Posts Tagged ‘Pictures’

Do You Backup All of the Digital Pictures You Keep On Your Computer?

I met a young man last April who came to Maui for the summer and ended up extending his break for another semester. He was having a great time, exploring the island, sailing, snorkeling and scuba diving, hiking in the crater of Haleakala, our dormant volcano, camping and hiking in the rainforests of Hana, and of course, enjoying the beach and the spectacular Pacific sunsets. To top it off, he lived in a house with 4 house-mates from his school that was right on the ocean side of Front Street in Lahaina. Needless to say, this is a popular place for barbecues, beach volleyball and parties!
He had an “awesome” digital camera and recorded all of his adventures in pictures, which he stored on his state-of-the-art laptop computer. He had literally hundreds of pictures and videos of beautiful sunsets, friends enjoying good times, spectacular pools and waterfalls, you know, just all of the great things that a vacation on one of the most beautiful places in the world has to offer.
Near the end of his 8 months here on the island, after a party that went well into the early hours of the morning, he woke to discover that his laptop had been stolen from his living room. He was really ticked about the violation of his personal space, and aggravated by the loss of his personal property.
But, he was ABSOLUTELY DEVASTATED from the loss of ALL of his photographs and videos of his stay on the island. You see, he had no backup system, be it flash card, CD, DVD, whatever. He didn’t have them stored anywhere else but on his computer. They were all just GONE in an instant.
That got me to thinking about how I’d feel if I lost all of my photos: family, my son at the various stages between 0 and 20 years of age, places I’ve traveled on and off of Maui, before-and-after home project photos, etc. I realized that I should back up my photos, at least, not to mention all the other valuable information I keep on my computer.
I looked into some of the methods out there, and discovered online digital backup. There are many advantages to this method because it will protect you against loss whether it’s human, as in error, stupidity, laziness or crime. But, in addition, there are forces of nature that can threaten the security of your computer documents. Storms, causing flooding and power outages, electric company blunders or problems that cause power surges, earthquakes and …I’m sure you get the idea. Another thing is that these natural disasters can threaten even backup media if they’re stored in the same vicinity as your computer.

Click Here to Try Carbonite Online Backup FREE for 15 days and back up your irreplaceable files automatically and securely. No credit card required!

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 ?

Click Here to Try Carbonite Online Backup FREE for 15 days and back up your irreplaceable files automatically and securely. No credit card required!