Picture backups

[jakey]

Hi,
Anyone have thoughts on best ways to back up family pictures? Is there a good online server or anything?

[DougAxford]

Most people backup on at least an external drive.

I backup on 3 drives, each in a different computer. I gave up on DVD's last year when some became unreadable already. Bottom line is that the chances of someone ordering an extra copy of a family portrait these days are pretty slim. After the first year, we have had one request for a reprint out of hundreds of family portraits. Our grads are much more active for requests, many 3 years later. We no longer make an promises that portrait files have any guarantee of storage.

Doug

[LarryRyder]

3 copies is a good idea just be sure at least one of those drives is stored at a different location. If you do go with online backup I would stay with a major player as many of them have not made it very long.

[David Hughes]

Using Jungle Disk and Amazon Simple Storage works for me - assumes a decent broadband connection

[ChrisPerry]

I burn a DVD of the RAW and then do a weekly backup that is taken offsite (external drive).

I've not had a DVD not read, but I've heard tell of HD's that are used, then parked, not coming back to life. That I have had happen- several times. Not sure the shelf life of a parked drive, but 3 years is too long. Some will spin up but not read, some just don't even spin up! Other give errors.

Online solutions work for some, but how much do you need to upload? My backup is 280Gb - not something I'd want to upload once a week or daily or whatever. And it's growing with my use of LR2 now - fewer files overall, but now I keep the RAW on my drives instead of the JPGs. Huge difference in data quantity that way.

[MathewLodge]

Originally Posted by jakey

Hi,
Anyone have thoughts on best ways to back up family pictures? Is there a good online server or anything?

For a small number of family photos, Mozy is easiest to use. JungleDisk and Amazon S3 is cheapest -- but harder to set up.

Personally, I back up locally to external hard drives and use JungleDisk/Amazon for longer term storage (my Internet uplink can keep pace with the amount of photos I take... otherwise this would not be viable).

[Noel_Carboni]

I have a 500 GB Western Digital MyBook external USB hard drive. Every night I've scheduled a backup of my entire system to it. These drives are so cheap that no one should be without one.

Occasionally I burn all my most recent photos to DVD-R and move them away from the computer.

-Noel

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