Backup of your photos

[zapman29]

Just trying to see what you are all using to help protect your digital photos. I mean have been using external HD, but they along woth computers will eventually crash Just looking for a more realible way. I have so much time invested dont want to lose those important memoires. Thanks

 

[CWN]

SmugMug + 500GB USB Drive

 

[ann]

4 external hard drives, one off site

 

[Gaerek]

Smugmug + 1TB Iomega Storcenter NAS Drive set up as 500GB RAID 1

 

[Plato]

Finding the "correct" answer is akin to finding the "correct" camera bag. Regardless of what you choose, I can easily describe a scenario where your solution will fail. The questions that you need to answer are:
1) What do YOU believe is the probability of losing the files on you main storage medium?
2) When you do lose the files, what do YOU believe will be the probable cause of the loss of those files?
3) How much are YOU willing to spend in terms of money and operational aggravation to provide some measure of protection.

In my case, I expect that the only reason why I would lose files is my own error. I've had Mac computers for some twenty-five years and I've NEVER had a disk failure. I use Time Machine to automatically back up my files to a locally attached external drive. (There is no requirement that the backup drive is locally attached. That's merely the way that my system is configured.) With no involvement on my part, TM keeps copies of all files that existed each hour for the past 24 hours, each day for the past month, and every week for anything older than a month up to the maximum capacity of the drive.

 

[SpeedTrap]

Currently I am Using 2 Drobos, one on-site and One off-site.
Each holds 4 TB of data Fully Redundant against drive failures.

 

[Brick]

Separate HD + backblaze.com. $5/month for unlimited storage.

 

[itznfb]

I have a storage server. + External SATA drive. + External USB drives that I keep in fireproof storage for shots I really don't want to lose.

 

[Invictus]

NAS Drive set up as 500GB RAID 1

+1

 

[altitude604]

I picked up at 1Tb USB Drive from Futureshop here in Canada for $125.

Works great.

 

[bhphotography]

I use a network storage device, on my wifi network, stored in a separate building from my house. That way if I lost everything due to fire / theft, I'd still have all of my clients photos backed up.

 

[Garbz]

I mean have been using external HD, but they along woth computers will eventually crash Just looking for a more realible way.

Well external harddisks only have 2 modes of failure. Failure due to damage (water, fire, shock, etc) and failure to fluid bearings seizing catastrophically. An external harddisk that is powered up several times a year will long outlive any computer. I still have an old 500mb harddisk that works just fine.

So the first mode of failure can be mitigated by carefully storing it off site. Your best backup is useless if it's ruined along with your computer in the same event. I store my harddisk at work.

The second mode of failure usually is rare unless you don't power up the drive for about a year. Simply making backups will decrease the likelyness of bearing seizure. Additionally buy the latest and greatest every few years. Yes harddisks fail, but I have only seen one harddisk fail that wasn't at least 3 years old (IBM "Death"Star series), and even if it fails, the act of backing up is a verification that the solution is working. If you backup once and rely on getting that data back in 5 years when your computer dies, that's not a good backup. If you backup every 3 months, and as soon as you see signs of hardware failure on the backup device you replace it, that is a good solution

While plato is right that there is no perfect solution, following the above would have to create an incredibly unlikely and unlucky event that it becomes an acceptable risk.

Smugmug + 1TB Iomega Storcenter NAS Drive set up as 500GB RAID 1

You better not be relying on RAID1 as your primary backup. RAID is a high availability not a high reliability solution, and the only problem with Smugmug is it takes a lot longer to download your pictures again.

I'm all for cloud storage, but only in Korea or any other place that has 100Mb FTTN broadband

 

[[Dillz]]

I store full res on my server and burn DVDs and use external HDs.

XD

 

[JLEphoto]

2, 1TB western digital externals (mirror drives). When they get full one goes in a safety deposit box!!!!

 

[Jon_Are]

I use two 1TB external drives; the photos are stored on #1, backed-up nightly to #2.