cloud storage; an area I'm doing some research on at the moment. This would provide a geographically separate storage system with high redundancy and high availability. Depends on your needs though - something like Amazon's S3 is probably overkill for most people, but given it would only cost something in the order of $10 to store my current 100GB of photos per year (admittedly plus upload costs), then it is becoming increasingly attractive as an option.
 
I think i'm the only one who uses a USB stick.
But i do use my netbook & Flickr too as well as my Desktop so that's = x4 backup.
Then there's always my own personal Satellite.....but what with all the space junk whizzing around up there.... :nuts:
 
Graham00 said:
I think i'm the only one who uses a USB stick.
Click to expand...

They aren't really back up solutions, IME it's far too easy to lose or damage them, and flash memory isn't really the best back up medium.

USB sticks are also pretty small, by the time you get to worthwhile sizes you could have bought a better bigger hard drive.
 
Keep the pics on your computer and back them up to an external (USB) hard drive too.

Preferably don't keep the external drive connected at all times, because this reduces the risk of you accidentally deleting the backup somehow.

Personally I would never bother backing up to DVD as their integrity long term is unknown and they are far too small and far too slow and far too easily lost or damaged.
 
redddraggon said:
They aren't really back up solutions, IME it's far too easy to lose or damage them, and flash memory isn't really the best back up medium.

USB sticks are also pretty small, by the time you get to worthwhile sizes you could have bought a better bigger hard drive.
Click to expand...

My understand is that solid state drives are a hell of a lot more reliable than normal hdd's due to the fact there are no moving parts.

Also, I have harddrive's that have been sitting around for years and years, unused. I've recently just used one for a fresh install of an old desktop and it worked fine :)
 
Howi said:
RAID 0 writes data to 2 drives but splits the data evenly, this will speed up disk read and writes, but not ideal as a backup solution.
RAID 1 writes the same data to two seperate drives. This should be seperate to your computer system drive (Not a good idea to use raid for a home PC, but super for backup).
My set up - C: drive for system
D: drive (seperate hard drive NOT a partition ) where my photos(RAW + Jpeg are loaded to.
Raid 1 USB/Firewire drive where RAW files are backed up to, this drive is only switched on when I write my latest pics to backup.
External storage is so cheap it's a 'no brainer'
Like the original op 'Don't wait until you lose everything' do it NOW.
You know it makes sense.....:rules:
Click to expand...

Performance vs cost RAID0 often fails to be worth while. I posted a link a while back with a series of benchmarks proving this.

Also I prefer to use RAID5 for backup arrays, less "wasted" disks and less cost to expand.
 
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Harvey_nikon said:
My understand is that solid state drives are a hell of a lot more reliable than normal hdd's due to the fact there are no moving parts.
Click to expand...

Hmm, moving parts breaking is not an issue. I've had more catastrophic SSD failures than with HDDs. IME SSDs tend to just die, HDDs show symptoms of failure before they fail, giving you time to back up.
 
redddraggon said:
Hmm, moving parts breaking is not an issue. I've had more catastrophic SSD failures than with HDDs. IME SSDs tend to just die, HDDs show symptoms of failure before they fail, giving you time to back up.
Click to expand...

The real benefits of SSD are more to do with the low access latencies, which doesn't really assist when backing up. Currently the cost/GB of using SSD is prohibitive right now; you could probably buy 5 standard hard disks and create a RAID5 or RAID6 array that would be much more reliable for the same cost!
 
I have quite a lot of data that I back up often.

A 2Tb iTunes library that I keep on an external 5.5Tb RAID array along with about 500Gb other files (software etc). A 300+Gb Aperture library on my internal disk which is vaulted to the RAID array every other week. All my docs, apps etc are stored on my internal HDD and backed up with Timemachine to another external disk.

I have 4 x 1Tb disks which I back everything above up to every other week (1 disk every 3 or 4 days) and I keep those disks in a fire safe at the other end of the house from my office. Those disks will obviously need to be replaced with bigger ones eventually.

Pretty much everything in my house is replaceable except me, the missus, the kids and anything digital (particularly photos!). I did consider keeping a backup off site but I work from home and don't go anywhere on a regular basis so it would be very easy for me not to do it. Hence the fire safe.

You can never have too many backups.

NO RAID SETUP IS A BACKUP ON ITS OWN!!
 
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Archiving implies the disk may not be used for a long time which is why I feel hard drives are unsuitable for this task.
 
neil_g said:
Performance vs cost RAID0 often fails to be worth while. I posted a link a while back with a series of benchmarks proving this.

Also I prefer to use RAID5 for backup arrays, less "wasted" disks and less cost to expand.
Click to expand...

Definitely agree with first point, just not worth it.

Wouldn't use RAID 5 myself, this mode has some serious drawbacks, mainly used for servers where drives may need to be hot swapped. You would need fast drives also, this mode has been superseded with higher levels of RAID but think this is real overkill for a simple backup, again ,more suited to server operation.
Keep to the K.I.S.S wherever possible
 
Oggy said:
I know I should have done this before, but I was busy buying shiny bits and a hundred other feeble excuses.

This morning I came to switch the PC on and there was a "ringdingding" and it refused to see the hard drive.

I felt sick.

It took most of the day to get it going again. As soon as I did manage it, I got in the car and tore round to the nearest source of backup drives. My photos are backing up as I type.

I am sure 90% of people back up regularly, but to the rest - please do it. :thumbs:
Click to expand...

Glad you are getting it sorted. Indeed there is no excuse, I back up onto two hard drives.
 
External hard drive and laptop, got some other more special ones on a couple of cd's too

Might get more organised for the new year, say that every year though
 
Hi All,

Do not just ensure that you backup all your photos but ensure what you save to hard drive are there. We had my Fiancees 86 year old Gran around over for Xmas and she is now suffering dementia or type of. We were sat in the house and she said that she had never been here before, we all said "Yes you have don't you remember your 80th here". So off I went to bring up the photos of her 80th on the bouncy castle etc but nothing in the folder for her birthday, they have gone. The weekend of her 80th was also a friends stag weekend, I have these but not Grans 80th photos. I have spent two days running recover utilities on Memory cards and hard drives from PCs that have fallen along the wayside over the years, but no 80th birthday photos. Checked backups taken to DVD from 2004 and nothing either, I am not a person to delete anything. She has gone downhill rapidly and now those photos of her are lost, gutted to say the least. I am IT literate and was so sure that I have had all bases covered, it just shows that we all make errors, but please just double check that what you think is there is there. Take care when copying photos from memory cards to the PC and ensure that everything is there. Once there maybe set to read-only so that they can not be inadvertently deleted and ensure that when you buy a new PC/MAC that everything goes over.

Thanks
 
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