what method do you backup your photos?

[usayit]

I always think in terms of tiers. Each level provides increasingly more archival at the expensive of longer / less convenient recovery time. Other work related items get treated in the same manner. Mine works like this:

0) On my compact flash card direct from the camera. Copied to my scratch disk but not erased.

1) On my scratch disk which is stripped for optimal perfomance.. Fast response, not reliable. This is were I would do my photoshop editing. My Workspace

2) Stuff that I'm done working on gets moved to my mirrored disks. slightly more reliable but a bit slower data transfer. At this point, I will erase the compact flash card if I need it for something else.

3) Once a folder on a mirror hits about 600mb, It gets burned to an archival quality CD ( I use gold efilm CD-Rs). The burned CDs are stored in plastic jewel cases and outside world contact is kept to a minimum.

4) Once a month my mirrored disk gets backed to magnetic tape... yes... old technology... magnetic tape. This is the most reliable of all the tiers but also can be a little bit of pain to recover. ( both my jobs are in computer data disaster recovery so magnetic tape does not seem so odd/strange).

Oh yes... remember offsiting too.. 2 month old backups on magnetic tape gets placed in my desk at work..

My strategy might be a little over kill for most but its good to think in terms of tiers with archival versus cost versus data value in mind.

 

[f8lranger4x4]

External hard drive!!!!!

 

[rob91]

Back them up on two harddrives.

 

[domromer]

I ask Jesus to watch over my hard drive.

 

[schuylercat]

I have a pair of 500MB internal drives, and I copy everything from the primary to the backup using a batch file that runs through a scheduler. Since the primary drive includes edits with new file names, my backup scheme grabs all files available. I frequently delete edits I don't like, so my "G" drive is filling faster than my "F" drive. No matter - that way I have everything, and if I realize "hey, I kinda liked that edit I deleted last Tuesday..." I can go retrieve it. Currently my backup drive states there are 74,000 files and it's 98GB in size, with basic image folders dating back to October 13, 1999 and some scans of slides from my Nikon CoolScan dating back to about 1992.

Next plan: I'll burn DVDs and store them in a fire safe.