Pixiq

Great article, my backup strategy is very similar to yours, although it does differ slightly.

I do all my editing on my mac, which hold the latest 40Gb or so of my photos, this is backed up to my Time Capsule.
I have a PC in my house which has several TBs of storage which is a direct mirror of the Time Capsule (this is done with free software called SyncBack from 2brightsparks.com), I also keep backups of my photo store to several USB external drives that are kept in different physical locations (work & parents house). For automated offiste backups i use Carbonite, they are very similar to Mozy, can’t remember why i chose them over Mozy, but the reason at the time doesn’t apply any more.
Finally, for uber paranoia photos that are very special to me for one reason or another are stored in another online solution – Amazon’s S3 cloud storage system. S3 is aimed at developers, although they are an increasing amount of tools that make uploading/downloading files easier.

I recommend CrashPlan for automatic and unlimited online backup. Costs $2,9/month if you go for the 4 year solution, so you can save some money compared to Mozy. They can also prepare and send you an external harddrive with the files you've backed up in case of an emergeny.

One thing to consider with RAID solutions is that most hardware manufacturers have their own RAID technologies, so anything that spans accross multiple volumes will be very hard to recover if youe hardware fails and becomes obsolete.

A little bit off subject, but Im just starting out with my DSLR and am wondering if anyone can offer suggestions on filing nomenclature techniques to keep organized archives.
Thanks,

Just a heads up: Drobo is a proprietary format, so if something happens to a Drobo you can't remove the hard-disk, plug it to a computer and recover the data. The only way to recover data is using another Drobo device.

I also use Mozy and one feature I love is that on Windows you can ALSO configure and external hard drive so that Mozy will automatically backup to its servers AND to a local external hard drive.

I also love your suggestion of checking your backup integrity. While I want my backups to be automatic (like Mozy), I also like to manually check to make sure everything seems OK. I can easily do this by doing a folder compare of the Mozy generated external hard drive (since only files that were sucessfully backed up to the server appear there). For this, I use a wonderful piece of software called "Beyond Compare". I go into more details about this on my website, happydigitalphotos.com

I'm looking into cloud computing as a way to store my image files. Has anyone used cloud computing, and what about the upcoming iCloud that Apple is soon to be releasing in the fall?

Oh my golly!

This was like a warning from the future. I was going to start some serious computer admin (defraggin & backing up etc) last night after work but I turned my computer on and just got a flashing cursor, nothing else! Immediately I just thought about all the photos that I would have lost – I think I last did a back up about 18 months ago – and I got the shivers.
This morning I turned my computer back on, got the evil cursor again, did the old turn it off and on again routine and amazingly, it worked! I have spent the last few hours backing up like a beast! I have managed to save all my photos, next comes my videos, then music. I’m too scared to turn my computer off in case it doesn’t turn back on.

Anyone reading this article, heed the warnings!

This is a must for any profession that requires computer use. Hard drives are dirt cheap these days so no one has any excuse not to back up. Heck record on DVD blanks if you have to.

I was just thinking about purchasing a NAS with 2 RAID mirrored hard drives. And as you mention it IS a security if the drive fails, however, is it possible that the NAS fails, thus wiping both drives ? Im all new in backup, so this RAID setups are a new for me.

I like Backblaze myself and have backed something stupid like 300gb of data with them. Client for Windows and OSX.

/Mads

I have two drives which happen to be the same size. I regularly backup to one of these drives via an external USB drive enclosure and when I make the occasional trip to my bank safety deposit box, I swap the other drive. This way, I have periodic off-site backups.
I also have a cheap NAS (Dlink DNS-323) running in raid-0 that I use locally as a file server.

forgot to mention that these are encrypted using truecrypt. This ensures there’s no problem if they get misplaced or stolen.

Very simple.

1. Prime photo images location(RAW, JPEG, PS, HDR, et all): external hard-drive.
2. Backup #1 of all of the above (and then some): external hard-drive disconnected from USB AND power strip (Mother Natures’ power surges can be rough).
3. Backup #2 all of the above: external hard-drive (backed up 2-3x per year) 1000 miles away.

Being a computer professional I know how serious having good backups are. My backups are simple, ye easy to recover in the event I should need to. This is my solution, which was cost effective, but almost impossible to lose information.

When I do a shoot, here’s what I do immediately when I’m done:
1. Get the pictures off the camera and onto my computer.
2. Burn the pictures I have just taken to DVD, making sure I fill the DVD completely with older images — redundancy counts!
3. Copy all my pictures to my external drive, which is only used for backups and only plugged in when I am backing things up.
4. Bring the burned DVD(s) to Grandma’s house when I visit her each week, and store them in a CD binder.

With those steps I have 3 copies of every picture: one on my computer, one on my backup drive, and multiples on DVD at Grandma’s.

DVDs also only hold data for so long (about 5 years), so every year on New Year’s I re-burn ALL of my pictures to DVD, and also keep the old backups.

If something happens to my house/computer, no problem. Just means I’ll be visiting Grandma :)

Yep! Share a little story with you about a couple of years ago I lost an external disk with a fair few images on but because they were from my early days as a photographer. Nothing I couldn’t afford losing so after being quoted £800 to have the data restored I gave it a miss. Then the other day I powered up a small external that I use for a lot of the work I do out in the field. It had been working perfectly fine the night before however when I powered it up it failed, I tried every bit of data recovery software on the market to no avail… So lost some important images but not worth the £800 I was quoted again… anyhow! lesson learnt well and truly now I back up. Just because it has never happened doesn’t mean that it won’t. BACK Your Data up.

I kept thinking that I’d back up someday… I have the same exact story as the previous writer. All of my photos were on an external drive. Worked fine last Saturday, Sunday morning it was as if nothing had ever been on the drive. I lost everything. So, now I use Carbonite and CD’s. Lesson learned, the (very) hard way.

I read today that Apple have admitted that some of their Time Capsules have been faulty. What it reminds me is that for the most important data you need to backup the backup also as nothing is immune to failure/theft/flood/fire.

great article and certainly something I tend do. I tend to back up to an external hard drive but sometimes I get lazy becasue it takes some time. I should check some on-line solutions or get myself a faster hard drive.

Im using the LG NAS network storage, set up with 2tb raid drives and bluray burner.

All my machines can connect and by using the reaid stripe if one drive fails, I have a perfect copy on the other. :-)

I can obviously archive to blu-ray as well.

I back up everything! It was interesting to read about backing up online. I think I will look into this

I use a drobo and am relatively happy with it

I back up on to two seperatebut identical hardisks. That way if one goes faulty the parts are interchangeable. Hopefully that wont be necessary.

a couple of thoughts….

A RAID is a fairly expensive item, quite useful for many things, including fast storage and retrieval of large amounts of information. They are in some ways self-repairing, and if a drive fails, one can replace it with little difficulty.

However, most aspiring pros just don’t need this kind of horsepower, or expense. Using two drives, a background backup software app can easily handle the load from someone shooting only a day or three a week. Add the online services you mention, like Mozy, and you’ve got pretty decent coverage.

As you said, the real issue is retrieval. If you can’t get an image back almost instantly, it can become a big problem.

David Saffir
GuruShots.com Photo Critique

I use the iMac and would NEVER use a time cap having read so many bad things about them. I have 2 x WD 1 TB FW800 external drives so I have my DT backed up twice (just in case!). Although I am 35 I have never had a HD failure (touch wood).

Great article!

So I’m using an online backup service copies it runs continuously in the background so you don’t have to remember to backup your files and are inexpensive. Personally I use ZenOK Online Backup 2011. and it does pretty good.