Protecting You Images - One Take on the Subject

There have been several posts about lost or corrupt images lately. Here is one set of possible solutions.

 

 

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/protecting-your-data-from-camera-to-archive/

Totally an ad for Backblaze's cloud service. No real info here.

Totally an ad for Backblaze's cloud service. No real info here.

+1. The simple solution is to back up, back up, back up. Often, to multiple locations and devices. As for the last post about black images, I did ask about a backup or even if the member was using Time Machine (I believe he was on a Mac). Never heard back. And in terms of cloud backup, my actual experience over the last 4 years with CrashPlan has been a very good one.

Totally an ad for Backblaze's cloud service. No real info here.

 

As you read the blog, in your mind, replace the name "Backblaze" with your favorite cloud service or simply "Cloud Service"; to take it one step further, replace "Cloud Service" with "Off Site Backup".The concepts discussed remain valid.

 

To take it one step further, replace "Cloud Service" with "Off Site Backup".

Edited August 13, 2018 by bgelfand

+1. The simple solution is to back up, back up, back up. Often, to multiple locations and devices. As for the last post about black images, I did ask about a backup or even if the member was using Time Machine (I believe he was on a Mac). Never heard back. And in terms of cloud backup, my actual experience over the last 4 years with CrashPlan has been a very good one.

 

How long does it take to restore say 2TB from a cloud backup system?

I have about 6TB of data that is backed up to external disk drives (most USB2) and it still take quite a while (hours) to restore any lost data.

How long does it take to restore say 2TB from a cloud backup system?

I have about 6TB of data that is backed up to external disk drives (most USB2) and it still take quite a while (hours) to restore any lost data.

Of course, it depends on the speed of your download.With my Internet provider I get approximately 500 Mbps. Hence you want one or ideally more than one local back up on actual hard drives. Cloud storage use is a secondary protection method. Kind of like wearing a belt and suspenders.

Edited August 13, 2018 by digitaldog

How long does it take to restore say 2TB from a cloud backup system?

I have about 6TB of data that is backed up to external disk drives (most USB2) and it still take quite a while (hours) to restore any lost data.

 

Compared with permanent loss, it's blazingly fast! Local backups give you extra copies so you don't have everything on a single drive, but a fire could take everything in a single event. Redundancy and multiple locations are critical for maximum protection.

How about a safe that's fire-proof?

Heresy, but the thought of losing my digital photos isn't something that keeps me awake at night - I can make more. Even the loss of hard copy family stuff, backups of which are stored in my "on board computer", not so much, since I can call them up in my mind's eye. Most ot the images I particularly value would not be that to others. A better photographer than I, particularly one of note, a different situation. Seems at least to me, there is a value cycle in which possessions transition back and forth between treasure and burden.

my actual experience over the last 4 years with CrashPlan has been a very good one.

 

Crashplan doesn't do consumer backups anymore, iDrive and BackBlaze are the most prominent ones.

256 GB Flash drives are dirt cheap these days. I keep two going all the time, when one is full, it's off to the bank safety deposit box. Fire safes are OK for your average house blaze, but every thing inside my sizable, well know brand, fire safe was carbonized paper & lumps of plastic during the firestorm that occurred in 2015. Bill

Used to see that often after the big wildfires here in Montana. IMO, as you say, the big fire safes are good for suburban house fires and reasonable protection against theft.

"...possessions transition back and forth between treasure and burden...."

Great observation and how true this is, especially as I get older! But, also as I get older, and as my mind's eye dims along with my bodily set, I would like to keep something of that "burden" around me for a little while longer.

 

Regarding the OP's subject I like to keep backups of my material on external drives (either spinners or SSD's). Even though my main workflow is still scanning film and saving the files to DVD RAM I also send them to the external drive. Periodically these are transported off-site. This is more time consuming than cloud storage but I'm not a big fan of the cloud. Regards.

I would like to keep something of that "burden" around me for a little while longer.

As would / will I!

How about a safe that's fire-proof?

I have that as well but an offsite back up is also a very good idea to have and hence, cloud backup.

With the fire proof safe, I also rotate the HD backups. I have a set of four drives to do so.

You don't have to backup what you don't care to lose.

Crashplan doesn't do consumer backups anymore, iDrive and BackBlaze are the most prominent ones.

True but they gave me a screaming deal for a year. Then, I didn't want to migrate TBs of data from them to another provider and don't feel the business plan is excessive in price. But if someone is starting from scratch, they can find lesser expensive options. That said, I'm quite happy with CrashPlan. Like Time Machine, it keeps incremental changes on their cloud which has saved my butt a few times. So if you edit an image three times over three days, you can 'go back' to older iterations and download. It's also unlimited in terms of storage space.

You don't have to backup what you don't care to lose.

You don't have to back up what you don't mind losing?

You don't have to back up what you don't mind losing?

Yup. So for CrashPlan, I don't back up the entire boot drive. I backup my User folder on Mac, not applications as an example. I can reinstall all that if necessarily.

ALL images get backed up. They reside on a dedicated HD so that makes it very easy to clone that drive to any number of other drives. So one for location, one in the fire proof safe, an extra sitting in the office. Then rotate the drives every couple months or so. Come back from location with new images, clone only the new images to the other(s) and so forth.

Like Bill Bowes (above), I keep my backups in my safe deposit box which is over 15 miles from my home (the closest branch I could find with available boxes). I suspect the bank vault is designed to withstand a fire storm and collapse of building.

 

My backups contain my financial records, tax returns, correspondence, and full wall-to-wall home inventory in addition to my digital images. I am more concerned about losing the records than the images.

I have that as well but an offsite back up is also a very good idea to have and hence, cloud backup.

With the fire proof safe, I also rotate the HD backups. I have a set of four drives to do so.

You don't have to backup what you don't care to lose.

 

eventually all digital images will be lost to the advancing technology and the shear size of your stored data.

 

clouds may seem a good idea today, but once those companies up their fees, people will be very sorry trying to retrieve their treasures to another storage facility.

 

btw cloud storage isnt a guarantee your data will be safe. our hiking club lost all its archived historic information on one of those storage clouds. the cloud when asked what happened, said read the terms... it says we are not responsible for lost or courrpt data.

 

hahahaha waste of time trying to secure those zeros n ones.people spend more time backing up than actual shoiting anymore. chasing technology is chasing the dragon. 8mm to beta to vhs to floppies to cd to dvd to blue ray, multilayer bluevray n next will be? change the formats n keep you on tge run with more data than stored at the pentagon. oh i understand they lost most of their magnetic tape archives to deterioration.

 

put your negatives and important papers in a fire proof safe rated for documents and data.

eventually all digital images will be lost to the advancing technology and the shear size of your stored data.

Eventually the sun will explode and all will be lost.:eek:

Look, digital data is far easier to migrate over long periods of time than analog (negs, prints, etc). Make multiple copies, update to a newer file format IF necessary. Back up what you don't wish to lose. But yeah, everything will be destroyed in the future and very, very little of what we create is worth standing the test of mankind anyway.

btw cloud storage isnt a guarantee your data will be safe.

1. No one said it was.

2. Nothing in terms of data is guaranteed.

3. Cloud storage is simply one part of a full backup schema. It can be a royal PITA (initially slow). But so is having your home burn down with all your existing data. Or your town where your other back up was living in a vault. No matter how many backups and where, there is still no guarantee.

 

SCAN your negatives (and chromes) and important papers, put those scans in multiple locations.

8mm and beta and VHS is analog. Digitize them, do the same. IF you care about that data. I do.

 

One guarantee: in time, all hard drives will fail. If you only have important data in one place, you're eventually going to lose that data.

The other guarantee and this is from George RR Martin: All men must die. After that, they don't need to care about data and backups. hahaha.

Some of us can shoot and back up and often not at the same time. All my backups occur totally unattended. To the cloud too. This really isn't as difficult as some here suggest. But then, it's their data and I have no dog in the fight if and when they lose it. ;)

This reminds me of a project that the NY Times did around the millenium on what would be the best way to store a time capsule that would be retrievable after 1000 years had passed. One of the most intriguing ideas was to encode the information in the introns (non coding portion) of a NY cockroach DNA. The idea was that cockroaches are likely to survive 1000 years better than any hard or software.

Eventually the sun will explode and all will be lost.:eek:...

Hmm... no, the sun will

expand as a red giant

and toast everything out

to the orbit of Mars...

got about 5 billion years...

http://bayouline.com/o2.gif

The Library of Congress has specified using the tiff format for digital reproductions, including photographs. See, TIFF, Revision 6.0. So, for really long term storage, tiff is probably the best choice. Certainly better than the current flavor of RAW format.

 

I still have a couple of card decks for two computer programs that I wrote in the mid-70's. They remain as well preserved as at the time that I wrote them. Of course, feeding the card decks into a computer (IBM System/360, I recall?) as input would probably require an inside connection at the Smithsonian Museum. I keep them around to entertain my computer programmer son and his colleagues.