bweber Loc: Newton, MA

An inexpensive and easy back up strategy would be to purchase an inexpensive portable external drive that is powered by the USB port so you do not need to plug it into an outlet. You can buy one for less than $50.00 on Amazon. There is no need to spend the money on an ssd drive as you do not need high speed for a back up drive. Then use back up software that will automatically, on schedule you set, run back ups. I use carbon copy cloner at around $40.00. Your initial backup may take some time, but it runs in the background and does not tie up your computer. Then your daily, or weekly back ups will be very fast and run in the background. You will not notice it. I back up my photo hard drives daily using this system and it works well. If you really want to protect yourself you can periodically back up to a second hard drive and keep it off site to in a fireproof box.

Picture Taker Loc: Michigan Thumb

I agree with "CHG CANON" you should have 2 back-ups both the same. I use 2 hard drives on separate computers. I also have a set as taken, by date (200112 TODAY) and an other set off finished pictures by title. I had a hard drive fail about 10 yeas ago and could not recover them. Now 2 of everything.

Fotoartist Loc: Detroit, Michigan

No mention of Carbon Copy Cloner and Super Duper backup software yet. So I will.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Oh, there's probably a bunch out there.

Fredrick Loc: Former NYC, now San Francisco Bay Area

I use Acronis True Image 2020 back up. It easily allows me to clone an entire drive, so for example, if I wanted to swap out a hard drive in my PC and replace it with a solid-state drive it’s a very simple process where you also don’t need to reinstall programs etc.

I’m only mentioning this product because it also allows me to do a full back up and incremental backups. My system drive with my images is only about 175 GB and when it does a full back up it takes about an hour or less. However, the back up scheme that I use Does five incremental back ups after the full back up and then continuously repeats that process. By that I mean a full back up followed by five incremental backups. No need to do a full back up every time. The incremental backups just take a couple of minutes. Now, you can set the timing of these backups anytime you want as well as the frequency. For example, I have my incremental back ups occurring once a week at 3 AM Monday morning. You could do the incremental back ups every hour or every day if you want, whatever you choose. The program also allows you to delete old back ups after a certain period of time, again whatever number of days you choose. In my case I chose 183 days which is a default and is six months.

There are plenty of back up programs out there for you to choose. I find the Acronis software to be one of the best. Good luck.

PlymouthWoodworker Loc: Plymouth, MA

I back up everything, not just my photos. My photos are on a separate partition on one of the internal drives in my Windows computer. So I back up my photos by backing up that partition. I use SyncBackFree software from 2BrightSparks. It's free and works really well. It is easy to set up and you can customize it so that it takes the actions you want when it encounters the same file name on both the source and destination drives or folders. I back up to a WD Passport, and have done so for years with no issues. Photo back-ups take from a few seconds to a few minutes depending on how many files are new or have changed. I back-up once a day to one WD and once a month to another WD that I keep in a fireproof box. Hope this helps.

Lolipod

I use a product (usb) called PICTURE KEEPER which is fully automatic and stores all my photos and excludes duplicates.

Dngallagher Loc: Wilmington De.

Never cared for products that find where your files are and back them up.... I think it is far batter to KNOW where your files are and control what gets backedup. I guess I also wonder what else the product may be doing while it is digging thru files and folders.

Just my opinion.

PHRubin Loc: Nashville TN USA

There are 2 issues here, on what to back up, and using what software (app)? I use SyncBack because it can work in the background, runs unattended and can either backup or synchronize. After the 1st use, it only works on new or modified files.

As for the "on what", I recommend both an external drive and a cloud solution like Amazon Prime Backup or Carbonite. These 2 work on their own requiring nothing after installation.

rck281 Loc: Overland Park, KS

A very good backup is included in Windows. If fact there are two different ones.
File History backs up data files continuously. Files are not encrypted.
The Windows 7 backup is also available. It can back up all files or just the folders that are selected. A System Image may also be included. This backs up all files and allows a damaged drive to be easily replaced and reimaged. I have used the System Image to recover a drive and it is easy and works perfectly.
I really don't understand why these are not more popular and universally used. They are free, built-in, and work perfectly (in my experience)

Tommg

I use Goodsync backup program. It's much like what bz178g indicated it only backs up the new files and adds them to the main file (backed up to an internal drive which is only used for photographs plus 2 additional external drives) The result is 1 file with all the pictures in the original photo master folder, not compressed and not encrypted - backup 1 drive once each week thus the oldest copy is never more than a week old.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Does it create a backup set FILE or does it copy the files separately? Are the files viewable/searchable in the backup?

rck281 Loc: Overland Park, KS

A history of all files are included in File History. You can go back to an earlier version. The Backup creates a single file but if you double click it, it brings up a selection to restore a file. You can then see all files and restore those you select.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Earlier OLD , old version options were only backup or restore.
Never used it since. I was not aware that you could open and select files in the newer version(s).
That's a GOOD thing.

rck281 Loc: Overland Park, KS

File History is more than just a backup. I keep my old files forever since I don't use my computer much anymore. However, you can set the interval when File History should delete the old files. I just looked and I have a file that has the current issue and 9 older versions dating back to 2017. I understand that File History is going to be renamed as Timeline in a future update. This is separated from the Windows 7 Backup program.