Festina Lente Loc: Florida & Missouri

Best Media to Backup Your Photos

I have been studying the best media for me to use for saving and backing up my photographic images for some time. Since this subject understandingly comes up often on UHH, I decided to share what medias I have been using for the past 5 years.

I store all my primary data on a Netgear Raid 5 NAS, not on a local hard drive. I have an automatic backup program that is run every time it is connected to my NAS via my home Ethernet. I do not use WiFi for backup.

I also backup an image of the OS (Operating System) and application programs on the hard drive (basically the C: drive) to the NAS once a month. With the RAID redundancy, multiple hard drives would have to fail simultaneously to lose any data. A possible but unlikely event. If any hard drive acts up, the NAS sends me a message and I simply swap out the hard drive while everything is running in less than a minute. Easy and fast.

My NAS has a dedicated UPS to eliminate voltages spikes and transient voltage, as well as FAT corruption should power fail while writing to the primary hard drive.

I keep my NAS operating in a safe with other valuables. The UPS is outside the safe. This helps protect it from theft and fire.

For longer term and offsite storage I periodically take out a hard drive from the NAS and store it in a safety deposit box at my local bank. A new hard drive is installed in the NAS and the RAID controller automatically makes it a part of the RAID array. Pretty easy and automatic.

For archival storage of my most important data and images I burn the files to Verbatim 95355 UltraLife Gold Archival Grade DVD-Rs. Yes, they are expensive (about $1.75 for each 4.6GB disk) but it is a permanent long-term solution for all practical purposes. These archival disks have been independently tested and rated for between 25 and 150 years depending on storage conditions. That's long enough for me, as I plan to keep my hard drives updated and migrated to newer technology every 10 years or so contingent on what comes down the road.

At the end of the day, I'm not sure who will want to go thru thousands of files and images when I'm gone anyway, so my backup strategy is primarily for me and hopefully my family. BTW, I do try to keep important family images separate from my general photographs as I believe those will be the only ones my heirs will really care about.

Bottom-line a good back-up system has to be:
- easy to maintain,
- virtually automatic,
- difficult to fail completely,
- easy to restore,
- provide reliable long-term storage,
- relatively economical,
- and easy transport to newer technologies as they become established standards. Established standards are important so that supporting hardware and software technology does not go obsolete quickly.

My choice of a combination of magnetic hard drives and optical disks was based on these criteria. My decision not to rely on memory (CF chips or USB thumb drives) is based on their proven unreliability, vulnerably for any period and evolving supporting technologies.

My decision not to use online data storage systems is based on too many layers of technology between my files and wherever they are stored to make it work correctly, difficulty and duration for a full recovery, and faith that any one company has the resources and capital to stay in business in such a competitive and dynamic environment.

I hope this helps someone with formulating their photo back-up strategy.

Everyone has a system they believe works, but until it is tested...

BboH Loc: s of 2/21, Ellicott City, MD

The only thing to be wary of is evolving technology - We grew out of floppy disk readers, we grew out of the HD disk readers, we grew out of the Zip disk readers - we grew out of video tapes - be wary of growing out of DVD readers

marvin Klein Loc: upstate NY

U just have to keep up to date and change with the times.
That is life

richnash46 Loc: Texas

Personally, I think we need to nominate you to be the head of Homeland Security! :wink:

blacks2 Loc: SF. Bay area

Better yet, let's go back to the film days and forget about all this stuff that sounds Latin to this old man. LOL.

wilsondl2 Loc: Lincoln, Nebraska

This may be a noval idea but why not print the best ones and keep them in fireproof filecabnet. - Dave

Festina Lente Loc: Florida & Missouri

I assume you mean prints?
I view the digital images like negatives. The only way to make more of the same quality is with the originial digital image. Furthermore, I only print those I plan on using to frame or hang. Some are for memory and familly history, while most are commercial.
Not only would prints force me to really narrow down what I kept, they would be hard to catalog and find, prints degrade over time, they are expensive, and I'd need a very large fireproof safe to keep tens of thousands of prints. Besides, what size should they be? And I'd still want a digital back-up in another location, right?
Sorry, unless your toungue was in your cheek, saving everything important as prints is just not practical from any perspective I can envision.

pakeha

"For longer term and offsite storage I periodically take out a hard drive from the NAS and store it in a safety deposit box at my local bank"
if you are using this method for a backup of your data on the RAID 5 NAS how do you recover the information from that single drive?
As RAID 5 writes the data in Stripes over the Disks full recovery should be impossible from one drive in the RAID 5 SET

Festina Lente Loc: Florida & Missouri

Thanks! That is true. Nice catch (wish I could edit the original post accordingly...).
I should have said RAID level 1 with blocks mirrored and no stripes for the photo back-up (Netgear ReadyNAS Duo w 2TB). I do simply pull one drive out and hot swap it. I also have a RAID 5 for my general server storage and that data that is used by several people, however my photos are all saved on the NAS Duo RAID 1, which is dedicated to my photography. It is a simple mirroring Raid level 1 array (2 drives).
I have been considering getting a third drive and simply backing up to that drive instead of rebuilding the array each time I swap a drive out. I understand that this poses a short term risk each time I hot swap (?) Do you know anything about this?

pakeha

It is your choice but the general techie consensus of using RAID 1 as backup is a no go. Too high a risk of data loss.
Plus the efficiency of RAID 1 is awful. And if large capacity Disks are used they better be Enterprise level quality.
Plus a Unrecoverable Read Error on a rebuild will ruin your week.
You might be safer using two quality external HDDs via USB 3.0 or eSATA, or use your NAS without RAID, and use a backup program to copy the files you want to save to each drive alternatively. Imaging has proved very reliable, it is quick and easy to schedule in non busy time.
this is a rather large subject but I would encourage you to not use RAID for backup.

PhotoArtsLA Loc: Boynton Beach

Hard drives die. Computers go out of date. Unless it's an ONLINE UPS (meaning your computer ALWAYS runs off battery, NEVER the incoming AC line- such units start at about $4,000 more than the ones they sell at Staples) you are asking for trouble.

If you have a PC, the DVD burning software is usually the death knell of archival nature. Fast burns always means low archival quality. I have 25 year old CD-Rs which read perfectly today because I burned them the right way. Deep pits gives better life.

Computers themselves can be joke. Dell computers will go bad even if unplugged. Leave a Dell unplugged for a couple of years and try to turn it on once again. Surprise! The computer killed itself in storage. I made a funny video of my dead Dell as it lay in a trash container. It died as described. Horrendously low quality components throughout. Most buck without any bang seems to be their motto.

All that said, ALL recordable Blu-Ray discs are more archival than ANY CD-R or DVD-R at any price or quality simply due to the difference in chemistries. Blu-Rays are simply more archival through chemistry.

THAT said, even the Blu-Ray is not archival. Better than CDs and DVDs, true, but NOT archival.

Which brings me to M-Disc. The cat's meow of archival storage. Look it up, and be amazed. Digital files on M-Disc should outlast every silver gelatiin print ever made by Ansel Adams and Brett Weston, to name but a few olde practitioners, but include in the mix every print ever made.

The only print process which MIGHT be as archival as M-Disc is a carbon print using suspended carbon particles in an emulsion able to be sprayed by modiified inkjet printers. But then, you would need perfect storage conditions. M-Disc doesn't, though it is nice to treat quality with quality.

grounded Loc: Auckland NZ

I just use a flash drive, so simple.

Festina Lente Loc: Florida & Missouri

Thanks pakeha. This is good information and I'm passing it on to the guy that helped me set up my system.
I was under the impression that with the UPS powering the NAS, the types of errors you mentioned are very unlikely, and so far the performance is fine (for me anyway). NetGear seems to think the ReadyNAS Due is pretty reliable; at least their marketing hype says so and user reviews are good. But..

I can certainly change it to be two independent drives but getting software to keep both of them updated or one incrementally backing up the other one on a daily basis has been difficult.

Do you have any suggestions? They would be very appreciated.

I realize no system is perfect, but the best system is one that you do not have to constantly attend to as we are all human and soon let down our guard with less and less frequent back-ups until Murphy strikes.

Festina Lente Loc: Florida & Missouri

Thanks for the good information. Gives me more to think (and worry) about.

Can you explain the difference between the M-Disc (which looks impressive) and the Verbatim 95355 UltraLife Gold Archival Grade DVD-Rs?
They are different technologies which require different hardware. But while the technology makes sense, I'm concerned that a good idea that does not have industry support or an IEEE standard (?) may go the way of the Bernoulli Box and the Zip Drive -- both of which were good archival products but are now relics collecting dust in my basement.

But I like being on the bleeding edge; gives me short term bragging rights in exchange for longer term poverty. :lol:

Festina Lente Loc: Florida & Missouri

I'm no expert, but I'm told by others who live and breath this stuff, that a thumb drive may be the least reliable media out there for long term storage. I understand that a high quality CF chip is better, but ....