Long ago when all I had was a digital point and shoot I trekked out at 6AM with one of my best friends on a day-long kayaking trip. We paddled across the Intracoastal Waterway in Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina, and spent the exploring the small rivers, inlets, and marshlands.
The highlight of our day, and the most frightening moment as well, was when we noticed a school of perhaps a hundred jellyfish swimming under our kayaks. And, inevitably, we got lost. We could always see land, but the path to land was curvy and complicated.
Throughout the entire day I was snapping photos left and right. Captured some great moments, and amazing sunset just as we pulled back in, and the frightful jellyfish.
Two days later, I lost the camera. The day after that my hard drive crashed, never to be recovered. I lost all the photos of that trip, which sadly was the last time I ever had the chance to go kayaking with Tristan.
Do you make backups of your photos? If so, what methods to do you use? How often do you make backups?
I learned a lot since then. My backup methods are fairly simple.
On a daily basis, I copy all my photos I shot, if any, to my local hard drive and a portable backup (a Western Digital Passport 500GB).
On a weekly basis, I copy all my edited, cropped photos to the same portable backup. I also have a running photo called "Photo Archive" on my local hard drive. When that folder reaches 4.7GB, I burn all the contents of that folder to a DVD.
On a monthly basis, I take all my Photo DVD's to a safety deposit box at my bank for safe keeping off-site. This way, if my home is ever robbed, burned, or flooded I have a backup off-site.
This way, I have three backups on two different mediums at least one off-site. This is called the 3-2-1 Backup Method.
I actually make back ups once a month- I just burn whatever is new onto a disc. Unfortunately once a month didn't help me out though- our PC just crashed and needs a new hard drive and motherboard, some of my newest and best portraits were on that computer :(
Inside the Apple universe, I use their Time Machine to automate backups - I am lazy and really don't want to think about making backups. Aperture creates vaults that allows me to use one eternal HD. I use a third drive to work from; all that sits on my machine are versions and thumbnails that are related to the master images.
As an aside, I read fairly recently on one of the tech sites that there is a shelf life of CD and DVDs, even without damage such as crashes. If I can find the article again, I'll post a link to it.
Hard drives are way too cheap not to backup! What good is spending hundreds or thousands on new lenses and fancy gear if everything you've ever done can be wiped out in an instant?
I'm on a three-tier data system myself. Files get pulled from the memory card via Lightroom and then from there everything gets added to the catalog and arranged in folders by year and date. Then copies of this structure is also made to a separate internal hard drive at the same time. Then once week those files get baked up to an external drive. I also have my own online business and have my own servers so I copy my most important photos there for a remote backup, but I still need to get a permanent off-site backup solution up and running.
So at any given time the data is on two or three separate physical drives, plus the really valuable stuff is online somewhere in case the unthinkable happens.
@jasonbarnette wow that's a great suggestion about creating a file to burn to dvd - i do back up to an external hard drive -- the challenge is i live in vermont and none of the local banks have safe deposit boxes... and i shoot all raw so files are too big to do web based save. however i have been thinking of getting a good safe that is heat resistant that way i could put the dvds in that...
I used a external hard drive. I keep meaning to put them on a dvd as well. About a year ago, I almost lost every single photo from 2003. Both children since birth, our wedding, countless holidays
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Something is better than nothing!!!!!!!!!!!
During my study in Computer Animation I learned the ever so tremendous lesson that you should ALWAYS backup your work and SAVE OFTEN!
Losing a months worth of Animation work will teach you this lesson :|
I always backup my most important stuff on multiple HDs whenever i finish it as well as upload it to an online backup
For those who are, or plan on archiving backups on DVDs or something to put off-site somewhere in a safe, lock box, etc. you may actually want to save some time by skipping the DVDs and just get a spare hard drive to tuck away.
Good archival DVDs will usually run you close to $75 for a spindle of 50. At 4.7GB per disk, that's a grand total of 235 GB on a spindle. That comes out to 32 cents per GB, not to mention the countless hours you'll spend copying that much data to individual disks.
Hard drives are so cheap you can now pick up a 500 GB drive for as low as 50 bucks! That's only 10 cents per GB! Not only that, but you'll be able to transfer files to and from the drive in a matter of minutes as opposed to laboriously burning individual discs. And, a single hard drive takes up about half as much space as a spindle of DVDs so you'll be able to fit even more in your safe or safe deposit box or whatever the case may be.
The only drawback is if the drive is off site you have to go get it so you can add more files to it and you can't just burn a few discs to drop off at your leisure, but for a third of the price it's worth considering IMO. Just some food for thought.
wonderful! 3-2-1 very helpful all.
Jeremy Vohwinkle you're so right!!! -"Hard drives are way too cheap not to backup! What good is spending hundreds or thousands on new lenses and fancy gear if everything you've ever done can be wiped out in an instant?"
@marubozo Very true that the cost of a portable hard drive outweighs DVD's, but there is a single flaw in that thinking: portable hard drives are prone to water damage, heat damage, and failure. DVD's are not.
One of the biggest parts of the 3-2-1 system is to have your backups on two different mediums, such as hard drive and DVD.
I've had two Western Digital drives die on me, which I think is par for the course with them. I'm currently waiting to get the 1TB drive by Apple simply because it's wireless. But it's more than just keeping backups off-site, it's important to keep them on two different formats as well.
@jasonbarnette That's true, but DVDs simply aren't very stable media. Archival quality discs will certainly last longer than a regular disc, but the microscopic recording material can degrade over time and that data is lost forever. And a DVD will melt at a fraction of the temperature that causes hard disk to fail.
A hard drive is more than the data it holds. It's full of circuit boards, capacitors, and other electronics and mechanical parts, and that's the stuff that fails.
Furthermore, hard disk data CAN be recovered in the event of failure. If a drive crashes, gets soaked in water, or whatever else the case may be, even though the drive may not work if you simply plug it in, you can get that data recovered quite easily. Unless the platters were subjected to a really strong magnet or physically damaged by force, you'll get your data back. Once your DVD gets damaged, which could be something as simple as a scratch to getting deformed by extreme heat, that data is gone forever and there's virtually no possible way to recover it.
It's true though, if you have a three-part system and utilize different media for at least one of them, you're in a position where there's little chance that all of your data would be wiped completely at one time. But personally, for long-term archival, I'll take a hard drive over a DVD any day.
Obviously there are a dozen ways to skin a cat, and at the end of the day as long as you have your data in different physical locations there's very little to worry about sans global disaster.
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On a daily basis, I copy all my photos I shot, if any, to my local hard drive and a portable backup (a Western Digital Passport 500GB).
On a weekly basis, I copy all my edited, cropped photos to the same portable backup. I also have a running photo called "Photo Archive" on my local hard drive. When that folder reaches 4.7GB, I burn all the contents of that folder to a DVD.
On a monthly basis, I take all my Photo DVD's to a safety deposit box at my bank for safe keeping off-site. This way, if my home is ever robbed, burned, or flooded I have a backup off-site.
This way, I have three backups on two different mediums at least one off-site. This is called the 3-2-1 Backup Method.
Backup! Backup! Backup! At the very least, just get one of those USB 2.0 powered hard drives.
My external crashed and I hadn't backed up on to disc anything from November and have lost the lot :(
As an aside, I read fairly recently on one of the tech sites that there is a shelf life of CD and DVDs, even without damage such as crashes. If I can find the article again, I'll post a link to it.
I'm on a three-tier data system myself. Files get pulled from the memory card via Lightroom and then from there everything gets added to the catalog and arranged in folders by year and date. Then copies of this structure is also made to a separate internal hard drive at the same time. Then once week those files get baked up to an external drive. I also have my own online business and have my own servers so I copy my most important photos there for a remote backup, but I still need to get a permanent off-site backup solution up and running.
So at any given time the data is on two or three separate physical drives, plus the really valuable stuff is online somewhere in case the unthinkable happens.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Something is better than nothing!!!!!!!!!!!
Losing a months worth of Animation work will teach you this lesson :|
I always backup my most important stuff on multiple HDs whenever i finish it as well as upload it to an online backup
Good archival DVDs will usually run you close to $75 for a spindle of 50. At 4.7GB per disk, that's a grand total of 235 GB on a spindle. That comes out to 32 cents per GB, not to mention the countless hours you'll spend copying that much data to individual disks.
Hard drives are so cheap you can now pick up a 500 GB drive for as low as 50 bucks! That's only 10 cents per GB! Not only that, but you'll be able to transfer files to and from the drive in a matter of minutes as opposed to laboriously burning individual discs. And, a single hard drive takes up about half as much space as a spindle of DVDs so you'll be able to fit even more in your safe or safe deposit box or whatever the case may be.
The only drawback is if the drive is off site you have to go get it so you can add more files to it and you can't just burn a few discs to drop off at your leisure, but for a third of the price it's worth considering IMO. Just some food for thought.
Jeremy Vohwinkle you're so right!!! -"Hard drives are way too cheap not to backup! What good is spending hundreds or thousands on new lenses and fancy gear if everything you've ever done can be wiped out in an instant?"
One of the biggest parts of the 3-2-1 system is to have your backups on two different mediums, such as hard drive and DVD.
I've had two Western Digital drives die on me, which I think is par for the course with them. I'm currently waiting to get the 1TB drive by Apple simply because it's wireless. But it's more than just keeping backups off-site, it's important to keep them on two different formats as well.
A hard drive is more than the data it holds. It's full of circuit boards, capacitors, and other electronics and mechanical parts, and that's the stuff that fails.
Furthermore, hard disk data CAN be recovered in the event of failure. If a drive crashes, gets soaked in water, or whatever else the case may be, even though the drive may not work if you simply plug it in, you can get that data recovered quite easily. Unless the platters were subjected to a really strong magnet or physically damaged by force, you'll get your data back. Once your DVD gets damaged, which could be something as simple as a scratch to getting deformed by extreme heat, that data is gone forever and there's virtually no possible way to recover it.
It's true though, if you have a three-part system and utilize different media for at least one of them, you're in a position where there's little chance that all of your data would be wiped completely at one time. But personally, for long-term archival, I'll take a hard drive over a DVD any day.
Obviously there are a dozen ways to skin a cat, and at the end of the day as long as you have your data in different physical locations there's very little to worry about sans global disaster.