How do you back up your photos? How do you keep them organized?

[2WheelPhoto]

So far I just backup to am external drive, I have an upcoming course "PHO11021 - Digital Image Management" and perhaps I'll learn new trick or two

 

[skieur]

I have blown external hard drives, and DVD recorders, so obviously I personally do not find them very reliable. The most reliable item that I have found has been the thumb drives of the 32 or 64 gig variety.

skieur

 

[Buckster]

My question is does everyone back up their RAW files along with the JPGS or only the JPGS?

I especially backup the RAWs. RAWs are my digital negatives. I can always re-create anything I made from them as long as I have them.

 

[pacman10]

DPBestflow is a government funded study on the preservation of photography. They have a great section on file management: File Management | dpBestflow

Thanks for flagging this excellent source. Full of solid information.

 

[480sparky]

My question is does everyone back up their RAW files along with the JPGS or only the JPGS?

It would be nuts/crazy/dumb to back up only your jpegs.

 

[Garbz]

One should mention quickly before you get the wrong idea, mirroring / RAID is not a backup solution. It is a high availability solution designed to keep your system up in case of a harddisk failure. What it does not protect you against is accidental deletion of files, accidental saves or other software related problems such as hosing the file allocation table. Actually it introduces problems as a power outage could cause the array to de-synchronise if one drive finished writing before the other. It also doesn't protect you against power surges, fire, flood, theft, or any other good stuff that a backup solution should cover.

Backups should be free from these problems, which is as simple as storing the backup off site. Take it to work, or put it in a safety deposit box, give it to your dad or something.

Now my solution looks like this:

- Images are loaded onto my main computer.
- Daily an automatically scheduled run of an open source program called Synchronicity which does an incremental copy of files to a NAS box under the stairs. This NAS box amongst other things features a 2TB RAID1 array for redundancy and also allows us to access files from the TV / other computers. Delete a file from the NAS at the end of the day my backup software will replace it. Delete a file from my PC and it'll still be available on the NAS.
- On the weekend I manually run Synchronicity to do a mirror backup. This ensures that if I legitimately delete things it gets removed from my backups. This is manual not scheduled so it doesn't happen just after I accidentally stuff something up on my computer.
- Once every 2-3 weeks I bring a harddisk home from work and plug it into my NAS. An automatic script on the NAS (seems to be a common feature for even the cheapest NAS boxes these days) will make a copy of the the entire drive onto the external. This one then gets taken back to work. It is the backup and the last line of defence.

Having 3 locations for files is important as there's always the ability for data to be lost while you're configuring your backup or making an initial backup.


Advanced tip for you RAID1 folkes:
If a member of a RAID1 fails do NOT replace it without doing an incremental backup of your important files first. Re-syncing a mirror array will absolutely thrash a harddisk for a good 10-14 hours and may even cause the failure of the other drive. After you have made your backup disconnect the backup drive and THEN rebuild the RAID array.

 

[slackercruster]

Hard drives, different computers, cd, dvd, thumbdrive, flash cards. Tons of multiple back ups.

Organized? I'm only half ass. Need more work in that area.