How do you back up?

photorookie12 · Jan 3, 2011

After looking of the tragic loss of a digital library i the post (http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/...um-photo-gallery/229902-ugh-its-all-gone.html) I came to wonder: "How do people actualy back up their precious photo's?". There are a variety of alternatives from using online photo sites, backup disks, burning DVD's etc. But what do you actually do?

Post your personal alternatives to help others improve.

photorookie12 · Jan 3, 2011

As for me, I have an external RIDE drive that I have a one-way synch to for all my files(one way meaning that files from my laptop are copied to the external drive, but not vice-versa). For more precious files (files that are used more actively), these are also copied to my google account.

Buckster · Jan 3, 2011

I went with an array of 1TB drives, which works well for my needs. I have redundant backups of EVERYTHING, on separate hard drives, all online and accessible instantly at hard drive bus speeds via my eSATA interface, and if one of my hard drives goes bad, I know it right away and am able to replace it, copy the backup to it, and have my redundant assurance/insurance again quickly. This has happened already, and it was painless and easy to recover.

At the moment, I'm running with a 10TB hard drive system:

Here are the external drive enclosures:

Each of the Addonics enclosures holds 4 drives, and I've stuffed them with eight 1 Tb drives total. The top two Antec enclosures are single-drives, and they're each holding a 750 Gig drive. The final 500 Gigs is in my main system unit, but only used for operating system and programs. So, 10 TB at the moment, but a totally expandable system if I want to add more later.

Those 10 drives/cables all plug into a pair of e-SATA port multipliers (that's just an unrelated USB hub on top, for running my mouse and keyboard and importing data from my Photo Geo-tagging device):

Each port multiplier reduces 5 drives/cables down to 1:

And those two resulting cables are then plugged into a card on the motherboard of the main system unit.

To facilitate the back ups, I use a program called Allway Sync and it works really well for me. I just open it up every time I dump new photos onto my hard drive or do some editing that I don't want to have to repeat, and hit "Synchronize".

At the end of each month I burn the newest photos to 2 DVDs (or sets of DVDs if there are too many to fit on one); One goes in the safe and one goes to my sister's house for safe keeping.

That's what I've been using for the past several years, and it's working pretty well for me so far.

Robin Usagani · Jan 3, 2011

Buck.. you are hard core!

I have a 2TB external HD that will sync with my puter. So if I delete something, it WILL delete the same files on the HD too. Since this is 2011, I am about to burn 2010 on DVD (2 copies each DVD).

Gruen Photo 7 Design · Jan 3, 2011

external hd's & dvd/cd

ann · Jan 3, 2011

4 external hard drives, one always off site. a copy of everything on each drive

Buck, toooooo cool.

redtippmann · Jan 3, 2011

I back up on location with an iPad and then at home on my iMac with a 1tb drive. At the same time a backup is made on an external drive.

Vinny · Jan 3, 2011

Since it looks like you make money from your shooting I would take the advice of multi drives and storing a complete set off site. I've worked at a place where data saving was important and they had an external 3 disk system - two drives mirroring each other and another stored off site. Once a week they would swap out one of the drives that were mirrored and store that off site. The thought process was if something happened then they would only have 1 week's worth of data lossed.

Unfortunately, it sometimes takes a problem like that to get us to think about securing our data.

psyclop · Jan 3, 2011

You can use acronis software and make an image, but the safest way to be sure is to burn them on a dvd or a blue ray. you can pick one up for about $100.00

c.cloudwalker · Jan 3, 2011

Set of external hard drives including two that are rotating between my house and studio. Everything is backed up at the end of the day and one of those HD goes home with me. In the morning I bring in the older backup HD and so on and so forth.

At the end of the week, everything is also backed up to two DVD (or sets of, depending on how much work was done that week) and those go to two different places.

I do not store anything online. It doesn't take much knowledge for someone to gain access to those. I have some clients that will not even let me send them images over the net; they have to be hand delivered on disc to their offices.

Trever1t · Jan 3, 2011

Pretty much same here, although not as high-tech with a single external hard-drive. I burn RAW files to DVD.

Village Idiot · Jan 3, 2011

Sucka, you got servered!

I use an HP mediasmart server with Windows Home Server. I was thinking about building a server with a bit more oomph! The computer case for my desktop that I build has 10 drive bays, which would give me 16TB of storage with one DVD drive, one system drive, and 8 2TB drives. Looking into the new Windows server program too.

John Mc · Jan 3, 2011

I'm currently upgrading my pc's at the moment. Going to have 2 Ssd's in raid for Os and Editing suite and a 500gb hdd for other programs and for the photos to be uploaded to for phase one. ive started build(my brother has atleast) on a liquid cooled private Server storage system with 4 tb drives,phase two is where i save 4 copys onto each drive. finally,i have an external drive.cause as much as i love technology and pc's,i cant trust them one bit

Village Idiot · Jan 3, 2011

John Mc said:
I'm currently upgrading my pc's at the moment. Going to have 2 Ssd's in raid for Os and Editing suite and a 500gb hdd for other programs and for the photos to be uploaded to for phase one. ive started build(my brother has atleast) on a liquid cooled private Server storage system with 4 tb drives,phase two is where i save 4 copys onto each drive. finally,i have an external drive.cause as much as i love technology and pc's,i cant trust them one bit

I thought a cheap quad core setup for a server build was overkill. Is your brother planning on using the server to find the cure for cancer or something?