Image back-up..?

[andyoxon]

What methods you you use.  I have all my photos (~27Gb) on the PC hard disk, and on two sets of DVDs .

Does anyone use online back-up?  I'd be interested to know how you get on with this...

I heard a story on the radio the other day, about a family who had a copy of all their photos on the 3 PCs in the house.  One night they were all stolen. Apparently when in frustration (police fringerprinted but took no details of the PCs) they advertised locally for the photos back for a reward and no questions asked, the police said they were breaking the law...

Andy

[Biggsy]

PC hard disk + External hard disk + DVDs

I think burglars are unlikely to steal ordinary-looking DVD discs, although fire is still a worry.

Online backup is too expensive for me (for large qualities of data).

[Ivo]

PC Hard Disk & External Hard Disk. Selection of photos on another external HD.
When I go away for at least a week the main external HD is transferred to my mothers house, the small one travels along. Still have to acquire an extra external HD which will stay at my mothers house except when the backup is refreshed.

[Zipperhead]

I use a pair of mirrored disks in my PC, which are then synchronised with a copy on my NAS.

I'm thinking about buying a second NAS so that I can mirror those as well (I'm not worried about losing pictures if it dies, but having to re-do all my mp3's)

[sas]

I copy everything onto a portable hard drive when I remember, and most stuff also gets uploaded to Flickr. You can set the permissions on photos to limit who can see them, and I don't think the paid-for version has any storage limits. Around £12.50/yr at current exchange rates.

[TimO]

Be a bit wary of things like DVDs, I'm note sure what the practical life of them is, but I certainly have CDs which are only a few years old, and are now unreadable, although there is no obvious physical damage to the CD.

[Lonewolff]

Also just beware that if you backup to NAS and have a break in they will probably take the NAS box too. I speak from personal experience here.

[Zipperhead]

That's why I want another one which can live tucked away somewhere and mirror over wireless.

Hmm, my garden shed has power....

[marna]

Backup hard drive in the office, and flickr. The flickr lot are usually some way behind, and both only have the last year or two of photo-ing on them. Most of what I have is on neg, though, rather than digital, and short of scanning it all there's no reasonable way to back it up. (And scanning is a very tedious job.)

Photos are of things and places, and not people and events. It'd not be too tragic if I lost them all.

[David Martin]

My brother and I have talked about hosting complementary backups of each others data. Might have to talk to him more once his domestic situation settles down (separation+divorce ongoing).

Then there are geographically distinct and cheap hosting arrangements.

..d

[Lonewolff]

I now use a NAS box at home and a second NAS which is stored with my web hosting kit in a datacenter somewhere in england. Once bitten twice shy I think the saying goes Loosing 5 years worth of photographs is Not Nice

[Polar Bear]

What's a NAS?

[Chris N]

What's a NAS?

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/e9vYDJCm63c&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/e9vYDJCm63c&rel=1</a>

[Lonewolff]

Not quite what I had in mind. Try Wikipedia

[Gandalf]

I have always understood NAS to be Nikon Acquisition Syndrome 

[Jaded]

Fire will lose you prints too.

I have a collection of CDs, DVDs, Hard disks and an NAS.

It's a devil of a job making sure they are all up to date!

[TimO]

Funny, no one has mentioned turning the digital images into photo prints or a printed photo book as a way of "backing-up" the photos...

It does depend on how you do this, a lot of inkjet printouts won't look very good in a few years time.

[Crackle]

What methods you you use.  I have all my photos (~27Gb) on the PC hard disk, and on two sets of DVDs .

Does anyone use online back-up?  I'd be interested to know how you get on with this...

I heard a story on the radio the other day, about a family who had a copy of all their photos on the 3 PCs in the house.  One night they were all stolen. Apparently when in frustration (police fringerprinted but took no details of the PCs) they advertised locally for the photos back for a reward and no questions asked, the police said they were breaking the law...

Andy

I use an online backup service now. It's just matured into something usable in the last two years and most impotantly it works. The peace of mind is worth it alone, no more, 'when was the last time I backed this up?' questions, because it does it within an hour or so of you creating the images.

I looked at quite a few before I tried. Most I rejected on cost, cost per storage, storage limits or being tied in with something else I didn't want. The two I finally tried were www.carbonite.com and www.mozy.com the home solution. I opted for Mozy because it's a bit more fully featured and because it backs up open files (Outlook) and keeps incremental files, so if you want that spreadsheet back from 10 days ago you can get it. You access files either from on your own computer or from a website login where you can create datasets to download.

Uploading the data initially took me about a week (21Gb upload). It works seamlessly and if interrupted picks up from where you left off. Data is encrypted and if you want you can apply your own encryption key. They do warn you though, lose the key and they can't help you. I now have mine configured to back up about 4 times a day. It backs up all office files, images and MP3's. It's still a good idea to do your own manual back-up, as it would take a good while to download 21GB but in the event of a disaster, at least you could.

I think I signed up for three years as you get a better deal and for the peace of mind it's well worth it.

Edit: Internet connection isn't slowed because it throttles back when it's in use, you don't even notice when it's backing up.

[Valiant]

Burn to DVD, backed up onto server, also an external HD and now also Flickr. External HD lives in the fireproof safe

[Zipperhead]

I looked at quite a few before I tried. Most I rejected on cost, cost per storage, storage limits or being tied in with something else I didn't want. The two I finally tried were www.carbonite.com and www.mozy.com the home solution. I opted for Mozy because it's a bit more fully featured and because it backs up open files (Outlook) and keeps incremental files, so if you want that spreadsheet back from 10 days ago you can get it. You access files either from on your own computer or from a website login where you can create datasets to download.

That's interesting and the prices are good. It's cheap enough that I think I'll try mozy, it's not much money for an extra level of security. But I wonder how long it will take to uplaod 170Gb of pictures 

[Crackle]

That's interesting and the prices are good. It's cheap enough that I think I'll try mozy, it's not much money for an extra level of security. But I wonder how long it will take to uplaod 170Gb of pictures 

If you've got a 512Kb upload and say you actually manage about 300Kb in reality, then 3-4Gb a day and up to 6Gb. I just left my PC on while it did it. Check your speed with this http://www.mybroadbandspeed.co.uk/

[TimO]

...or check it with Speedtest.net.

One thing to watch out with, when using these online backups, is that if your ADSL has a cap, and need to recover your disc, you may have problems.  I can upload an arbitrary amount (at around 350kb/s), but if I try to transfer more than 20G back in a month, it's going to start costing me additional money.

[Crackle]

...or check it with Speedtest.net.

One thing to watch out with, when using these online backups, is that if your ADSL has a cap, and need to recover your disc, you may have problems.  I can upload an arbitrary amount (at around 350kb/s), but if I try to transfer more than 20G back in a month, it's going to start costing me additional money.

This is true and I should have said it's still necessary to have your own backup regime. Mozy do offer to send the data on disc if you do have a catastrophic loss, which is really what you'd be talking about. In truth I'd probably be able to restore from several different sources, so when I came to use Mozy for the final restore, it wouldn't actually need to download all the data, just what's missing.

[TimO]

The Mozy site does seem to be quite interesting, and possibly good value for money.  Does anyone know of a similar thing which would work for Linux?  As far as I can see, they only support Windows, and it could be useful to me to have a similar, personal level of backup, that would work under Linux as well.

[CathH]

Laptop backed up to 500GB LaCie.  500GB LaCie mirrored to partner's 1TB LaCie.  My LaCie also mirrored once per month to second 500GB LaCie which lives at work with me.