Photo storage system (Page 3): Good plan, however I am interested in what your actual backup procedure is to keep all the drives in sync with the current original data. I do believe...

Dngallagher Loc: Wilmington De.

lbrandt79 wrote:

You will lose them at some point, i.e. the reason for backups. I keep on external HD at my best friend's home, used to keep it in my office but am now retired. I periodically exchange Hard Drives with my friend when I load new pics on it. I also keep one at my desktop with everything stored, so long story short, I have three copies going simultaneously.

Good plan, however I am interested in what your actual backup procedure is to keep all the drives in sync with the current original data.

I do believe that an off site drive is very good sense ;)

RiverNan Loc: Eastern Pa

Having suffered a crashed drive with some 50thousand images (some duplicates YAY Seagate retrieved all that I thought was lost), I now recommend keeping your images in at least 2 places. c drive and external or two externals at minimum.

I also have heard it is good to keep everything but I believe it is important to listen to all good advice and then make your own decision...for me keeping everything has proved ridiculous. Pick and save your best shots from every download and get rid of anything that you are unlikely to view again or print, or use for inspiration or manipulation. At minimum get rid of anything that is blurry or lacks appeal or stirs a fond memory...figure out your odds of a good shot 1 in 10, 1 in 24, 1 in 36....delete delete and work at improving your odds...(take fewer shots and keep more)
I have probably deleted 10000 images recently of practice shots, challenge shots, multiples, and crap and figure I have plenty more to go...I mean how many shots of a beloved pet do I need, believe me way fewer than I have.

LJR

I attended a Freeman Patterson workshop back in 1997 when we used film (E-6 porocessing for slides). One of the instructors suggested that no image (slide) be thrown away until the photographer reviewed it not less than 60 days after the exposure was made. Images do look different after that time than one's memory of the event.

nikonwaddy

LJR wrote:

I attended a Freeman Patterson workshop back in 1997 when we used film (E-6 porocessing for slides). One of the instructors suggested that no image (slide) be thrown away until the photographer reviewed it not less than 60 days after the exposure was made. Images do look different after that time than one's memory of the event.

Yep, agree as has been mentioned on this link before. Often, for me anyhow, when the results of a shoot don't match what I was originally shooting for, I tend to overlook them, but when I go back later and view them I see a whole new art and view, often better then what I was originally shooting for. That's one reason why I advocate not immediately trashing your less then obviously looser captures..but also, as noted here, not keeping the the real dogs.....

arlissd

Gemgirl1 wrote:

I would be interested in how everyone stores their... (show quote)

I use a Buffalo NAS, Seagate, 3TB external, and two 3TB G-tech external drives. Also, I use CDs and DVDs for old image for archive.

woolpac Loc: Sydney Australia

jimmya wrote:

I actually use two externals. I had one fail not long ago and fortunately my photos were backed up to a second external and to DVD so everything is still there.

Frankly I don't trust anyone's "cloud".

My days in the I.T industry the rules are if your data is not in 3 places it not backed up. For true disaster recovery one of these copies should be off site (out of your house) for fire robbery etc. I burn DVD's and leave at a relatives place I suppose now the cloud does that. Another reason I burn to dvds is you can drop them and they dont break. One of the other guys made a good point use your operating system to copy as some backup software can do weird encryption to your files. A couple of external drives are cheap now I think now seagate has an 8Tb drive out for under $300.

Bob Boner

I am a little paranoid about my images after having a couple hard drives fail. The drives both contained the same images from a couple years and I was fortunate to know a tech to recover the images (he was not able to get images from one of them, but was from the other). I now have 3 copies of everything, one at home and 2 offsite at separate locations. Hard drives are relatively inexpensive now.

redrocktom Loc: Sedona

Note: If you use Time Machine to backup - you need to INCLUDE any external disk if your images are on them as the default ignores other external drives.

To confirm what is there, either browse the Time Machine partition with Finder, or enter Time Machine like you were doing a restore and see if the files are there, you can browse whats there without doing a restore.[/quote]

Donald, can you use Time Machine to backup to multiple externals? I thought TM did incremental backups, so if you had one offsite and therefore in a different state of backup, how would TM know where to start the incremental on two different drives?

Dngallagher Loc: Wilmington De.

redrocktom wrote:

Note: If you use Time Machine to backup - you need to INCLUDE any external disk if your images are on them as the default ignores other external drives.

To confirm what is there, either browse the Time Machine partition with Finder, or enter Time Machine like you were doing a restore and see if the files are there, you can browse whats there without doing a restore.

Donald, can you use Time Machine to backup to multiple externals? I thought TM did incremental backups, so if you had one offsite and therefore in a different state of backup, how would TM know where to start the incremental on two different drives?[/quote]

Time machine has an option to make use of multiple drives, connected at different times.

http://www.maclife.com/article/howtos/how_backup_time_machine_multiple_locations

I am not 100% sure about how it manages the incrementals though but suspect that in a disaster to do a full restore you may need both TM drives to get everything.

Usually the archive bit on the original file determines if the file has changed since it was last backed up and software that does incremental backups reads the archive bit.

Dngallagher Loc: Wilmington De.

woolpac wrote:

My days in the I.T industry the rules are if your ... (show quote)

I really think you guys are overly paranoid about backup software - if you do not understand how to control and manage it, then don't use it. But it sure beats copy for speed and automation.

redrocktom Loc: Sedona

Dngallagher wrote:

Time machine has an option to make use of multiple... (show quote)

Thanks Don. Very helpful.

b2bjacks Loc: Sequim, Washington

Gemgirl1 wrote:

Thank you......I know that RAW uses a lot more space. I appreciate your advice.

Using Adobe Lightroom to import photos simply click "import as dng. It will also save space on your hard drive as Raw is bigger, but not any better.

Also a question I'd like to ask. With thumb drives getting bigger, seems these wouldn't take up anymore room in a bank deposit box than DVD's in the long run. Are thumb drives ok for long storage??

Dngallagher Loc: Wilmington De.

b2bjacks wrote:

Using Adobe Lightroom to import photos simply click "import as dng. It will also save space on your hard drive as Raw is bigger, but not any better.

Also a question I'd like to ask. With thumb drives getting bigger, seems these wouldn't take up anymore room in a bank deposit box than DVD's in the long run. Are thumb drives ok for long storage??

I would include SD cards in the mix as well... take up little space, holds lots of data, and may be as good as USB sticks at lasting for a long time.

Lots of articles now talk about how CD/DVD are going the way of the floppy disk, so if you use them to archive you might want to revisit that.

http://www.muada.com/2013/10-14-archiving-data-dvds-flash-drives-hard-drives-.html

woolpac Loc: Sydney Australia

Dngallagher wrote:

I really think you guys are overly paranoid about backup software - if you do not understand how to control and manage it, then don't use it. But it sure beats copy for speed and automation.

I think the main problem with backup software not so much restoring now but restoring data you may have archived years ago. Either you have changed you backup application or your backup application is not backward compatible. Try and open an old office file in the current office application. There are plenty of little scripts around that will automate the process for you and I think and perceivable increase in speed you may see is because files can be compressed by backup software

Dngallagher Loc: Wilmington De.

woolpac wrote:

I think the main problem with backup software not so much restoring now but restoring data you may have archived years ago. Either you have changed you backup application or your backup application is not backward compatible. Try and open an old office file in the current office application. There are plenty of little scripts around that will automate the process for you and I think and perceivable increase in speed you may see is because files can be compressed by backup software

As long as the backup software is making a copy and NOT encrypting or compressing the data then it is restorable with or without the software correct?

For example I make use of Apple's Time Machine to backup every hour, day, week, month.... if I want to restore a file, I can either go into Time Machine and execute a restore, or just click on the drive and copy the file back. Easy Peasy.

I also use Chronosync to manage backups monthly to another drive. Again, I can set the encryption and compression if I want, use Chronosync to restore, or just jump in and drag and drop files as I see fit to restore.

I prefer a set it and forget it package that lets me manage/control it, and not worry about it.

Been there with the MS office app crap - now that I have been using Open Office on my Mac, no more version problems. :)