Backing up and Storing

[Cinka]

I've come to the point where I now have too many images. I have a pretty large hard drive and use iPhoto for viewing and sorting; except now iPhoto is loading slow and I'd like to clear out the clutter. I also have an external drive which I intend to use for storage, but I'm wondering how everyone else archives their images? Do you keep everything?

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[Corbin Lane]

I have a CD system. With all of my archives, I keep a raw and a larged, edited jpeg stored on a 4.7 GB DVD. I have the CD's numbered and I've got a spreadsheet of the DVD's with the contents and such. It works really well and I don't use them that much, they are in a safe location. If you're worried about your house burning down then keep a copy in a safety deposit box at a bank or something.

[O|||||||O]

I do the DVD thing too. I don't keep a spreadsheet on them though, I just write that stuff on the disc. Date - first, last; File # - first, last.

Always check to make sure everything got burned correctly too. So far I've only had one bad disc, and the originals are gone - I'll never see those again...

[Corbin Lane]

I do the DVD thing too. I don't keep a spreadsheet on them though, I just write that stuff on the disc. Date - first, last; File # - first, last.

Always check to make sure everything got burned correctly too. So far I've only had one bad disc, and the originals are gone - I'll never see those again...

I'm just an organizational junkie!

[craig]

I keep everything and my work is backed up on hard drives. I am not convinced that cd's and dvd's are archival.

Love & Bass

[Holy Ghosted]

CD and DVD's are not archival and are only as good as the burner you used to make them $50.00 Burners are not equipped with the latest and greatest technology out there. As far as back up and storage goes Ideally if you can back up on import and as soon as you can get a copy off site. either online storage a buddies house what ever.
My work flow is I Import to one mirrored raid and a single drive one of the mirror drives is constantly swapped every day or two to an off site location and the raid rebuilds the other drive when installed to catch it up to what is new and all eddits are upladed to online storage to 4 different locations in there own server. so all said and done I have 4 coppies of Raws at all times 1 off site and 6 edited 4 off site and 2 on.
If you intend to go to this extent plan on spending a lot of money however a good external or two that you can take one off location is a great start and usually enough for most.

[Bthornton]

I keep them on an external hard drive, and dvd on site and the same off site. I also use spread sheet to keep track of them. I know it sounds like overkill but once something craps out on you, and it will it's no longer over kill. I found that out the hard way

[stsinner]

The best thing to do is use a backup site. I use Mozy.com because my wife works for a software encryption company called EMC, and they recommend Mozy.. EMC is one of the world leaders in software encryption, so I will take their advice.. At $4.95 per month for unlimited storage, I think it's a bargain.

The backup takes a while, but if you want absolute safety of your photos, this is the way to go.

Here's a blurb from their website:

Alternatives to MozyHome

• Burn a new CD or DVD every Sunday night and store it at your brother-in-law's office.
• Pay $200/year for an online backup service that uses old, mediocre software.
• Buy a $200 external hard drive and hope your office doesn't burn down.
• Do nothing and don't worry about backup. (We suggest closing your eyes, plugging your ears and repeating "I'm in my happy place, I'm in my happy place.")
• Run a cron job of rsync, gzip and mcrypt piped over ssh to your friend's server over his DSL line.

[MikeBcos]

I have everything stored on a file server, it is backed up to another PC and an external hard drive.

The file server also backs up to Mozy.

I figure three hard drives and an offsite backup are enough.

[iflynething]

For files on these servers.....If everything were to burn and get destroyed and the server was the ONLY way to get the photos back, how would you do this.

Download each individual photo or what? How does this work?

~Michael~

[stsinner]

With Mozy, you do your backup like a zip file. To restore it, you tell it what files you want to restore, or restore the whole backup file.. It's very easy-you go to the Mozy website and download their small application that is menu driven. You tell it what you want, and it does it. It runs in the background and sits in your taskbar. You can adjust a slider for faster PC performance or faster backup, so it's a pretty friendly program.

[MikeBcos]

For files on these servers.....If everything were to burn and get destroyed and the server was the ONLY way to get the photos back, how would you do this.

Download each individual photo or what? How does this work?

~Michael~

When restoring you can simply go to the mozy website, log in then choose what to download, whether it be just one folder or your entire hard drive.

If, like me, you have a lot of files backed up, Mozy will burn everything to disc for you and send it to you overnight. That isn't very cheap, but if you need all your data as soon as possible it's the way to go.

I have 160GB backed up with Mozy, they would charge me about $200 for discs but it could be worth it.

[msf]

Keeping multiple copies is a good idea.

When I can afford to get an external raid system, I plan to go in that direction. Having 3 hard drives all with the same information.

For now I keep the picturse on my internal hard drive, external hard drive, and on two sets of DVD's.

I also put some of my pictures in a private gallery in my account on SmugMug Photo Sharing. Your photos look better here.. They keep a backup of all pictures on there and you can order a cd/dvd of your pictures if you ever need to. If you try smugmug out, you can save $5 with the referral code 5bQxXhVZY6En2.

Its also a good idea to keep a 2nd external hard drive or dvd's off site, like a safety deposit box.

You could probably use gmail as a limited storage device. : )

[fightin14]

I have an external hard drive that stays in a true fire proof safe not that junk you buy at Target.

[czsmola]

on another note Iphoto is not a powerful enough program to handle a large quantity of pics... so get yourself lightroom2 best application i have found for organizing pics... you can even have your photo librarys split between multiple hard drives...