Backing up photo data

<p>My background in business continuity comes in handy here. I would apply the same principles, make frequent backups to two or more storage devices and keep one off-site at all times (or in your car if your studio is your home).<br>

I would favor a large capacity external hard drive (from a drive manufacturer with a good track record) as my choice of backup media.</p>

<p>May be this sounds simplistic but I use pendrives to back up data. every photo expedition NEF files and processed ones are put in a new pendrive besides they being in my computer hard drive. </p>

<p>I keep three copies<br>

1. One on WD Passport drives<br>

2. One on a RAID 5 Drobo 2nd Generation<br>

3. One on WD 2-4 TB drive.<br>

Passport drives are stored off site through out the year<br>

Drobo is my working drive linked to my computer<br>

WD 2-4 TB are archive drives that are on location through the year, but at the end of the first quarter, assuming I am not doing any work on the previous year, gets stored off site.<br>

And I pray once daily to the digital storage gods.</p>

 

<p>aah, the convenience of digital. what steps are you putting in place now so that your 1's and 0's are not only backed up and safe for the next five or ten years, but for the next thirty, fifty, or one hundred years? <br>

"I keep three copies<br /> 1. One on WD Passport drives<br /> 2. One on a RAID 5 Drobo 2nd Generation<br /> 3. One on WD 2-4 TB drive."</p>

<p>That's fine Steven, but are your children going to do the same, and their children? Don't get me wrong, i shoot with a digicam for some of my work, but when it comes to personal work/play, i want a negative...and black and white neg that's good for 1000 years, stored in my safe in an archival box. sure, i still have to trust my children with these when they are gone, but to ask them to make a back up online, and on a couple of externals, maybe a DVD.....no way! <br>

if you're one of those people who doesn't care about your images when you are gone, then digital might just be good enough.</p>

<p>The two drive option (one at home, one at work), make good sense and is cost effective. But the other part of backing things up is keeping your "permanent" photo collection small. Yes, you took 1,000 pictures on your last trip, but do you really need to save all of them for 20 years? If you do, it will just be harder to find the good ones later. And, at some point, you will delete the folder that has them because you forgot what it contained. Consider a strategy that backs everything up, but keeps the 1 - 5% of pictures you are really proud of in several additional places, including remote locations.</p>

 

<p>I can still restore and view images stored 20 years ago, the computer industry is pretty good about supporting older formats or at least providing tools to convert older formats to newer ones.</p>

<blockquote>

<p> i want a negative...and black and white neg that's good for 1000 years, stored in my safe in an archival box</p>

</blockquote>

<p>The negative may be good for 1000 years (possibly), but what if they no longer make photographic paper and chemicals to print it on, which is more likely than not having technology to read older binary data, unless we evolve backwards in our technology like in H.G. Wells Time Machine, then we're both out of luck.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Tom, I agree with your concern. Critical family pictures are also uploaded to Kodakgallery as high resolution JPEG files and lately I have been pondering generating books of the years best pictures or maybe it is a quarter or 1/2 year or 2 years. <br>

The problem with a book is high quality print books can be expensive, but I like the concept which is similar to my parent's scrapbooks of old.<br>

DVD's and even blu-ray media is really too small for my needs..and not convinced they will be stable or more likely the hardware to read them will disappear (I have a number of drives where the interface for them is no longer)<br>

Could print hard copies and used to do 4x6 or 5x7, but that also becomes a huge storage problem.</p>

<p><em>if you're one of those people who doesn't care about your images when you are gone, then digital might just be good enough.</em><br>

Actually, I think everyone is in that category :)<br>

But seriously - all we can do is make the pictures available. People kept shoe boxes of prints a long time ago, but how many survive today (the question is <em>not</em> how many could have survived)? The sad truth is - unless someone is dedicated to saving them, they won't last, be they digital or paper.<br>

As for RAID, this has been stated so many times it should be obvious - it is NOT a backup strategy. Delete a folder on a RAID array, and it is gone off all the drives just as fast as it would be on a single drive. RAID controller or OS gets flaky - all the data can be lost. It is fine as part of a backup strategy - just don't fool yourself about it. Although then it will be one less thing for your kids to worry about.</p>

<p>Stan.. RAID is NOT a back up.. rather I view it as potentially as a more stable primary source of data, but I think still needs to be proven. <br>

I don't know about anyone else, but I spend a reasonable amount time scanning pictures taken in the last century so prints do survive, particularly if there are people in the family willing to spend time to make sure they survive. <br>

Maybe we need to laser our images into the walls of caves!!<br>

Steven</p>

<p>I work in IT also. I have seen RAID1 go bad when both disks getting corrupted. Still some files may be retrieved. I have had RAID5 go south because two drives failed out of five. Data lost. Simple so that it will be done. Redundant so there are copies. Off site so a diseaster less than nuclear war will not destory copies. If you have timely backups then media changes and file changes can keep pace with technology. Simple, redundant and off site on a schedule with tests preformed often. SSD may cure most mechanical hard drive failures. My CF cards have worked very well so far but I know they are not perfect either.</p>

<p>For the time being, I have a pair of 500 GB Seagate external drives in use with my laptop, they are mirrors of each other. I usually make a CD or DVD of any important set of files, which is three copies of everything. I also have another Seagate external HDD attached to an old desktop at my parent's home that have some of my files.<br>

If I actually photograph something of great worth, it often end up as a framed print. Yes, the image will fade over time, but, with modern paper and inks, it should outlast me if it's kept in the proper environment.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>I myself have just gone with a variation on #3 above. I looked at the drobo, and frankly was drooling over them. What I ended up doing was going with a Windows Home Server (WHS) solution using mostly older h/w I had laying around. It acts like a drobo in that it is not true RAID but it treats all HDD's installed (internal and external) as a single giant volume. You can set up redundancy on a folder by folder basis, so my music and photo's have duplication enabled (exist on two separate disks within the server), while my daily backups and other less essential media are only copied once. <br>

<br />WHS takes care of full system backups as often as you ask it too (I do it daily), and I use MS SyncToy to mirror my photo and other media files once a day on both the shared folders on the server and my main PC. So I end up with 4 copies of my images, 1 on main PC, 2 mirrored copies in the shared folders of the server, and 1 as part of the full system back up also on the server.</p>

<p>To me this scratches my redundancy itch very well. The other benefit to WHS that drobo does (w/ an add on NAS unit) is remote access. I can not tell you how easy this is, I get a distinct url (xxx.homeserver.com) and I have full time access to all of my files from any internet connection. Where WHS (and drobo) fall short is the offsite backup. I haven't bridged that yet but plan to start an offsite hdd based system soon. Happy shooting!</p>

<p>Tony</p>

<p>photographic paper and chemicals (at least black and white) is so cheap and easy to make, that it is likely to be always available. people are making this stuff at home! with my negs, all i have to do is shine light through them, and there's my image. i work in a digital environment ie. a hybrid workflow, so i have the best of both worlds. digital can be great, i just think that there are going to be alot of people over the next twenty years plus with a lot of heartache.<br>

Charles you're obviously a pro photographer who can take full advantage of digital capture, which affords super fast turn around time to satisfy your clients needs. but i see little advantage for "serious amatuer photographers" in going digital, and see alot of disadvantages. i view it as a step in the wrong direction for the hobbyist. my wife however, who is only just a snap shooter, thinks that digital is great for uploading her picys onto facebook. i doubt that these images will stand the test of time, so i'm never too far behind with one of my cameras, loaded with a roll of fuji fp-100b or tri-x film. <br>

i think the best option for digital images is an optical print from a digital file, which should be good for nearly one hundred years.</p>

 

<p>Hmmm - it seems that most of you guys use HD-solutions.</p>

<p>In addition to my working disk, I copy my keepers to an external HD, which is most of the time disconnected to the PC. In addition, I burn 2 DVDs of every folder (montly projects) I make of the keepers. One DVD copy is stored and hidden in the back of my house. The other DVD copy is brought to my office, which is in another town. I guess that if all these copies are destroyed at the same time, I will not be able to care..... ;)</p>

<p>It's only been touched on briefly in the responses, so I'd like to emphasise that ANY valuable data including photos not only needs a backup, but that backup MUST be stored securely, in a different location to your working copy.<br>

There's no point having multiple copies all stored on the shelf above your PC -<br>

a. a thief is likely to nab all of them along with your PC<br>

b. a fire would destroy all of them and your PC.<br>

My maxim is that you can't have too many backups, so for my own part I have a working copy on a RAID-1 disc, keep a second working copy on a portable HDD, and have a third (archive) copy on CD stored elsewhere.<br>

Maybe overkill but it's not a big bind to keep multiple backups, I just make new backups once a month or so. I definitely don't want to lose many years of irreplaceable photos.</p>

<p>For a number of years I have been using an Iomega Rev drive with 35GB cartridges (you can get 90MB). It is set up to instantly back-up files every time I create a new one. It keeps older versions and stores revisions. The technology is admittedly older, but it works very well. Essentially, I have a real-time mirror image of everything on my hard drive including photos, emails, etc. The cartridges can then be stored locally or offsite - your choice.</p>

<p>Chris - I could not agree more!! Whatever you use to backup, assume it will be destroyed along with the rest of the home in a worst-case scenario. We talk about the three P's in terms of what to save - People, Pets, Photographs. I like to believe that by keeping everything-digital in a couple of off-site places I have dealt with the last one. </p>

<p>I have to wonder how well founded the fears about optical disks (CD, DVD, BD) really are. My plan is to use BD going forward. My quesiton is, does anyone have extensive experience with <em>well cared for</em> optical disks becoming unusable after a certain span of years for no reason? I well understand that CDs (going back a quarter of a century) were promised as superior to vinyl because the laser wouldn't damage the disk with use as much as the needle did with vinyl (and cassetes just fell apart with regular use). This proved to be a false promise in practice because the average person just tossed naked CDs onto the back seat of their car, which meant within weeks you'd have degredation similar to vinyl if not worse. And, half of all netflix users, it seems, enjoy using their rented disks as coasters for coffee mugs during their stay in the home :). However, as far as I can tell, it remains true that well cared for optical disks should last a very long time. If anyone has actual hands-on empiracal experience with optical disk failure, I'd love to hear it.</p>

<p>Well, Steve, I have on several occations lost data which were burnt on CDs. You can say that I have learnt the hard way that I only should use High Quality media, and even then, be prepared that the data needs to be reburnt after some years. Problem is, you never know how many years before it is to late. Therefore, better be frequent (safe) than sorry!</p>

<p> Luckily, I have almost always been able to restore the data from other backup media.</p>

<p>The CDs were stored in CDcases without exposure to heat, sunrays or mechanical objects.</p>

<p>One word: film</p>

 

<p>My two cents (of euro)<br>

Besides what have been said, the best RAID is RAID10, that is first mirror and then strip.<br>

You have the speed of RAID5 and the data is duplicated like in RAID1<br>

Problem is not all RAID controllers support it and you need bigger box.</p>

 

<p>it has been mentioned in previous posts, but "eSATA" is your friend. Few, but the newest, computers have eSATA built in, but it is easy to add as a PCI-e card. The beauty of eSATA is the extremely fast read/write ability of the interface. Your external SATA drives reads and writes and tranfers data at the same speeds as your internal drives. Much, much faster than USB 2.0 or Firewire. SATA hard drives are inexpensive, use several, and just consider them the "CD/DVD type" backup for today's large internal hard drives. After a few years, swap out the external SATA drives for new ones....they will still be perfectly good, but for peace of mind, the recopying to new drives is good insurance.</p>

<p>Pay extra and get the good stuff like G-tech drives if you have a mac. Delkin sells blu-rays that are rated to last 300 years as well as gold plated dvd's. Just remember buying dvd's from fry's or any cheapo outfit you are just asking for trouble. Just stick with gold plated Dvd's that are rated to last 100 years. Blu-rays are even better according to tests that several mfg have done. Back up on metal case extrenal hard drives as well. Online storage services are chancy if they go bust, so does your photos and your profilo. Is better to have your own site and store them your self though someone like Adoroma. Someone who has a track record that has been around a while. You can also check Fotki. as well. </p>

<p>Metal case hard drives. I have owned three LaCie portable hard drives. The two 250GB drives died in less than 2 years. The little pocket one is still going. I have switched brands for susbsequent purchases. Tom Mickan's point about the next generation is important. As my father's health declined he made some errors with his computer and erased quite a bit of stuff. In the time between the onset of an illness and someone looking at the aftermath a lot can be lost even if the next generation is highly motivated. </p>

<p>I have heard bad things about LaCie drives except for the rubber rugged ones, the ones you use at home are no good, but the ones with the orange protection work. But if I will do it over again I would stick to G-tech, they have metal case on all drives and come with 3 year warrantee. So at least you know you have 3 years of life out of the drive. They are made in the USA. </p>