How do you back up your photos?

[mrshaleyberg]

I was just curious what all you photographers out there do to back up your pictures. I never really thought about this until I lost a few pictures the other day. I have a feeling my computer is on the verge of crashing, so I'm going to start buying some external hard drives and use another third party to back everything up. I would be devastated if I lost people's memories that they can never get back!

So what do you do?

 

[RauschPhotography]

External hard drive, plus backed up on several different locations on my home network.

 

[McNugget801]

I have two external drives and keep one offsite at my sisters house (in case of fire or flood). Typically I backup each one once a week.

I also upload of lot of edited images for Flickr.

 

[mrshaleyberg]

I'm buying an external hard drive pronto! I don't know why I haven't yet. Good idea to store another one at a different place. Is there a hard drive brand that's the best to get? I know they're pretty cheap, but I don't want to buy a cheap one and something happen to it.

 

[eccs19]

The main drive I keep my pictures on is a USB drive, and I back it up to a hard drive in one of my computers, plus I've got another external drive I put a copy on once in a while. I keep that one off site at my parents place.

 

[blazerj]

What about cloud solutions? They run about $50 a year. I want to back up photos and some documents from my + 1 more computer.

Anybody recommend an online backup site?

 

[Boomn4x4]

Everything is backed up on a leased web server, which is also backed up onsite and offsite. $3.95 a month.

I just lost my computer on Sunday.... didn't lose a single picture.

 

[clanthar]

First: There are two physical drives inside my computer. I don't have them "raided" but one backs up the other. If my computer crashed I could fully recover in about 2 hours and that includes the drive time to MicroCenter to buy a replacement drive. I use Nero Backitup to mirror my system drive and I keep two copies of that mirror (one internal and one external).

Second: I have an external USB drive that backs up all critical data.

Third: Archived photos are periodically burned to DVDs which are duped and copies kept in the office.

As sure as the sun will rise tomorrow: All hard drives will eventually fail, all servers will at some point come down, all flash memory will one day fry and all DVD/CD media will separate. At least one of those events will catch everyone someday. Murphy's law: Those least prepared will get caught first.

Joe

 

[waynegz1]

mobileme is sweet as far as is you are using a Mac.

anyone have expierence backing up photos in Lightroom 2?

 

[PavementPilot]

Trust me, dont ever rely on one external HDD. We lost about 2000 photos that were not on DVD storage discs, when the external crashed. I now store to a DVD storage disc too.

 

[KVRNut]

I have two methods of back up. One is the original film and the other is archival cd.

 

[MohaimenK]

eSata hard drive for daily backup which is locked in safe. Then weekly backup to home server

 

[waynegz1]

Trust me, dont ever rely on one external HDD. We lost about 2000 photos that were not on DVD storage discs, when the external crashed. I now store to a DVD storage disc too.

Roger that. I have a WD Passport 500GB HDD and a 500GB Apple Time Capsule which is scheduled on an hourly automatic backup.

the best $$ I've ever spent IMO

 

[ghache]

one copy on my pc, one on a secondary hard drive, dvd copys.

i usually keep the raw on the cards untill the finish product made it to the dvds (3 copy total)

 

[jaymac]

Main hard drive of computer (after any photo session) > exteranl hard drive (weekly) > DVD's (monthly or whenever I get enough that will fill the DVD).