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Disaster! How do you back up your pictures?

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Rebecca93

Rebecca93

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On Thursday I walked by my computer and noticed a wierd looking screen. It said my computer could no longer load Windows 7. My first thought was no big deal...just restart. Not so lucky. After spending time with technical support in India and my local geek squad, it was determined that my hard drive was "dead". My computer is relatively new. In fact the manufacturer had a tech at my house to install a new drive the very next day under warranty. Of course the data I lost was not their responsibility. I do back up. My former system was to rate my pictures and only then back up the "5 stars" to an online site. Alot of pictures made it there. Most did not...but most pictures weren't really worth keeping either so what is my real "loss" here? I take a lot of pictures. Most of the time it is to better my technique. Snapping away at some school event or soccer game. Sometimes I take pictures of wildlife here in florida. I'll call it national geographic photographer wannabe. I didn't back those up either. In essence I saved "the best of my kids 2012" the rest are gone.... So what do you do? Do you back up everything? These digital files have gotten so big its hard to justify that. An external hard drive is usually in the same house as the computer. A fire or flood would take out both.

FYI I could have gotten all the data back. It would have cost 895 dollars. If you don't back up at all.

DO IT NOW! I HAD ABSOLUTELY NO WARNING I WAS ABOUT TO LOOSE EVERYTHING!
 
i back up everything to the cloud. there's a service called "carbonite" that charges several dollars a month for 200GB. i backup ALL my pictures there, it takes place in the background automatically and i don't have to think about it.

I also back up to an external disk. true, if there's a fire or flood it won't survive, but your case is probably more commonplace, and it was neither.

and you can always print an album or two, like we used to once upon a time :-)

L.
 
Rebecca93 said:
Rebecca93 wrote:

On Thursday I walked by my computer and noticed a wierd looking screen. It said my computer could no longer load Windows 7. My first thought was no big deal...just restart. Not so lucky. After spending time with technical support in India and my local geek squad, it was determined that my hard drive was "dead". My computer is relatively new. In fact the manufacturer had a tech at my house to install a new drive the very next day under warranty. Of course the data I lost was not their responsibility. I do back up. My former system was to rate my pictures and only then back up the "5 stars" to an online site. Alot of pictures made it there. Most did not...but most pictures weren't really worth keeping either so what is my real "loss" here? I take a lot of pictures. Most of the time it is to better my technique. Snapping away at some school event or soccer game. Sometimes I take pictures of wildlife here in florida. I'll call it national geographic photographer wannabe. I didn't back those up either. In essence I saved "the best of my kids 2012" the rest are gone.... So what do you do? Do you back up everything? These digital files have gotten so big its hard to justify that. An external hard drive is usually in the same house as the computer. A fire or flood would take out both.

FYI I could have gotten all the data back. It would have cost 895 dollars. If you don't back up at all.

DO IT NOW! I HAD ABSOLUTELY NO WARNING I WAS ABOUT TO LOOSE EVERYTHING!
Click to expand...
 
Rebecca93 said:
Rebecca93 wrote:

Do you back up everything? These digital files have gotten so big its hard to justify that.
Click to expand...
Ballpark maths: my 550D (yeah, I'm gatecrashing this forum. So sue me :-)) has a shutter rated to 100k shots. At 20 Mb per RAW file, the maximum conceivable size of all the files, ever, from my camera is around 2 Tb. That's assuming I shoot every single shot in RAW and never delete a photo.

Currently, a 2 Tb external hard drive will cost me £70; that's around 15% of what I paid for the body in the first place (and gets proportionally less as you move up models: while the rated shutter lifetimes are higher, the price of the body increases even quicker). This cost is just something you need to factor in when buying a body.
Rebecca93 said:
An external hard drive is usually in the same house as the computer. A fire or flood would take out both.
Click to expand...
So give it to a trusted friend / family member instead. In that case, the worst thing you lose is everything since you last synced the two instead.
 
Limburger said:
Limburger wrote:

As for an only back up using a cloud is dangerous too,since you don't physicly own the images anymore.
Click to expand...
What risk are you worried about here? I can only really see two:
  • Your cloud provider goes bust and you can no longer get access to your data. Mitigation: make sure you pay attention to business reports (and probably, don't go with the cheapest option because they don't have a workable business model).
  • Your cloud provider is incompetent and loses your data. Mitigation: make sure you pay attention to technical reports (and probably, don't go with the cheapest option because they won't be able to pay competent staff).
Amazon are almost certainly more competent at keeping your data secure than anyone else you know, including yourself (and that applies even to techno-savvy geeks). Personally, Amazon doesn't make sense on a financial level for me (S3 is too expensive on an ongoing basis, Glacier is good unless you need to get all your data out quickly, when it becomes horribly expensive), but I don't think it's an insane option.
 
Did you keep the old hard drive? It is very likely that the pictures can be recovered at little cost.

I had a similar experience a few years ago and lost 8000 images on a crashed drive. The computer would not boot up and the drive was not recognized even when I tried to access it on different computer. I was able to reformat the drive, reinstall the operating system and and download a program which recovered almost all of the images.

You can download the program for free and test it to see what files it can find. Once you see what files can be recovered, you can purchase an activation key for about $70. For me it was well worth it. I have used the program to recover files for others since.

Here is the website:

Loading…

www.recovermyfiles.com
 
Philip Kendall said:
Philip Kendall wrote:
Philip Kendall said:
Limburger wrote:

As for an only back up using a cloud is dangerous too,since you don't physicly own the images anymore.
Click to expand...
What risk are you worried about here? I can only really see two:
  • Your cloud provider goes bust and you can no longer get access to your data. Mitigation: make sure you pay attention to business reports (and probably, don't go with the cheapest option because they don't have a workable business model).
  • Your cloud provider is incompetent and loses your data. Mitigation: make sure you pay attention to technical reports (and probably, don't go with the cheapest option because they won't be able to pay competent staff).
Amazon are almost certainly more competent at keeping your data secure than anyone else you know, including yourself (and that applies even to techno-savvy geeks). Personally, Amazon doesn't make sense on a financial level for me (S3 is too expensive on an ongoing basis, Glacier is good unless you need to get all your data out quickly, when it becomes horribly expensive), but I don't think it's an insane option.
Click to expand...



The mitigations you listed are hardly mitigations and to solely rely on a cloud backup seems a little risky to me....
 
Nothing is completely foolproof, but you can make safeguards to minimize the chances that you'll lose data.


I understand that folks don't want to back up everything, but rather just the keepers. The problem is often we get behind culling our shots and don't want to make backups before the lower quality images are deleted.

What I do is first back up everything to an external 2TB hard drive, and then after culling the images and deleting may of them, I delete the first backup and make a new one of just the good images. I then copy the good images to DVD and that copy is stored off site in a safe deposit box.

It's not foolproof, but it has worked for me so far. I've had one hard drive failure in the 9 years I've been shooting digital, but I was able to recover all my data from backups.

The most important thing is to decide on a workable plan and then stick to it. Most people I know who have lost data, did so because they got lazy at making backups.

With all the hacking that has gone on with financial institutions and with credit card company data over the last few years, I simply do not trust that online backup services don't somehow have access to other data that may be stored on my computer. So I choose not to use on-line backup services.

I also do not think an online service is practical for the amount of data I would need to store there. But that's just my opinion. I know others that use those services and are happy with them.
 
The fist question you have to ask is: How important are those pictures and what effort/cost is justified or needed to keep them securely back uped. What risks are we mitigating?




The most common risks we should consider are:

- Loss from human error (you accidentally deleted them)

- Loss from mechanical or electronic failure

- Loss from virus

- Loss from fire/flood

- Loss from theft

- Loss from software/data corruption


- Others




In a nutshell it all comes down to having several backups in several locations. The question is just how many and how often and on what media.




If you have a small amount of photos you can use DVDRs (last 1-10 years only) or cloud backup (I would not trust it 100%).




For large amounts you can use harddrives or tapes for very large amounts.




Since your place can burn down or your computer get stolen, you put backups in several places.


In my situation I have one set of photos on my work PC, one set on a NAS, one on a harddrive that is only connected cor backups and one on a harddrive in my safety deposit box
 
Matt105483 said:
Matt wrote:

The mitigations you listed are hardly mitigations and to solely rely on a cloud backup seems a little risky to me....
Click to expand...
What risk are you worried about? I wouldn't do it for my only backup, but I'd be more than happy to do it for my only *offsite* backup if the price was right (which it isn't yet) and I had enough bandwidth (which I don't).
 
TimR32225 said:
TimR32225 wrote:

I simply do not trust that online backup services don't somehow have access to other data that may be stored on my computer. So I choose not to use on-line backup services.
Click to expand...
Any reputable online backup service (say, Amazon) would never even consider doing anything like that - their business depends on their reputation. Shady operators at the cheap end of the market, who knows?
TimR32225 said:
I also do not think an online service is practical for the amount of data I would need to store there.
Click to expand...
You're underestimating the scale of cloud services. Amazon Glacier is designed as a replacement service for the companies who currently have Iron Mountain turn up every month with a lorry and fill it with backup tapes - they can handle your data without even blinking an eye.

(Depending on the bandwidth you have, actually getting that data to Amazon may be more difficult).
 
I have my main drive backed up to a USB3 external drive nightly. I have my main drive backed up to Crashplan, in the cloud, on an ongoing basis. I have BluRay backups of my drive, made every few months, both in my safe and at my in-laws. And my in-laws now have my old computer, with my old photo drive still in the chassis but not connected, thought that will always be only to a point-in-time. My best photos are also out on my SmugMug account.
 
Philip Kendall said:
Philip Kendall wrote:
Philip Kendall said:
Matt wrote:

The mitigations you listed are hardly mitigations and to solely rely on a cloud backup seems a little risky to me....
Click to expand...
What risk are you worried about? I wouldn't do it for my only backup, but I'd be more than happy to do it for my only *offsite* backup if the price was right (which it isn't yet) and I had enough bandwidth (which I don't).
Click to expand...



I said that your mitigations "to pay attention to reports" are hardly mitigations that keep your could data save.




To each their own, but I would never entrust all my memories or moneymaking photos to a cloud provider.
 
Rebecca93 said:
Rebecca93 wrote:

So what do you do? Do you back up everything? These digital files have gotten so big its hard to justify that. An external hard drive is usually in the same house as the computer. A fire or flood would take out both.
--
Rebecca
Click to expand...
Yes, I backup everything. I see it differently - external storage has gotten so cheap, I'd rather backup everything. And some of those family shots that are not 5 stars might mean more than you think in 10 or 20 years.

I currently have a 1TB drive in my laptop and two 1.5-TB drives in external enclosures. One lives at the office and periodically comes home to sync with the onsite backup. I only delete files off the laptop once they are on both the externals - I always have at least two copies of everything.

One way to save space is to discard RAWs. I shoot a lot of sports, and usually I delete the RAWs after conversion. But I keep RAWs for important events, or if I've shot something that I think I may want to print large, or that was a challenge to process - I'll probably be able to do a better job in the future.

I take a lot of photos - I've had my 7D for over three years, and I probably have about 100K on the shutter. But I have images that go back to 2004. I'll be upgrading those 1.5TB drives to 3TB or 4Tb soon.

As for cloud storage, I don't think the volume I need is cost effective. I have some, as a lot of my photos end up on Smugmug, so if something happened to all my drives, at least I'll always have what's online.

Mark
 
Rebecca93 said:
Rebecca93 wrote:
FYI I could have gotten all the data back. It would have cost 895 dollars. If you don't back up at all.
DO IT NOW! I HAD ABSOLUTELY NO WARNING I WAS ABOUT TO LOOSE EVERYTHING!
Click to expand...
First of all: What's the value of a backup? How much would it cost to reenter/recreate the data? This is what you should decide on.

You need to inquire with your techie: How do I do a "bare metal recovery" and how long? If you get a weird look, look for a real techie. A bare metal recovery is when the drives are gone, kaput, nothing to recover, this mean reinstalling the OS, all the programs (of course you have kept the serial numbers) and finally recover the data. Will it take a day, a week, a month, a year?

Internet, aka the cloud, Many unlimited Internet plans and not as unlimited as normal human being thinks (aka read the fine print). Many "live" backups will delete the backup file, if you delete the file on your local hard drive. Is this what you want? Some people do, some people don't.


How do I know that I have a good backup? The backup software telling that the backup was "successfully" completed is not a valid answer because it doesn't prove it. The only way to "prove" that your backup is good is: To test it by renaming a few files and restoring them from the backup. If it works then it's a good backup, if it doesn't ... But you won't know until you do it.
  • For my backupS, I use:
    http://ncix.ca/products/?sku=29859&vpn=ST0005U&manufacture=Thermaltake
  • Every so often when hard drives are on sale, I buy a couple of them, and I rotate the backups between all the hard drives (I currently have 5 backup drives).
  • I create a directory: 20130101 for 1-Jan-2013 and I copy all my data in there.
  • The following week, I use another hard drive and create a directory 20130108 for 8-Jan-2013 and I copy all my data in there. I rotate my hard drives that way. I have a dozen backups. The drives are kept in a 2 hours fireproof safe.
  • I just use the standard copy command, so I can restore easily on a new system without having to install any new software. Yes, it takes more space, but space is cheap.
 
Mark Salvetti said:
Mark Salvetti wrote:
Mark Salvetti said:
Rebecca93 wrote:

So what do you do? Do you back up everything? These digital files have gotten so big its hard to justify that. An external hard drive is usually in the same house as the computer. A fire or flood would take out both.
--
Rebecca
Click to expand...
Yes, I backup everything. I see it differently - external storage has gotten so cheap, I'd rather backup everything. And some of those family shots that are not 5 stars might mean more than you think in 10 or 20 years.

Mark
Click to expand...
Photo's aren't art as they can be but memories as well.

That crappy shot of a kid laughing can mean more than a perfect shot of Paris skyline during the blue hour.
 
I've had hard drives fail. I've had backup drives fail. I've had someone break into my office and steal my computer and all the disks/drive they could find.

I believe in good backups.

First, forgetting about data for the moment, how long would it take you to re-install Windows and then find and re-install all your software? It would take me over a day's effort, so I believe in a complete system backup that can restore my system if I had to replace the hard drive.

Second to make my backups easier, I have several physical hard drives in my system, with Windows and all my software on one, all my photos on another, and everything else on a third. This way, I can back them up on different schedules (I don't backup my boot drive as often as I back up the other two).

Thirdly, it is important to have a backup off-site, so you can recover everything if there's a disaster (fire, flood, unfriendly thief). "Cloud" based backup can be good for that, but I find it prohibitively expensive to use a commercial cloud backup with over 1 TB to backup.

Finally, backup often, especially after you've done some significant work.

So, I have an external USB3 docking bay attached to my PC that takes standard internal SATA hard drives. I'll drop in a new 2TB or 3TB drive then backup each of my hard drives to that external drive with Acronis True Image. For the first time on a new system, I'd then take that first backup (Backup 1) and store it somewhere away from my house (such as a safe deposit box, or at a friend's house across town).

Next, I'll drop in another backup drive and do a full backup of each internal drive with Acronis True Image, but this time I'll leave the drive (Backup 2) attached to my computer and have True Image set to backup all the changes automatically once a week. I'll run it manually if I've just added a lot of important stuff.

About one to two months after the starting Backup 2, I'll remove Backup 2 and put it in a safe place in my house. Then I'll start again with Backup 3.

About one to two months after starting Backup 3, I'll take Backup 2 to where I have it off-site, retrieve Backup 1, then put Backup 3 in a safe place in my house, take Backup 1, reformat it, and make a new backup to that.

In this way, I'll have a rotating set of backup hard drives, and if any one backup fails worst case is I'll have an earlier one so I haven't lost everything.

Finally, periodically I'll boot my PC to the True Image CD, run True Image from that and make sure that I can access everything on the backup drive - viewing the contents of a few files just to be sure. A backup is worthless if you can't trust it.

In addition to the above, I'm experimenting with my own "cloud" system. A few companies, such as Buffalo, make hard drives that have Ethernet connection and you can access them on your home network or anywhere on the Internet. So, I can buy a 3 TB Buffalo drive, do a full backup at home, then take it to a friend's house and periodically backup to that over the Internet - at least in theory. I have the drive, but I haven't had a chance to really test it out yet.
 
I set zoombrowser to download to my seagate desktop hard drive and then plug in my WD my passport and make a copy. the only images i have on my PC are a copy of the ones im editing and bout to print. I use the PC hard drive just to run the computer. Tho my PC only has an 80gig hard drive.
 
If I read that correctly, you only have the photos on your external drive plus the working copies on the computer.

All hard drives fail - it is just a matter of time. You should always have a backup. And a single backup isn't enough if you really want to be sure - I've heard of many people who's hard drive died and then they found that their backup was no good.
 
2 hard drives. One Seagate Desktop Hard drive. Always connected to my PC. And one portible Western Digital my passport hard drive as back up. My PC's CD/DVD writer no longer works. If my PC failed, then the photos are on Two External drives. If one of those fail, then I would get another external hard drive and copy off the good one.
 
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