(OT?) Backing up your images

I am in the process of setting up a poor mans RAID system for backing up my 5,000+ images that are currently on my hard drive as well as a jillion CDs. The $29 software package to mirror the two hard drives was suggested in a recent photo magazine and can be found here http://www.peersoftware.com

I manage my images on-line with the photo data base software package IMatch ( http://www.photools.com/ ) written by Mario Westphal.

There is a learning curve involved with IMatch but well worth the effort. (I designed and subsequently trashed four or five structures before settling on one. I can catalog a photo of my wife and me in Provence France under the separate catagories of France, Provence, me, wife, me & wife, the year or any other combination that I can dream up as the decision on the structure mine and I'm not locked in by the software. The overhead is slight since the package creates links not separate copies of the image.

It's a snap to find any image which is a god send with thousands of images.

Both packages I mentioned have evaluation copies available. Do it whatever way you like but BACKUP YOUR WORK! I've not lost any images yet but did make the mistake, early in my Nikon 990 days, of correcting and resizing images before saving instead of saving the uncorrected version.

End of commercial (sure sounds like it).

billtoo

--
http://www.pbase.com/billtoo

I have seen both halves of a mirror die at the same time. Without backups on at least three different drives, or tape, and taking backups offsite either way, you aren't really doing completely safe backups.

Raid 5 may be a decent solution, but costly to impliment. We have several disk arrays here at work, using hardware Raid 5 and have never lost data to a disk problem. Actually, in 3 years, we have only lost 1 disk in the three arrays.

But we also do 31 daily full backups each month (give or take) and keep lots of tapes offsite in case of fire, etc.

At home, I have my photos on one disk, and I do weekly full, and nightly differential backups, dumping the backup sets to different physical drives. After the backups run, the backup sets are copied to two additional disks, one of which is removable and is swapped weekly with a disk that is kept offsite. That makes 4 copies of all data, on 4 diffferent disk drives. And I still wish I had a tape drive for keeping generations of the data as we do at work.

All my raw files are archived to CD/R, two copies, and one copy is taken offsite.

Once my photo HD fills up, I archive the oldest year's jpegs to CD/R disks and take one copy offsite, using the other for slideshows. The files are then removed from the HD to make room for this years photos.

Bill too said:

I am in the process of setting up a poor mans RAID system for
backing up my 5,000+ images that are currently on my hard drive as
well as a jillion CDs. The $29 software package to mirror the two
hard drives was suggested in a recent photo magazine and can be
found here http://www.peersoftware.com

I manage my images on-line with the photo data base software
package IMatch ( http://www.photools.com/ ) written by Mario
Westphal.

There is a learning curve involved with IMatch but well worth the
effort. (I designed and subsequently trashed four or five
structures before settling on one. I can catalog a photo of my
wife and me in Provence France under the separate catagories of
France, Provence, me, wife, me & wife, the year or any other
combination that I can dream up as the decision on the structure
mine and I'm not locked in by the software. The overhead is slight
since the package creates links not separate copies of the image.

It's a snap to find any image which is a god send with thousands of
images.

Both packages I mentioned have evaluation copies available. Do it
whatever way you like but BACKUP YOUR WORK! I've not lost any
images yet but did make the mistake, early in my Nikon 990 days, of
correcting and resizing images before saving instead of saving the
uncorrected version.

End of commercial (sure sounds like it).

billtoo

--
http://www.pbase.com/billtoo

Click to expand...

--
D30, two quarters, three dimes, 1 nickel, 7 pennies, and 1 bus transfer

My Galleries: http://home.attbi.com/~keylargographics/

Bill too26877 said:

Both packages I mentioned have evaluation copies available. Do it
whatever way you like but BACKUP YOUR WORK! I've not lost any
images yet but did make the mistake, early in my Nikon 990 days, of
correcting and resizing images before saving instead of saving the
uncorrected version.

Click to expand...

I agree ... but I like to use CDs. I dropped my laptop once ( backpack strap broke while I was running to catch a train ) and the computer wouldn't come on for a week. So I don't like the idea of having all my photos on a hard drive.

I use Access for my cataloguing needs, though. I'm finding it works very, very well ... you just have to know what you're doing.

I copy the files from my microdrive to my hard-drive.

Before deleting the images off the microdrive, I copy the images over to an external firewire HDD.

My working copy is on the internal IDE hard-drive.

Before erasing the set from the IDE drive, I burn them to DVD.

At that point, I have a set on DVD, and a set on my external Firewire HDD (120 GB).

--
The Unofficial Photographer of The Wilkinsons
http://thewilkinsons.crosswinds.net
Photography -- just another word for compromise

If you sell photographs, and don't keep copies offsite, you could lose all your inventory with just one small fire. Now that I am (actually) selling my photos, redundant, offsite backups are even more important than ever.

DavidP said:

I copy the files from my microdrive to my hard-drive.

Before deleting the images off the microdrive, I copy the images
over to an external firewire HDD.

My working copy is on the internal IDE hard-drive.

Before erasing the set from the IDE drive, I burn them to DVD.

At that point, I have a set on DVD, and a set on my external
Firewire HDD (120 GB).

--
The Unofficial Photographer of The Wilkinsons
http://thewilkinsons.crosswinds.net
Photography -- just another word for compromise

Click to expand...

--
D30, two quarters, three dimes, 1 nickel, 7 pennies, and 1 bus transfer

My Galleries: http://home.attbi.com/~keylargographics/

Good advice.

Kinda makes you wonder how film photographers handle that "redundancy" problem, doesn't it?

Bogie said:

If you sell photographs, and don't keep copies offsite, you could
lose all your inventory with just one small fire. Now that I am
(actually) selling my photos, redundant, offsite backups are even
more important than ever.

Click to expand...

--
The Unofficial Photographer of The Wilkinsons
http://thewilkinsons.crosswinds.net
Photography -- just another word for compromise

Probably keep their negatives in some sort of fire-proof box, or in a safe-deposit box at a 'fireproof' bank. Glad I can have two or more copies of my 'negatives' for the price of a blank CD.

DavidP said:

Kinda makes you wonder how film photographers handle that
"redundancy" problem, doesn't it?

Bogie said:

If you sell photographs, and don't keep copies offsite, you could
lose all your inventory with just one small fire. Now that I am
(actually) selling my photos, redundant, offsite backups are even
more important than ever.

Click to expand...

--
The Unofficial Photographer of The Wilkinsons
http://thewilkinsons.crosswinds.net
Photography -- just another word for compromise

Click to expand...

--
D30, two quarters, three dimes, 1 nickel, 7 pennies, and 1 bus transfer

My Galleries: http://home.attbi.com/~keylargographics/

I use two drives in one computer with the second drive serving as a backup for the first. I use a program called Second Copy that makes intelligent copies in the background only copying files that are changed. It can be set to run at different intervals such as every two hours.

http://www.centered.com/

I have been using Second Copy for several years without problems. I also use it to copy files from my server at work to my laptop during the day so that I have a copy while on the road.

I then copy my photo files to a DVD using an HP burner.

Bill too said:

I am in the process of setting up a poor mans RAID system for
backing up my 5,000+ images that are currently on my hard drive as
well as a jillion CDs. The $29 software package to mirror the two
hard drives was suggested in a recent photo magazine and can be
found here http://www.peersoftware.com

I manage my images on-line with the photo data base software
package IMatch ( http://www.photools.com/ ) written by Mario
Westphal.

There is a learning curve involved with IMatch but well worth the
effort. (I designed and subsequently trashed four or five
structures before settling on one. I can catalog a photo of my
wife and me in Provence France under the separate catagories of
France, Provence, me, wife, me & wife, the year or any other
combination that I can dream up as the decision on the structure
mine and I'm not locked in by the software. The overhead is slight
since the package creates links not separate copies of the image.

It's a snap to find any image which is a god send with thousands of
images.

Both packages I mentioned have evaluation copies available. Do it
whatever way you like but BACKUP YOUR WORK! I've not lost any
images yet but did make the mistake, early in my Nikon 990 days, of
correcting and resizing images before saving instead of saving the
uncorrected version.

End of commercial (sure sounds like it).

billtoo

--
http://www.pbase.com/billtoo

Click to expand...

--
Bill

Thanks for the heads-up on Second Copy. It appears to offer more than the basic version of Save_N_Sync and they are the same price ($29). The basic version of SNS will only copy one folder to one folder whereas Second Copy will do any and all that you tell it to do (or so their web spiel seems to be saying). And of course their is a demo version available.

billtoo

Bill White said:

http://www.centered.com/

I have been using Second Copy for several years without problems. I
also use it to copy files from my server at work to my laptop
during the day so that I have a copy while on the road.

I then copy my photo files to a DVD using an HP burner.

Bill too said:

I am in the process of setting up a poor mans RAID system for
backing up my 5,000+ images that are currently on my hard drive as
well as a jillion CDs. The $29 software package to mirror the two
hard drives was suggested in a recent photo magazine and can be
found here http://www.peersoftware.com

I manage my images on-line with the photo data base software
package IMatch ( http://www.photools.com/ ) written by Mario
Westphal.

There is a learning curve involved with IMatch but well worth the
effort. (I designed and subsequently trashed four or five
structures before settling on one. I can catalog a photo of my
wife and me in Provence France under the separate catagories of
France, Provence, me, wife, me & wife, the year or any other
combination that I can dream up as the decision on the structure
mine and I'm not locked in by the software. The overhead is slight
since the package creates links not separate copies of the image.

It's a snap to find any image which is a god send with thousands of
images.

Both packages I mentioned have evaluation copies available. Do it
whatever way you like but BACKUP YOUR WORK! I've not lost any
images yet but did make the mistake, early in my Nikon 990 days, of
correcting and resizing images before saving instead of saving the
uncorrected version.

End of commercial (sure sounds like it).

billtoo

--
http://www.pbase.com/billtoo

Click to expand...

--
Bill

Click to expand...

--
http://www.pbase.com/billtoo

Which many of you mentioned, after I neglected to, is off site storage of backup. I did work one time for a large corporation and was surprised to see the DP Manager take home a copy of all of the source programs for the company. You don't need an expensive fireproof safe if the data is twenty miles away from the fire.

Thanks to all who added their $.02 worth. Hopefully the string was helpful to some people.

billtoo

Bill too said:

I am in the process of setting up a poor mans RAID system for
backing up my 5,000+ images that are currently on my hard drive as
well as a jillion CDs. The $29 software package to mirror the two
hard drives was suggested in a recent photo magazine and can be
found here http://www.peersoftware.com

I manage my images on-line with the photo data base software
package IMatch ( http://www.photools.com/ ) written by Mario
Westphal.

There is a learning curve involved with IMatch but well worth the
effort. (I designed and subsequently trashed four or five
structures before settling on one. I can catalog a photo of my
wife and me in Provence France under the separate catagories of
France, Provence, me, wife, me & wife, the year or any other
combination that I can dream up as the decision on the structure
mine and I'm not locked in by the software. The overhead is slight
since the package creates links not separate copies of the image.

It's a snap to find any image which is a god send with thousands of
images.

Both packages I mentioned have evaluation copies available. Do it
whatever way you like but BACKUP YOUR WORK! I've not lost any
images yet but did make the mistake, early in my Nikon 990 days, of
correcting and resizing images before saving instead of saving the
uncorrected version.

End of commercial (sure sounds like it).

billtoo

--
http://www.pbase.com/billtoo

Click to expand...

--
http://www.pbase.com/billtoo