How Do You Backup Your Digital Pictures ? ?
Hello,
First let me say I’m a little crazy about backing up my pictures, that being said my current setup is I have 8 different external hard drives that I use to make 3x triple backups of all my pictures. Every wedding is on 3 different drives, plus I upload everything to smugmug for an online backup and I copy everything to 1TB hard drive and it gets locked up in a safety deposit box at my bank. So actually there is 5x backups, The problem I’m having is its just not efficient since I have to be the one to copy everything by hand. Plus the amount of space the 8 drives take up on my desk and under with cables and plugs is a huge. I have been looking into a better way to do this and so far have come up with (2) ideas.
1. HP EX470 MediaSmart Home Server w/ 3x TB drives and 1x 500gig ( only cause that’s what comes with it ) I have been looking at this but am worried that it creates a pool from all the hard drives and not sure if it would be a good backup to keep redundant or even triple backups like I need. Plus the need to take it apart and upgrade the memory doesn’t sound fun.
2. Drobo 2.0 – This seemed like a good choice since it just like a raid system and makes backups of all data, the problem I have read about his is if the unit it self dies then it has been know to corrupt and kill all four drives in it. Thus losing all the data, I wouldn’t be as worried but more than one reviewer of this has said it happened to them.
My questions are has anyone used or still use either of the products listed ? And what do you do to backup and protect you pictures? What do you recommend ?
I use standard hard drives in a RAID 1 set up then burn CD or DVD on archival quality media. You already may know that CD life span for cheaper computer burned CD’s may only be in the 2 to 5 year range. Because of that some computer gurus still recommend magnetic tape for a backup which when stored properly can last 30 to 100 years
Archival quality discs last much much langer particularly stored in cool dry places. HiSpace (www.hispace.com) have recently launched a new range of CD-Rs aimed at digital photographers. These disks use 24 caret gold to help add stability to the disks. As a result, they come with a 100 year warranty. http://www.computerworld.com/hardwaretop…
I always make a CD of the originals, and keep copies of the originals and edited on an external hard drive and on my computer.
I just use online image storage sites like Picasa, that way if something should happen to my hard drive, they’re all still stored online. Ya, I probably should use a backup at home, but I’m lazy LOL
I make two copies of each shoot on CD’s or DVD’s as backup’s. One goes into fireproof safe’s … one in my office and one at home. As technology improves, I will make copies of my old backups to match the new technology … not a problem.
There are only two type hard drives …1) those that have failed and 2) those that are about to fail.