Author Topic: How do you back up your images? (Read 8227 times)

avava · « **Reply #50 on:** February 01, 2009, 18:28 »

That would be cool wouldn't it. With a nice 30" screen in the middle. You might be onto something there CD. Gotta go, Kick Off.

Best,
AVAVA

noam · « **Reply #51 on:** February 01, 2009, 18:50 »

Hi J

Quote from: avava on January 31, 2009, 18:58

I figure there is always a back up version at the agency but the Macros make you pay full price for your own work so it might get pricey to download your entire portfolio if you wanted to, If you want to.

You are wrong about that. 123rf lets you download all your files for free. You can read all about it here: http://www.123rf.com/blog/blog.php?idblog=b1000006

Noam

avava · « **Reply #52 on:** February 01, 2009, 18:59 »

Hi Noam,

That is good to know thanks for the info. I was speaking of the Macro agencies, they generally charge a full price for a full down load to photographer. I would make a percentage of my own purchase but I don't think the math works in the long run.

Best,
J

gostwyck · « **Reply #53 on:** February 01, 2009, 19:08 »

Funnily enough, the longer I do this the less paranoid I am about preserving "yesterday's work". To me the real value of my port is not what's sat on my HD, yet to be processed, but what has actually been uploaded and is earning me money. Really, until an image has been uploaded and proven its commercial worth, as far as I'm concerned it has little value other than sentiment.

I still really enjoy my photography but most of the enjoyment is in the actual process of taking the images, seeing the results and then watching the money roll in for months/years later.

After a shoot I find myself thinking much more how I can make improvements the next time I shoot the same subject rather than wallowing in what I have achieved so far. I guess to a large degree it's a function of doing microstock. Admittedly, if I was doing fine-art landscapes and had camped for weeks in rain and wind in order to capture a breathtaking moment in nature, I would probably feel different _ but usually that's not what i do.

I have a MyBook 2TB HD configured as RAID and transfer all new images to the A disk (which will then be mirrored on the B disk). I work entirely from that HD so that I am continually backed up.

My 3000-odd stock images would actually fit on 3 DVDs but I could download them back (for free from agencies like StockXpert) if the worse came to the worse.

avava · « **Reply #54 on:** February 01, 2009, 19:19 »

Hi gostwyck,

Thanks for your feedback. I am one that has trouble letting go of all that data. One agency said there could be a great value in all those non similar images if you wanted to pull them from your hard drives and sell them all outright. It is little statements like that that keep me from letting go. In Macro which I have a lot of work in, there area bulk of the images an editor doesn't take. I have left those to pile up in hard drives as Raws and was thinking about going through finding the non similars and uploading them to Micro. There must be thousands and thousands there but it looks like a pretty big project and I don't know if it would be worth the effort.

Thanks for the feedback,
AVAVA

tubed · « **Reply #55 on:** February 01, 2009, 21:48 »

Quote from: cdwheatley on February 01, 2009, 17:35

Quote from: tubed on February 01, 2009, 17:25
Quote from: cdwheatley on February 01, 2009, 17:21
Quote from: avava on February 01, 2009, 16:24
Thanks a lot ma that is a big help. Sounds like a lot cheaper route to go and we could just keep the back up drives off site.

Thx Again,
AVAVA

or you can buy 7,500 standard DVD's...lol

... that collection would be fun to search..

You just need one of these

That would be sooo awesome to have.. I've always wanted one..

Phil · « **Reply #56 on:** February 02, 2009, 19:41 »

deleted

davidm · « **Reply #57 on:** February 03, 2009, 03:28 »

When I checked it sometime ago HP offered quite cheap entry level Intel-based Proliant servers with built in RAID controller for SATA2 HDs. As far as I recall IBM offered a similar set with SATA2 or SCSI option, priced a few hundreds bucks more.

So for a local backup up to 1 TB or so you can get a mirrored RAID for less than $2,000.
Bonus: fully functional HP / IBM server box with an OS of your choice :-)
And you can add a tape for something like $800

Anyway, my backups are on DVDs and they are not frequent enough. I would love to use an online backup service just because I believe that Amazon or Google can take better care of my data than I can do.

null · « **Reply #58 on:** February 03, 2009, 09:06 »

Quote from: davidm on February 03, 2009, 03:28

So for a local backup up to 1 TB or so you can get a mirrored RAID for less than $2,000.

I don't think AVAVA needs a RAID as a RAID is for online. Near-line will be enough for backup, still gives easy access, and is much cheaper.
Iomega Prestige Desktop Hard Drive 1 TB - USB 2.0 - 100 euro. 1000 GB, 7200rpm, 480Mb/s on USB 2. Buy 2 et voilà.

Quote from: davidm on February 03, 2009, 03:28

I would love to use an online backup service just because I believe that Amazon or Google can take better care of my data than I can do.

Correct if your provider doesn't enforce upload limits and your connection is fast. In that case, there is a free solution in emailing the pictures to yourself on unlimited gmail and yahoo mail.

mantonino · « **Reply #59 on:** February 03, 2009, 13:22 »

we do double HD backups + MostPhotos. MostPhotos you can download a full rez copy of your image free, like 123 and there are no reviews so they are ALL on there. I dunno how long it would take to copy over 30 tb but moving forward that's one way - so we have online AND offline storage. DVDs and CDs are typically the WORST way to store backups and anyone with ANY experience in professional backup & restoration will tell you to avoid it like the plague unless it's your 3rd backup option.

tubed · « **Reply #60 on:** February 03, 2009, 14:03 »

Quote from: mantonino on February 03, 2009, 13:22

DVDs and CDs are typically the WORST way to store backups and anyone with ANY experience in professional backup & restoration will tell you to avoid it like the plague unless it's your 3rd backup option.

Agreed.. CD's and DVD's have an actually fairly short shelf life and there are an array of elements that can corrupt or destroy them..

dirkr · « **Reply #61 on:** February 04, 2009, 03:47 »

Avava,

maybe you should look at a NAS (Network Attached Storage) for your purposes. These are essentially specialized PCs with a bunch of hard drives in them.
You connect them to your network (most modern ones have Gigabit network connections) and then can easily access your data on the drives.
And you can configure them as RAID, i.e. they will mirror the data and protect you from the failure of a single drive.

I recently bought one (from Thecus) with 4 drives, each 1 TB, for under 900 Euros.

I did a quick search and the biggest I found was one with 16 TB (16 1 TB drives) for about 4900 Euros (on www.xtivate.de, only in German, but I bet there are other similar solutions out there). Of these you would than need three or four (depending on what RAID level you want to run).

Not the cheapest solution, but would free you from the hassle of dealing with 30 or 60 separate drives.

And, very important: a RAID solutions protects you from the failure of a hard drive, but it does not protect you from human error (accidently deleting files etc.) or from things like theft or fire - for that you still need another backup. But you could do that on a second set of NAS devices, just depending on the amount of money you want to spend...

Dirk