How do you back up your images?

[Lcjtripod]

Just a bit curious how other photographers back up their images to protect against total loss!

Me: I back up all RAW files to a DVD or CD then a copy goes to a safe deposit box at my bank. And I also have an exact copy at home. (Note: I ONLY shoot RAW.)

I had a studio burn down and lost over 250,000 images. Mine and customers from commercial shoots as well as weddings etc. I learned my lesson.

I do not trust any web site to keep my images safe for me.

Your thoughts?

-Larry

[BrokenPhotographer]

I had a hd fail a while back and I lost precious family photos so I'm now paranoid and back all my photos and important stuff up to crazy levels.

I have an external drive I do a weekly raw backup (plus all my pictures of my kiddies) onto and then it gets stashed away in a hideyhole in my house where I know if we were robbed it'd be highly unlikely to be found.
I also do a monthly sealed and dated cdr zip that my mother keeps in a safe at her home.

[Sean Locke Photography]

I print out every image, which I shoot again, with my 1ds MK3, and then I save that onto a cassette, which I bury in my backyard in a steel box.



Every couple weeks, I copy my main hard drive to a second hard drive.  When full, put it at a relative's house.

[fljac]

I use Carbonite..

Cheap and above all, unlimited storage for almost no money!  http://www.carbonite.com/raf/signup.aspx?RAFUserUID=336374

I've been using it for quite some time and it seems to be working great! It does not slow down the internet connection while backing up.

It might be worth a try 

/Flemming

[Lcjtripod]

I use Carbonite..

Cheap and above all, unlimited storage for almost no money!  http://www.carbonite.com/raf/signup.aspx?RAFUserUID=336374

I've been using it for quite some time and it seems to be working great! It does not slow down the internet connection while backing up.

It might be worth a try 

/Flemming

I know that many folks use the net to store images and that may be 99.999 safe. But what if the site is corrupted or sabotaged and their back up fail? It would not be the first.

-Larry

[epixx]

I use Carbonite..

Cheap and above all, unlimited storage for almost no money!  http://www.carbonite.com/raf/signup.aspx?RAFUserUID=336374

I've been using it for quite some time and it seems to be working great! It does not slow down the internet connection while backing up.

It might be worth a try 

/Flemming

That works well as long as they don't go bankrupt. Lots of photographers got problems when digitalrailroad.net went bust a couple of months ago without any warnings.

I run a backup routine to a second HD a couple of times every week, and always after taking a new batch of photos. In addition, I burn DVDs that I keep at another location. Earlier this year, one of my HDs crashed, and the only thing I needed to do, was to buy another disk and copy from the backup. At the moment, I have disks in separate firewire enclosures, but the next time I upgrade, I'll invest in a unit with space for four or eight disks and RAID.

[shank_ali]

I don't back up any of my photos.Once in my istock portfolio i just delete them from my hard drive.I switched from shooting in raw about 6 months ago to jpeg.
If i ever wanted my 500 images back i would have to pay istockphoto to send me a disc with my photos on.

[Peter]

Backup on DVDs, and on external HDD. double backup.

[RacePhoto]

Backup on DVDs, and on external HDD. double backup.

That's about it. Backup to CDs for smaller shoots, DVDs as I work through the year. That's the backup for the external drive that has the same photos.

Online backup is supposed to be a good way to have your photos off site and safer. With sites like DRR and others, that have gone out of business, I have my own website and can store images on a server that only I control. That doesn't mean that the company won't go under, but I know who has access and I'm the only one.

Some days, I feel that my photos that I sell are online and since I'm not Adams, Feininger or Stieglitz, I predict that hardly anyone and likely no one will ever care what happens to them. Even shooting editorial, sports and news, I've never had someone contact me and say, "we need a photo that you took in 1970 of..." In fact I have some shots that were taken 40 years ago of a historic building burning down, wrote offering them to the institution, which they never bothered to answer.

Makes me wonder why I'm archiving and saving these photos?

[Peter]

I save those, If some new agency GOOD (which is less likely to happen) pop up, so I can easily upload everything...

[fintastique]

backing is important and I would recommend multiple medias and a secure (perhaps different location) obviously frequency is the big issue.

Obviously for DVDs pick a decent brand and burn at a lower speed (x4) to minimize chance of errors if your burner has a verification procedure might be worth the extra minutes.

I think for HD several medium sized ones is safer than just one mega drive just in case that screws up obviously if the safe (location) has limited space that will limit the number of hard drives stacks of DVDs.

I think there was a thread about this ages ago because I digressed and started talking about HDs being sensitive to EMP.

So anyone got a blu-ray burner though if one of those discs has an error that is 25 GB lost

[gunnar3000]

interesting topic 

I backup my images every week on an external HDD, but the external HDD an the PC are in the same room of my house. may be you guys are right and I should bring the images out of the house. I think I will give a copy on DVD to a buddy of mine. 

gunnar

[Peter]

or even better bring those DVDs to missile-proof bunker

[gunnar3000]

peter, there is a old nuclear bunker not far away from my town (its out of use), but I guess there will be no market for stock images after a nuclear strike   

[Lior]

I have an external hard drive that is confidured to do a weekly backup, and I burn everything on 2 DVD's. I keep one of them at home and the other at my mother's house.

[MikLav]

I put RAW + processed PSD files on DVD (2 copies stored separately although both at home). Quite annoying for large sessions when I need to archive 10-15 GB of data (i.e. 3-4 DVDs 2 times...), so I really hope it will not take too long for BluRay to become affordable.

I have several copies of ready-to-upload JPG files - on PC hard drive, on USB stick, on external USB hard drive; and just in case some microstocks allow to download my own files for free

[hali]

since dvds are so cheap, i literally backup every thing , even the different photoshopped versions that i didn't select for uploading. i find this useful, in case one day we have to prove ownership .
another thing i like to do is keep the original raw untouched. this will have all the info intact.

the problem now is i have tons of dvds , which i don't look at. even my music ...
which is now counting at over a thousand cds and dvds backup.
it's getting bad, i hoard too much. i need an assistant to edit my backup,
so hopefully 2009 my sales will escalate so i can hire someone to do that, ha!ha!

[mjp]

I had this kind of plan:

Backup everything on the NAS drive (1gigabit) and had another USB drive in the bank safety deposit box. It worked but then the NAS Drive blow up:). So I had only one external drive + computer hard drive... Not good at all. Harddrives can fail any given moment, so counting on only few drives is not wise if you have valuable images on them.

So I test online backup systems and they are my current choice. I have two different setup. Amazon S3 (with jungle disk(www.jungledisk.com)) for backupping RAWs and final JPGs. Second one is Mozy.com wich I upload everything (jpeg,raw,psd). Why two system? Only for reliability and availibility. I also have one USB backup drive (I use SyncBackSE backup program)  at home also for fast access if network is not awailable or something similar.

Cost of the online storage system is cheaper than buying professional storage solution and supplying power to it. No hasle with cd/dvd's and time consuming burning and archiving progress...

Be sure you always have off-site backup as well and do not count on one or two external hard drives (they will broke on some day).

br, MjP

[ljooc]

I don't trust my laptop, it has got too much "garbage" in it that it has crushed or frozen me out a few times. So I save all my RAW files on an external 1/2 terrabyte drive and work off  that drive (and all my other important files on an external portable/mobile drive as well). I bought that 1/2 terrabyte drive at Frys for $129.99 2 years ago and it was a steal then. Now one can get a 2 terrabytes for $250 and 4 terrabyte for $581 on Amazon, I just had a look on their site, simply amazing!!! Well, global manufacturing in lowest cost location has definitely brought some fringe benefits to us all

jc

[madelaide]

External HD (originals and editions) and DVDs (basically originals).  I don't keep copies at another place, though it seems a good strategy.

Regards,
Adelaide

[Lcjtripod]

External HD (originals and editions) and DVDs (basically originals).  I don't keep copies at another place, though it seems a good strategy.

Regards,
Adelaide

You will know it is a good idea if your house burns down as my old studio did. Keep your back ups in two places ... but not in the same building!

-Larry

[MikLav]

I use Carbonite..
Cheap and above all, unlimited storage for almost no money! 

Second one is Mozy.com wich I upload everything (jpeg,raw,psd).

I found a lot of negative feedback about both Carbonite and Mozy. Data lost / not restored with Carbonite; too slow upload and various problems with client for Mozy...

Also beware that there is no commitment from online backup companies - no uptime guarantee; no data availability guarantee, i.e. there is no SLA at all and Terms_and_conditions deny any responsibility.

So using an online backup might be a useful extra option but isn't looking safe as a primary backup method, at least with cheap companies.

Amazon S3 looks better with an explicit SLA (which is assured by such a serious name like Amazon), but it becomes more expensive when you store large amounts of data (>100GB)... BTW it works nicely with freeware FireFox addon S3Fox.

[perkmeup]

I use the Drobo...and it works great...alittle expensive..but it's worth the piece of mind I get.  but......just in case I keep a backup HD of all the RAW and finished PSD files on it.  The only thing I should do is keep a copy of this HD in another location other than my house....just in case of a fire....but I currently live in a concrete house...so smoke won't hurt it.... 

[madelaide]

You will know it is a good idea if your house burns down as my old studio did. Keep your back ups in two places ... but not in the same building!

Fires are not very common here, as we live in concrete buildings (yes, things inside them still burn!).  I could have some copies elsewhere, but the most important things, such as family albums, slides from so many years of shooting film, etc - would not be "backupable" anyway. 

Regards,
Adelaide

[hali]

Fires are not very common here, as we live in concrete buildings (yes, things inside them still burn!).  I could have some copies elsewhere, but the most important things, such as family albums, slides from so many years of shooting film, etc - would not be "backupable" anyway. 
Regards,Adelaide

i started recently to copy and post process some of my families old photos . then i send them to my brothers and sisters. i think that is as good a backup as ever, because even if a building burns down or there is a fire or flood, it's unlikely it's going to happen to all of your family at once.
not even unless you live in the same area. 
also, when my bro and sis received my attachments they were really happy to get them, as they too had forgotten those old photos even existed.

[brm1949]

Right now I'm using Mozy but am thinking of using Carbonite also. It's cheaper and easier than external hard drives. i figure that the two of them should be secure. If one company fails, I will still have the other. I did have an external fail with all my images on it as back up but still had the originals on my computer hard drive. Now I don't trust any hard drive back up but feel somewhat more secure with the off site back-up from Mozy and carbonite. Would hate to lose any files, until something better comes along I'll stick with this option.

[mjp]

I use Carbonite..
Cheap and above all, unlimited storage for almost no money! 

Second one is Mozy.com wich I upload everything (jpeg,raw,psd).

I found a lot of negative feedback about both Carbonite and Mozy. Data lost / not restored with Carbonite; too slow upload and various problems with client for Mozy...

Also beware that there is no commitment from online backup companies - no uptime guarantee; no data availability guarantee, i.e. there is no SLA at all and Terms_and_conditions deny any responsibility.

So using an online backup might be a useful extra option but isn't looking safe as a primary backup method, at least with cheap companies.

Amazon S3 looks better with an explicit SLA (which is assured by such a serious name like Amazon), but it becomes more expensive when you store large amounts of data (>100GB)... BTW it works nicely with freeware FireFox addon S3Fox.

Amazon S3 get more expensive if you store lot of data into it, but with its multiple  geolocation datacenters and somewhat good SLA it is quite good and amazon is serious with its cloud computing services (like ec2, cloud front etc..). So I think my backups are quite safe in their hands:). Mozy.com has gotten some bad and good reviews so I do not count on it, but it is cheap secondary backup location.  I have also on location backup just in case and will always evaluate new backup strategies.

That s3fox is also very nice tool. But for better backup automation the jungledisk is needed.

best regards: MjP

[Alatriste]

Wich software do you use for automatic backups?

[Jack Schiffer]

Which software do you use for automatic backups?

Acronis True Image 11 is very good you can set this as a task to backup your entire
harddrive. on a particular day and time

[melking]

I use MOZY and I have to say it is awesome!  just yesterday I for some silly reason batch processed some of my files into black and white without FIRST saving the color versions......ya I know very bad move.....I thought I had the color lost forever....But I had them backed up on my MOZY.com!  I just went there on my computer...and pressed restore and there you go I got them back!!!!

So thanks to MOZY!

[GeoPappas]

Wich software do you use for automatic backups?

I have used SyncBackSE for many years and love it.  Besides the ability to create backups via various schedules, it will also keep previous versions of files (that you specify).  This is a great feature, just in case you made a change and backed it up, but then you realize you needed the previous version.

2brightsparks.com/syncback/sbse-features.html

[MikLav]

Amazon S3 get more expensive if you store lot of data into it, but with its multiple  geolocation datacenters and somewhat good SLA it is quite good and amazon is serious with its cloud computing services (like ec2, cloud front etc..). So I think my backups are quite safe in their hands:). <...>
That s3fox is also very nice tool. But for better backup automation the jungledisk is needed.

best regards: MjP

Yes indeed Amazon is serious and I am trying it now myself, so far just with manual copy via s3fox. I think I will use some automation for personal non-photography files. But I need to find another solution for photos - my ADSL line is too slow for large volume backup (it took 10.5 hours today to transfer 1.65 GB of data).

[SoftDux]

I backup all photos to a in-house server, and then from there to USB attached HDD, which I lock in a safe once done, so I at least have 3 copies of each

[avava]

 Hi All,
 
 I have about 30 Terabits of pictures does anyone know the best way to store that amount of info rather than the 60 different drives I have them on. I would love to do some kind of server that would hold that much without sinking my pocket book. Any ideas I am definitely not a pixel junkie. You want the mixing recipe for a good d-76 or a dip and dunk that compresses your highlights and shadows then I am your man but the digital age on the storage end I am pretty clueless.

Any Help...

Thanks,
AVAVA

[cdwheatley]

The good news is if one fails you still have 59 

I wonder how many days it will take just to transfer that much data.

[avava]

 Hi CD,

 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. I was just thinking it is probably better to keep them in two different locations and then wait for technology to catch up to that much data. You never know though we might come up with great new compressions that make that amount of info a thing of the past in size. Tough call. Thanks for the thoughts.

Best,
AVAVA

[anton9]

I back them up on a seperate hard drive and onto dvds

[cdwheatley]

Hi CD,

 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. I was just thinking it is probably better to keep them in two different locations and then wait for technology to catch up to that much data. You never know though we might come up with great new compressions that make that amount of info a thing of the past in size. Tough call. Thanks for the thoughts.

Best,
AVAVA

Probably around $6,000.00 to buy 60 (1 terabit externals) plus time spent trying to transfer all the info(especially if you have some older drives)..I can see why your looking for a server. Thats a lot of money to spend on back-up. I bet someone around here has a good answer.

I recently tried to transfer some info from a 3-4 year old maxtor II one-touch and vista will not accept the drivers. So now I need an XP machine just to get the info off it. They didn't mention that in the manual 

[avava]

Hey CD,

 Just ran a test on all sixty and one of my older Maxtors wouldn't fire so I am copying the back up over to a new one this week. It is a pain in the a*s but when I think about how long it would have taken to sleeve all those slides OMG and the files for keeping them in. I guess I can't bitch to much but if someone has an idea please help here. I don't know what I am talking price wise here but don't let that slow you down if you have any info.

Thx,
AVAVA

[PaulieWalnuts]

I have a 500GB internal drive which gets backed up daily to an external 1TB drive which gets backed up weekly to a 1TB extneral drive that's taken offsite.

I just had an internal drive fail a couple weeks ago and if it wasn't for the backups I'dve been hosed.

[Phil]

I use syncback for backup and have setup to automatically make a backups to a 2nd hard drive in my machine and then another one to our home server.  I am also procrastinating about making dvd backups which will be stored at work to make offsite backup as at some point in the past a few thousand images got corrupted somehow.  as I dont look at all my images all the time I didn't realise and the corrupt images propogated through and replaced the good copies on both backups

[avava]

 Hi Guys,

 Thanks for the help guys but I am talking about 30 teribits here. I already have them backed up on separate drives I am looking for another option if someone has some IT knowledge that would be a great help. By the way even the gold DVD's will not last very long so don't believe what you read about 100 years. You will be lucky to get 10 out of dvd's of any kind. Data tape is the safest method to my knowledge.

Best,
AVAVA

[tubed]

My Method is taken from the data centers I have worked with.. Probably the most secure method.. I use this for my images as well as my graphic and web clients files.

1. PC computer running linux operating system (virtually virus free)
2. 2 RAID configured hard drives (mirrored hard drives) so if one dies the other is exactly the same.
3. An external hard drive, inside of a fire proof safe that backs up nightly.

You could go 1 step further and create a tape backup, dvd's or another external drive that you change out every week or 2 that you store somewhere else.. (this would provide security from theft if your home was robbed).

 Jonathan, you could use this method for your 60 tbs, just would have to buy hard drives with that capacity.. Or use several smaller capacity drives..

 This is how most data centers protect server data..

[avava]

Thanks Tubed,

 That was a Big help. Scared to even start looking at a group of drives for all of this. I imagine they need to be different then what I have to link together which is what I would love to do, some kind of SATA or something I would imagine. Is there anyway to take the single Tera drives I have and link them all and have them connected to their own computer and be able to search all my data?

Thanks,
AVAVA

[tubed]

Thanks Tubed,

 That was a Big help. Scared to even start looking at a group of drives for all of this. I imagine they need to be different then what I have to link together which is what I would love to do, some kind of SATA or something I would imagine. Is there anyway to take the single Tera drives I have and link them all and have them connected to their own computer and be able to search all my data?

Thanks,
AVAVA

Yes there is.. You could do that a couple ways..

1. through USB hub (if they are external or inserted into a external adapter), you can connect them all through a USB hub (multiple USB connections) but for 60 hard drives you would need several of these.
2. you could use a storage rack to insert them all into like this this (uses RAID like I mentioned above).. There are also larger versions of similar towers - http://www.addonics.com/products/raid_system/mst4.asp

[avava]

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

[Hoodie Ninja]

I have an external hard drive that I back everything on my computer to.  I keep the external HD in a fire resistant safe when not being used.  The "good" pictures that I've processed and submitted are also on my SmugMug site.  I still need to upload all my family-oriented picture there.

[cdwheatley]

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

[tubed]

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..

[cdwheatley]

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

 

[avava]

 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]

Hi J

 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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

deleted

[davidm]

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]

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 voil�.

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]

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]

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]

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