Well my hard drive on my laptop has officially died.

so this is your friendly reminder to BACKUP YOUR PHOTOS.  Preferably in more than 2 places.  I think I managed to save everything as the death was fairly slowly.  The computer started acting slowly with a few write errors.  i saves all the important / non backed up info on a external drive.. the next day the computer was dead.

I am still waiting for a new drive in the mail to see if i can get the computer working again.

so anyhow, just to repeat myself.
Remember to back up your stuff.  It would have been VERY depressing to loose weeks, months or years of work, and photos (memories and income)

I agree two backups maybe one extrernal and another optical (to protect against EMP),

To protect against EMP, are you expecting a nuclear war?�

Mark

for those unfamiliar with EMP here is a link

not to sure i am so concerened about that however if you are including lighting strikes which fry your computer++ it might be a consideration.

Sorry to hear that! I'll have to backup quite soon, because it's been a while now.

A friend of mine recently got a virus on her computer that rendered all her JPGs to 0kb.

I found out that my growing image library is harder and harder to backup. Here are several reasons:
- The space you need for backups (at the moment it is +150 gigabytes)
- The integrity of the backupped files (do you really know that the backup files are ok?)
- The integrity of the original files (do you really know that the backup files are ok?)
- It takes a long time to backup images on the DVD discs (34 discs)
- Cheap DVD disc's can not be used for storing data since they get corrupted very easily
- How to protect against fire, power failures, high voltage peaks, lightning, etc..
- New equipment costs (NAS-server with battery backuped raid controller with multiple discs, UPS, blue ray burner, safety deposit box at the off-site location)

I only backup original RAW files from files I upload to stocsk, jpeg versions, psd-versions (curves etc on own layers), raw files of them and model releases.All the other raw-files will be deleted on short time.

My current solution is:

I have Linux based file server which have big harddrive(Ubuntu linux on server mode). I use Nero Backit-up program to backup images with the verify to file server daily with verify option enabled. I use file integrity check program monthly to detect errors on original & backuped files (it works but not good as I want (lot of work with it)). I burn Image collection to DVD's once a year or similar (high grade verbatim discs and record them at low speed).

This system works some what good. I got hd-interface crash about 6 months ago, lot of images got corrupted  (originals and the backuped ones, because I didn't use that file integrity check program that time and the backup program backuped the corrupted files on the backup system). But I got allmost everything from DVD's (only few images got lost because  corruption of DVD discs).

So what I really need more is security againsts fire, lightning, hardware crash, burglary etc..  And I have to replace dvd's with blue-ray or similar high capasity optical media.

So do you know any good online backup systems, where datacenter is located in safe place and the monthly fee is low?

br. Mikko P.

I did a full backup the other day. It was getting really nerve wrecking without.

You need a Raid controller and supplied software. Many new motherboards supports raid configurations or you can buy raid controller (ide,sata,scsi).

br, Mikko P.

The problem I have heard with mirroring drive is that if the original gets corrupted, that corrupted file gets mirrored and teh previous "good" copy gets overwritten.

I have still to sort out my solution but I think I will just put a copy of "my photos" onto multiple externals.

Leaf:

Do you really want to mirror ALL of your files?  Or are you looking to backup ONLY your documents?

I only backup my documents (which includes my images).

My strategy uses a two part backup process.

My images are all stored on one INTERNAL hard disk.

The first part of the backup process is to make an INTERNAL backup on another physical hard disk.  The images (along with other documents) are backed up on a continual basis using SyncBack SE to the other internal physical hard disk.  I have set up SyncBack SE to backup my images once a day in the middle of the night, but you can set it up at any frequency you want.  Some of my other documents are set up to backup every hour on the hour.

The second part of the backup process is to make an EXTERNAL backup (on an external USB hard disk).  I store the external hard disk in a fire safe in the garage.  This backup is done about once every week or two.  I should do it more often, but I usually forget.

This way I have two backups of my data if I ever need.

But to get back to your original question, mirroring is defined as RAID level 1.