Back Up Your Digital Photos

[YCW]

My notebook was stolen recently, gone together are my few years of digital photos top side as well as underwater. Although I have back ups but unfortunately not really that up to date. As usual for us human beings, back up somehow is not high on our priority lists and now I have learned the lesson, the hard way.

On some of the photos I have posted to Flickr site, I am surprised that I can only download the photos to the maximum resolution of 1600x1200. I guess there is another lesson to be learned here, in case people don't know already, Flickr is a photo sharing site and not a photo storage site. It is not meant to be the place for one to store their original digital photos.

Have backups guys, before it is too late. Even a hard disk may crash anytime, don't wait until it is too late, like me...

 

[amajamar]

That's terrible. I'm really sorry to hear that.

 

[Charlie99]

I found that putting stuff out onto CD or DVDs was pain and I didn't do it.

OTOH, backing up to an external USB HDD has been nearly painless. Many external USB drives come with backup software to make the chore easier.

 

[amajamar]

Yeah, external drives are so inexpensive these days...

It is probably the way to go.

 

[Netsloth]

The only caveat I'd add to the idea of using an external harddrive is this:

You are still subject to data loss if that external harddrive fails. If you are a pro or just really don't want to lose your pictures, I'd suggest looking into an external enclosure that supports either RAID1 (mirror) or RAID5 (stripe). Both options give you single drive failure tolerance.

You can also set up a RAID array in a computer, in some cases, but it gets more complicated, and not all motherboards support it.

Iomega is one of many manufacturers who now make affordable NAS (Network Attached Storage) devices that can be plugged directly into your home network and used as storage. For an example, check out the Storcenter Pro 150D. Can be configured for hardware RAID5 at 750GB, for around $800.

I don't work for Iomega, but I do capacity planning and network operations for a living. There are plenty of other vendors who offer similar hardware. I would be careful, however, with choosing a brand. Storage is cheap, but it's expensive when it fails.

 

[victor]

Netsloth is right.
Given our investment in travel, vacation time etc, $1000 to get a good backup is not that expensive.
The problem with most solution is that the original and backup are in your own house, so fire or lighting etc and you loose the lot.

There must be a market for network backup across the internet.

 

[Netsloth]

Heh. Interesting that you should say that, Victor.

I'm the owner of a startup providing that kind of a service, along with some others. I won't advertise, but it does make me happy to hear someone say that they see a need.

 

[RiverRat]

That sucks. Only takes once to learn a hard lesson. I'm a server admin and I lost data not too long ago. And I should have known better. Got lazy. Was a fairly new drive as well. I had to run a data restore program and got back most of my stuff. But it was painfull to say the least. I ended up getting a 500GB USB drive and I setup a scheduled task to run weekly robocopy (like xcopy on steroids) backups. I have my PC and the USB "mirrored" like a RAID1 setup. The odds of losing both drives at the same time are minimal. Always have some type of backup even if you just burn your valuable images to DVD.

 

[PriusDrIVER]

I work in the business of data protection for the "enterprise" (large corporations) and always fear data loss at home. Unfortunately, without a investment in software and hardware coupled with diligence data loss is almost guaranteed. There are companies like Mozy out there, but the issue there is the restore process is not sustainable. In most cases their system would expire your "restore" before you can download it, so then you get to start over.

Best options are going to always be to backup locally for your primary backup, and then perhaps have a "off site" backup for the worst case. If its worst case, you can suffer through the tedious and lengthy restore. I would suggest either USB/firewire storage and maybe DVD. DVD is limiting due to the 4.7GB capacity for a standard DVD, I can take 4GB of photos in a long weekend. If you use hard drives, it is best if you can use one that is RAID protected...as hard drives do and will fail. It is best to use something like RAID5 or RAID1, while not the best option...it gives you far more protection than a single disk would.

The home is still a market that isn't touched. Most people buy cheap PCs, its obvious they wouldn't invest in data protection. Its an uphill battle, everyone feels safe with their data on their hard drive...until the unthinkable happens.

I'm sorry to hear about your loss, but don't feel like you are alone. I know plenty of large corporations that go through the same thing. Many have a "Backup", but it turns out it didn't work or wasn't managed properly.

 

[PriusDrIVER]

I only know of 1 hosting site that allows access to the original file size, and that is smugmug. Many of the rest don't even preserve the original, it is downgraded as soon as it is uploaded. Others keep the original "full size", they just won't let you have it back.