Backup (Page 2): I know what it is like to loose in a house fire. Back in the day of film. I lost all of a year`s worth of pictures/negs/slides of Viet Nam. Along with everything I...

tankdonovan Loc: Tennessee

rmalarz wrote:

The reality of the situation is, if I were to come home to find the place burnt to the ground, backups would be the least of my concerns. The amount of time it would take to get a settlement along with the aggravation of dealing with insurance companies would put photography on a very far back burner.

So, offsite backups sound incredibly good, in reality of facing a loss, probably useless.
--Bob

I know what it is like to loose in a house fire. Back in the day of film. I lost all of a year`s worth of pictures/negs/slides of Viet Nam. Along with everything I cared about. Also, you are right about the insurance company part. A living HELL.

hogesinwa Loc: Dalyellup Western Australia

How true is this?

I was told some years ago that no matter how much your backup drive cost, its switch cost a few cents and they all come from the same factory.

BTW, I use 2 separate drives, plus put them on my old laptop (just used as a drive now) plus put them on another drive from yet another laptop drive which i have in a case.

gvarner Loc: Central Oregon Coast

A friend of mine uses a device that stacks 4 external drives together and has a clone function to facilitate replacing data from one to another, something like that. I don’t know what it’s called but he had one crash and cloned to a new one with no problems.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

therwol wrote:

The best discs for archiving are M discs, said to have a life of up to 1000 years. They are available in DVD and Blu Ray discs. Newer burners should be compatible with them. (Something you should check if your burner is more than a few years old.) CDs won't even hold 20 RAW pictures coming out of my Nikon D810.

👍👍 MDisks are the answer (CDs and DVDs can degrade over time and become unusable). Most Blu Ray players will record them - just look for the MDisks logo on the drive, box and manual. Last time I looked, they were available in sizes up to 100GB.

mtbear

As an IT professional we had saying: "backing up to a hard drive is as good as not backing up at all. Personally I backup to the highest quality production DVDs available (as opposed to mastering DVDs), only a little more reliable than hard drives. The best possible backup strategy is to rotate your backups between multiple off site servers. Each time you copy your files the OS will check the file structure and repair it. Even this strategy is not 100% reliable though it is estimated it could provide reliable for thousands of years and has the advantage of keeping you files up to date with changing file structures and OSs.
In the end it all boils down to cost effectiveness.

aellman Loc: Boston MA

PAB20 wrote:

How do you backup your photos? I shoot in RAW for... (show quote)

You have learned the hard way that you are not risk-free unless you have cloud backup in addition to external drives. I recommend Carbonite. >Alan

Picture Taker Loc: Michigan Thumb

I will down load all my pictures on 2 separate hard drives as I had one fail (About 10years ago) and it was $1,000.00 to try to recover with a small chance of success. Have 2 and be safe.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Picture Taker wrote:

I will down load all my pictures on 2 separate hard drives as I had one fail (About 10years ago) and it was $1,000.00 to try to recover with a small chance of success. Have 2 and be safe.

Still need an off-site copy for disaster recovery. That 2nd hard drive in RAID 1 configuration (mirroring) is good idea right until the moment of a fire, flood, power supply regulator failure or lightning strike takes out both drives (double drive failures DO happen).

JD750 Loc: SoCal

Ask 10 people you will get 10 different methods. The important thing is that you DO Back up you valuable data (not just images).

Some methods are more secure than others, backup drives can fail. There is a method that is called
the 3-2-1 method that works for any kind of backup, not just images:

The 3-2-1 backup method is an easy-to-remember acronym for a common approach to keeping your data safe in almost any failure scenario. The rule is: keep at least three (3) copies of your data, and store two (2) backup copies on different storage media, with one (1) of them located offsite.

redlegfrog

rmalarz wrote:

The reality of the situation is, if I were to come home to find the place burnt to the ground, backups would be the least of my concerns. The amount of time it would take to get a settlement along with the aggravation of dealing with insurance companies would put photography on a very far back burner.

So, offsite backups sound incredibly good, in reality of facing a loss, probably useless.
--Bob

You bring up a good point and it helps to get things in perspective.

I think and plan about backups because I know anything "computer" will fail eventually. This I can do, I've got it covered, but to prepare for the Flood, Fire, Earthquake disaster gets to be a bit much.
If I was making a living with photography I would want offsite or cloud storage for sure but as a hobbyist I don't think its worth the time and worry.

nadelewitz Loc: Ithaca NY

Goes to show that you can't have too many backups for valuable data, and that a hard drive or any other media can fail AT ANY TIME.
All my files going back decades are on my NAS server, backed up to six other drives with varying frequency depending on how much I add/delete to/from the NAS. And I have backups on two bare hard drives that are kept in my storage shed away from the house in case of fire etc. I don't trust cloud storage any more than multiple hard drives.
By the way, Transcend is not a maker of bare hard drives. Inside your Transcend hard drive case is a bare drive made by WD, Seagate, Hitachi or someone else. Did you take out the bare drive and connect it to a computer by itself via a USB dock? The problem could be the circuit board in the case and not the drive itself.
If the drive itself is bad,you can replace it with whatever brand & size you want. No need to throw away a good enclosure, if the circuit board is not the cause of the failure. Can't have too many external drives to use.

JD750 Loc: SoCal

redlegfrog wrote:

You bring up a good point and it helps to get things in perspective.

I think and plan about backups because I know anything "computer" will fail eventually. This I can do, I've got it covered, but to prepare for the Flood, Fire, Earthquake disaster gets to be a bit much.
If I was making a living with photography I would want offsite or cloud storage for sure but as a hobbyist I don't think its worth the time and worry.

It's as simple as backing up to a portable hard drive and then keeping it at work or at a friend's house. Swap it occasionally with your home version.

was_a_guru

1. Don't backup on HDs. Use SSDs. They are much more reliable.
2. Use at least 2 drives minimum. Alternate between the drives on a regular schedule (every two weeks). If for some reason a corrupt backup occurs you don't lose everything.
3. Verify the backup, & keep the SD card intact until backup is verified.
4. Have an offsite backup as well. If you get robbed or fire, or some other disaster you can recover all your photos.

photoman022 Loc: Manchester CT USA

It's not overkill! I've had two external hard drives die on me. I learned (on here) to have more than one backup and I'm glad I did. I, too, have 3 external hard drives to which I back up.

Curmudgeon Loc: SE Arizona

I backup on: 2 external hard drives, 1 internal HD and 1 off site location all manual backups. I don't trust automatic backup software either. Also backup all pictures plus data to an external HD using Norton's back utility. My slides and negatives are in a safe deposit box at my local bank. OK I'm paranoid but I sometimes worry if I'm paranoid enough.