Posted by Genny K. on October 10, 2006 at 12:42 AM
OK, how many backups of your image files do you need to make? I'm at the point where I need to start changing how I do things, I think. I'm a bit of a packrat, and I have a tendency to save too many images. I've been shooting digital for several years now, and the files are piling up.
My computer hard drive is full (I just spent several days doing a bunch of serious editing to clean it up some). I have everything backed up onto a Western Digital hard drive. I am in the process of trying to do a better job of sorting, and I have another hard drive that I plan to back up my high priority files onto. I used to back up my files onto CDs and DVDs back when I was taking pictures with a point-n-shoot that had smaller files, but I quit doing that when I got my 20D.
How many times do you back up your files?
Do you back up your files differently depending on how important they are?
I'd appreciate any words of wisdom on this.
Posted by Ron Niebrugge on October 10, 2006 at 1:03 AM
Everything is placed on to two hard drives in my office, and a third hard drive kept off-site. We also do a 4th back-up to DVD which is probably unnecessary, but I'm a little paranoid when it comes to hard drives.
Posted by Jim Goldstein on October 10, 2006 at 2:25 AM
Minimum of two backups on hard drives. They do fail and when it happens its very unnerving. Also there is much to be said for backing up your images in multiple formats... so DVDs are a good 3rd backup format. Keeping one or two formats off site is quite smart. That is the one thing that I need to do still.
Posted by Ed Cordes on October 10, 2006 at 7:05 AM
I use two HDs as well as DVD. The three backups allow me to sleep better. I do konw what you mean about being a pack rat. I always have to discipline myself to delete files I will never use. RE sorting - I am probably a little old stule but I have ben using the filing and taging system in PSE 3. This system works for me as I use the DVD files to load thumbs into the filing system then create tags. I like being able to only store thumbs on my HD (in the filing system only) and being able to view thumbs when searching for images.
Have fun.
Posted by Steve Foss on October 10, 2006 at 6:58 PM
Working hard drive is a 280Gb Maxtor. All images are backed up once on cd/dvd that stay in my office and again on cd/dvd stored off the property. That way, a catastrophic fire at my home office won't eliminate my work.
Thanks for the input. At least I'm headed in the right direction! Now I just have to get a method established so it's not such a pain to keep up with.
Ed- I do everything with thumbnails, too. So far, and maybe this will change, filing by keywords just doesn't work for me. Everything I do is nature-related, if I used the key word "mountains", I'd have 80 % of my images in there.
With all the flooding going on right now in Seward, I bet you're really happy to have off-site backup Ron!
We simply don't trust hard drives for long term backup and storage. There's a new volcano (Four Peaked) acting up only 80 miles from here, and volcanic ash is like sand in drives.
We have images on at least two and sometimes three drives over the short term, along with bulk backup on CDs in a secure location. Eventually (as I'm doing now), everything gets culled and prime images go onto multiple copies of best quality CDs for distribution to secure sites.
I don't think there is such a thing as TOO paranoid when it comes to backups, considering the possibilities of theft, fire, loss, media corruption and natural disasters.
Discussion
6 repliesMy computer hard drive is full (I just spent several days doing a bunch of serious editing to clean it up some). I have everything backed up onto a Western Digital hard drive. I am in the process of trying to do a better job of sorting, and I have another hard drive that I plan to back up my high priority files onto. I used to back up my files onto CDs and DVDs back when I was taking pictures with a point-n-shoot that had smaller files, but I quit doing that when I got my 20D.
How many times do you back up your files?
Do you back up your files differently depending on how important they are?
I'd appreciate any words of wisdom on this.
Have fun.
Ed- I do everything with thumbnails, too. So far, and maybe this will change, filing by keywords just doesn't work for me. Everything I do is nature-related, if I used the key word "mountains", I'd have 80 % of my images in there.
We simply don't trust hard drives for long term backup and storage. There's a new volcano (Four Peaked) acting up only 80 miles from here, and volcanic ash is like sand in drives.
We have images on at least two and sometimes three drives over the short term, along with bulk backup on CDs in a secure location. Eventually (as I'm doing now), everything gets culled and prime images go onto multiple copies of best quality CDs for distribution to secure sites.
I don't think there is such a thing as TOO paranoid when it comes to backups, considering the possibilities of theft, fire, loss, media corruption and natural disasters.