tillmanb

I use a second internal 18 TB internal drive. I use a product called Beyond Compare to replicate CR2 and CR3 files from the primary data drive D: to the secondary drive E:. I exclude folders which contain copies of RAW files and exclude JPG files from the compare and copy process. My C drive is an SSD, 2 TB. When the the data drives are full I replace them both. Over the years the drive sizes have increased.

tillmanb

I use a second internal drive, E: to backup my primary data drive, D using a product called Beyond Compare. It is not automatic but very versatile. 2TB SSD C:, 18 TB D:, and 18 TB E: is my drive info.

daledo Loc: Billings, MT

Have two external hard drives and also use Prime Photo which has the added benefits of allowing my scattered family members access and the ability to download photos they want.

bkinnie Loc: Pennsylvannia, living in Florida

I use IDrive.com, it's cloud based. they run a special that costs $7.99 for the first year and $79.99 thereafter.
It will allow you to backup to a Wi-Fi device also. I had a crash once, I didn't lose anything.

cbtsam Loc: Monkton, MD

I use a Mac with a single internal hard drive. Photos and (some other things) are kept on desktop external hard drives. A Mac utility (Time Machine) backs up most of the internal hard drive and all of the external hard drives more or less continuously onto a set of external hard drives that the computer sees as one hard drive, which it calls a JBOD, or "Just A Bunch of Disks." All of that gives me two copies of just about everything except some Mac operating system stuff. And all of that stuff is backed up more or less continuously to Backblaze.

To find out about Backblaze, go to backblaze.com, and poke around a little. You probably want what they call "Personal Backup;" it runs about $7.00 per month. You can pay a little extra to keep old copies: when I change a file called mine.xxx, the basic Backblaze plan copies the new version and drops the old; I don't mind this, as I'm always renaming new versions, like mine v2.xxx.

About a year or so after I began with Backblaze, I had a catastrophic failure of the current photo hard drive and the TimeMachine drive (it was only one big one back then). As the old song goes, I just about lost my mind. After I got myself together, I sent a request to Backblaze, and they sent me a new hard drive with all the stuff I'd lost on it, all in about 4-5 days. I've never really worried again.

Dr. Joel Germond Loc: California Central Coast

Lightroom and Apple are both backing up everything daily. I Also keep some on external drives. I have a few burned onto CD because I become apoplectic at the thought of losing the best of the best.

Architect1776 Loc: In my mind

Sorry just a couple of externals.

MtManMD Loc: Beaverton, Oregon

Robert, I'd highly suggest you add an isolated (disconnected and not synced) backup on a periodic basis (e.g. quarterly). If you run across a crypto virus, or a major user error, you'll have a point-in-time backup that doesn't get modified to fall back to.

DonWauchope Loc: Brevard, NC

Same Here. I have had a good experience with Carbonite, including their customer service, and recently downloaded their "Mobile" app to my Iphone and iPad which gives me access to everything I have backed up from my desktop to those devices.

bdk Loc: Sanibel Fl.

I have two externals and I put stuff on amazon....Ive never taken anything off of amazon, maybe I should check and see how they look

TomHackett Loc: Kingston, New York

Are you satisfied with your NAS? I have a WD My Cloud Home that I've been struggling to use for a few years now. At this moment, it has been unable to complete a connection (Ethernet) to the router for twelve or more hours (rebooting each device).

cjc2 Loc: Hellertown PA

IMHO, the BEST NAS units available are made by Synology. Synology is what I use and my various systems total about 150TB. Yes, TB. YMMV.

frankraney Loc: Clovis, Ca.

Another vote for Carbonite!!!!!

Real Nikon Lover Loc: Simi Valley, CA

I have 6 external hard drives in an unraid system. My "choice" pix are also backed up on DVD or BluRay disks and kept in a fireproof safe, as well as offsite copies.

MtManMD Loc: Beaverton, Oregon

Donna, here are some backup guidelines called the 3-2-1 Golden Backup Rules that you should review in forming a backup strategy. It is up to you to decide how deep you want to go regarding backups and redundancy. Following such rules has served me well in my 40+ years working in I.T. and managing large corporate environments, as well as my own person files.

3 - Maintain at least 3 copies of your data.
• In addition to your primary data, you should also have at least two more backup copies.
2 - Store the backups on 2 or more different media.
• It is best to store one of the copies on internal hard disk drives and the other copies on removable storage media or cloud storage.
1 - Store at least 1 of the copies at an offsite and offline location.
• It is highly recommended to keep at least one copy of the backups away from the physical location where the primary data and primary backup is located. Imagine a disaster like fire, water flood, or earthquake. All could be destroyed: primary data, primary backup and secondary backups!
• It is highly recommended to keep at least one copy of the backups offline, meaning not connected to any computer/network. If a hacker has access to your environment or a crypto virus affects your system, everything with an online connection can be impacted.

In addition to the 3-2-1 strategy, I also highly recommend maintaining point-in-time backups.
• Maintain “quarterly” or similar backup copies on offline storage. Maintain these point-in-time backups for a couple of years. In many cases today, malware authors are building in time delay features. A virus may infect your files, but not activate the encryption until months later. If all of your backups are “recent” or “synced”, you will not have a point to recover from.