How do you back up your images?

[Yammer77]

I would like to get to know everyone's ideas on backing up their files.

I currently have two computers in my house.
My desktop has 3 internal drives and 1 external.
I have dedicated space on my computer for photos, which in turn gets backed up to my external drive every other day, whether changes are made or not.
Every month, I then burn a disc of the images.

In case of a fire, I told my wife, get the kids out, but before the cats, grab the external drive.

How does everyone else store and backup their files?

[Ric]

During Weddings I transfer them all to my Laptop while everyone eats.
When I get home they go on Cds and DVDs.
My oldest son has a terrabite of space on his servers and a lot of the pictures go on there.
In case of a fire I'm screwed....

[RacingHistorian]

My system is a little 'complicated', but I'll give it a shot.

On my "UNIT-1" main PC, I have an "archives" drive.  It's a 500GB drive in a USB Vantec HD case.  I store all my multimedia, etc on this drive.    I then have UNIT-2, which is another PC which runs WinXP Pro.  This is setup with 2 500GB drives in RAID Mirror mode.   This PC is also setup as a FTP server.  So this is my file server/ftp server.  I use Microsoft's free SyncToy to synchronize my "Archive Drive" with my "UNIT-2".   I use SyncToy to also copy alot of 'stuff' from My Documents, certain install directories, etc.   

I gave up doing any archival activities on optical storage media because I've had several issues with CDs / DVDs and losing data.   With Hard Drives being so cheap - I just save it all to a HD and "lock it up".

I use these:



Which I'm going to use to swap between my XP system and my VISTA system - when I finally decide to venture into it.   But these tray less removable drive trays are awesome.  I just eject the hard drive and store it in hard drive "gaskets" from Cyberguys.





You can technically just use those gaskets as an external USB device if you had a USB adapter card....   but I've never used it for that purpose.  I just use it for storage containers. 

[s. horton]

In the field: CF/SD -> Portable Viewer / HDD

Home:
- Edit
- Crop
- PP
- Upload JPG to Smuggy
- Retain RAW/JPG of long-term keepers; delete all others
- Place on HDD and external 500s

500 GB external in a pair, rotated.

I'm probably signing up for PhotoShelter, in part, to get online backup of archival and commercial photos.

[super_rep]

My backup is pretty basic. I have and APPLE system and use SuperDuper for my backup software. I have three 500 gig external drives devoted to my photos. One is my working drive, one is the backup, and the third is the "offsite" backup. The working drive is backed up every three days and then that backup is swapped with the offsite drive once a month.

Chet

[peachhead]

OH MY!!!!!!  My method is so primitive compared to all of you!!!!  I take photos, download them into the computer and then make Photo CDs.    I usually make 2 copies and I store one CD copy in my Fire-Water-Security Safe.  I try to upload as many as possible to Flickr and I usually make CDs or send email attachments to friends and family that want the photos (even if I feel they are only being "polite" to me in taking them!!  LOL!!!)

We have discussed getting an external hard drive for me to keep my entire photo collection on but so far we only get as far as drooling over them at Sam's Club.
 
Does anyone have any advice for choosing a good external hard drive for photo storage?

Loretta    http://www.flickr.com/photos/peachhead/

[Yammer77]

Seagate.....
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/external/freeagent_desktop_data_movers/

[Brian Keifer]

Disclaimer:  A big part of my previous job was administering server backups for web hosting clients.  There's an old saying that there are two types of people:  those who believe in proper backups and those who will.  I've seen what happens when you tell people that their backups weren't working properly and their yearly financials/prize-winning photo/customer database is gone forever, and it's not pretty.

Some of you will see this as total overkill for a personal photo collection.  Frankly, you're probably right. =)  That said, here's how I do it...


I've got two general rules for my backups:

• They must be completely automated
  
  • If they aren't, I will not remember to run them.  I've got a mind like a steel trap, but it rusted shut years ago
• A file might as well not exist unless it exists in at least two different geographic locations
  
  • Backing up to the file server that's 10 feet away from my main PC does no good if the house burns.

Here's a run-down of the actual process:

• Photos are imported into Lightroom and stored on a 500G drive in my main PC which holds only photos and related files (Lightroom catalog backups, GPS tracklogs, etc.)
• GPS tracklogs are copied to a directory on the same 500G drive
• Backups are done from this drive each night to three different locations:
  
  • A RAID-5 array on my home file server via SyncBack
  • Amazon's Simple Storage Service, mounted via JungleDisk and synchronised with SyncBack
  • Mozy via their backup client
• Some photos will also make their way to flickr and/or SmugMug, but I don't consider these much of a backup, more of a showroom

[Ric]

Can you let us know of the costs for these services and how easy to set up?

[Brian Keifer]

Sure. 

Mozy is $4.95/month for unlimited storage for one computer.  This is their "home user" product and, as you might expect, pricing is higher for business use.  Desktop licenses are $3.95 + $0.50/GB per month, server licenses are $6.95 + $1.75/GB per month.  I'm purely non-commercial so I haven't really looked at the licensing terms to determine whether or not a business could use the home version for a single machine or not, but I suspect the restriction's in there somewhere.

Setting up Mozy was a breeze.  It'll try to figure out what you want it to back up, but I just told it to do my photo storage drive.  Tell it how often and at what time you want it to back up, and it just runs in the background.

Amazon's S3 is priced based on what you use.  It factors in storage space used, bandwidth used, and number of requests for the files you've got on their servers, which makes it surprisingly economical.  Transferring my current 20GB of photos to their servers and allowing for another 5G or so of yet-to-be-shot photos brings my monthly bill to $6.25.  Since I'm using it for backup, next month's bill will be lower since I don't have to transfer all 25G of my photos again, just the new stuff.  They've got a nifty pricing calculator available to help ball-park your cost.

Here's their pricing structure, blatantly copied from one of their pages:

      Storage
      $0.15 per GB-Month of storage used

      Data Transfer
      $0.100 per GB - all data transfer in

      $0.170 per GB - first 10 TB / month data transfer out
      $0.130 per GB - next 40 TB / month data transfer out
      $0.110 per GB - next 100 TB / month data transfer out
      $0.100 per GB - data transfer out / month over 150 TB

      Requests
      $0.01 per 1,000 PUT, POST, or LIST requests
      $0.01 per 10,000 GET and all other requests*
      * No charge for delete requests

The S3/JungleDisk setup is slightly more complex.  You've first got to sign up for an S3 account, which you can do directly from JungleDisk's web site.  Then you just need to install their software (Windows, Linux, and Mac supported) and provide your "Access Identifiers". which Amazon will provide.  Once that's done, you'll need to reboot and then you can access your JungleDisk just like a local hard disk.  It'll default to J:.

[Ric]

Ha... I run Vista (not by choice) and if I try to reboot it just hangs there. Microsoft is trying to help me but they only have a few days left then I say the heck with it and Reformat and load XP... Sorry to run off topic a bit...

Thanks for the info..

Heh, Lee.... A possible Program here with Backing up pictures...

[leelf62]

noted, Ric
Lee