backup software for photos

[ce4jesus]

Well after reading though some reviews I purchased Norton Ghost last fall. What a mistake. This isn't consumer software at all. For starters the PC needs to be logged onto in order for the software to run correctly according to tech support. Furthermore, if the backup doesn't run successfully, it doesn't alert you and it keeps the useless, uncompleted backup files on the drive. This is troublesome for many reasons but needless to say I discovered all this when a 500G drive was reporting no space. Finally, if it doesn't complete a backup, it has to start over!!! So to recap it needs active user management which might be well suited for an IT department that staffs 24 x 7 but for any consumer who wants unattended backups, this isn't the software. I burned $80 on what I thought was the best available.

So what is everyone else using for backup software out there?

 

[Ann Marie]

For my photos? I stick them online. Smugmug.com Then my family can look at them, I don't have to worry about my computer crashing. And if I'm somewhere where I want to access them, I only need a computer not my computer.

Plus, I think it is only $20 a year.

 

[fppf]

Norton Ghost was not designed for user backup.
It was designed for IT professionals to backup restore points on PC's. This way when someone at work install some junk that messes up the machine they just pull out the machine image and restore it to what it should be. This saves a TON of time. It is also very useful when you have 1,000 computers that are identical, they all use the same image.

For backup of images I would just burn them to a CDR, DVDR, or Blue Ray disk.

All backup systems need the machine to be on, the better ones don't need a log in, however you most likely will not spend that much money.

 

[Diver Dennis]

I use several portable hard drives for back up. The prices have gone down dramatically and it's very easy to drag and drop files of photos onto them.

 

[Zeeman]

I'm with Dennis...

Z...

 

[alcina]

I just whack em on a hard drive. When I download they get downloaded to two - one internal, one external.

Eventually I burn some stuff to DVDs and do a third backup to yet another external hard drive when I clean off the internal. Seems to work.

There are some serious systems out there for doing backups, but for me, right now, I'm comfortable.

 

[ce4jesus]

I appreciate all the feedback. I once had an internal drive fail, then as I was installing the replacement drive, my backup drive failed as well. I lost 2 years worth of photos. It was quite painful as most were of my family. I've since upgraded to a 3 drive system. 1 internal, 2 external. The photo folder is quite easy to backup and is regularly backed up to the first external drive. The problem is backing up the entire C drive in the event of a failure I'm not spending 2 days loading software and drivers. This also would give me the coveted 3rd backup to the photos folder as well.

fppf - I should've posted this before buying...haha. Thanks...I think I found out the hardway and agree that in the right hands it could be a viable tool.

 

[fppf]

Gary
May I suggest a "Network NAS" with a "RAID1 Array"

Ok in english, Linksys sells a cool box now for about $100. This box has a network jack to connect it to your network. You install 2 of what ever size hard drives you want. Then it has a few modes of operation. A "RAID1 Array" is a hard drive config where the 2 drives have the same data, if one fails it will tell you which one so you can replace it and it stays running until you do so on the good drive. This is great to protect from hardware failers, and because its not in a PC it is more stable and protected from many virus attacks but not all.

Then I would suggest you burn to disk or tape drive every once in a while or after a big trip.

 

[cfelliot]

I do two types of backups:

1) Complete hard drive
2) Just my data files (pictures, documents etc)

The full hard drive backup is done with a product by “Paragon Software” and is called “Drive Backup 8.51 Personal”. I only do this backup after I make major changes to my system because it takes a bunch of DVDs to do and takes several hours, but it will completely restore your system in case of hard drive failure.

I do data file backup every day using a product from “Dillobits" called “InSync”. This program keeps the data on the hard drive sync’ed with an external USB hard drive. The great thing is that it only needs to backup the things that have changed and finishes very quickly unless you’ve added a ton of new stuff.

 

[RTRski]

It's not cheap, and it's not as fast as it could be (I'm not a huge fan of USB2 vs. eSATA or FW as an interface) but the Drobo would be a good either direct-attach or NAS (with another addon) storage medium with some built-in backup. They use a pseudo-RAID approach that rebuilds on the fly as you swap out drives to increase storage space, or if drives fail. I beta tested for them back when they were calling themselves Trusted Data and liked the unit overall, but was at the time interested in video backup and no-compression DVD files weren't streaming quite fast enough for me (probably more related to my mobo choice at the time than the actual USB2 transfer rate on the unit). Data Robotics, Inc.

As far as what I actually use, I have a couple different pedigrees of 200 - 250 GB external drives, one FW, one USB2. Neither stays 'on' all the time but the FW is connected to my primary processing computer and I copy everything from my internal HDD photography folder to it pretty regularly, then about every couple months (or after any major trip that I add a lot of new files from) I also plug in the USB2 drive and let it copy everything from the FW drive overnight as another backup. Not foolproof I know but if the drives spend most of their time off and not spinning I'm reasonably comfortable with 2 independent backups like that. Might change when I start to hit TBs of RAW files (that are actually worth keeping, vs. just being a packrat and never culling the originals), but that'll take a while.