# backup storage of digital images



## hooter (Aug 12, 2005)

What suggestions do the experienced (or inexperienced like myself) have in regard to digital image backup storage? I have a ton of images on my laptop and would like the best way to back them up in the event of a meltdown. Do you use on online server, external hard drive, CD's? Any advise as always is appreciated.

hOOter

Since I am posting I'll attached another of my favorite subjects, the redhead.

Thanks


----------



## Gator_Nutz (Sep 27, 2006)

If you have everything currently only on your laptop, I suggest an external hard drive and as soon as possible. Personally, I have two 500GB external drives. I have duplicate backups on each and also on the C: drive of my PC. So that gives me three different drives with my images stored on them. I also have certain of my favorite images copied to CD. How often I backup depends on how much I have been shooting. Lately, not very much. Don't delay. Get another drive and backup soon before disaster strikes.


----------



## Arlon (Feb 8, 2005)

I use an external hard drive for primary backup and dvd for backup of what I consider "keepers". Also some of my favorites are loaded to Pbase which isn't perfect but better than nothing. I've also gotten into a better habit of purging anything that's even marginal. At first I seemd to keep everything but I've really gotten away from that habit. If I where doing this for money and storing portraits or something that was important to someone else, I'd probably have a more robust backup system.


----------



## Pocketfisherman (May 30, 2005)

You can pick up a 300mb SATA hard drive for around $100, and an enclosure with power supply and USB interface for another $50 and make a nice USB external hard disk. I've got two, and back up one to the other every week. Fry's electronics is good source for the components, and it is super easy to put it all together taking about 5 minutes, and another 45 minutes to format the drive when you're done.


----------



## fishphoto (Mar 3, 2005)

Between hard drives in my computer and my NAS, I have almost 2TB of storage. Everything gets saved in 3 places. I also have a couple of small external drives that travel with me. Check http://www.newegg.com for storage. They are a lot cheaper and usually a couple months ahead than what Fry's has in stock. The daily specials they run are usually a good place to find stuff.


----------



## grayfish (Jul 31, 2005)

If you wanna be really safe. Keep one backup in a different location such as your office or a relatives house. Rotate them. It is a pain and you are aways behind the curve but if you get a weekly routine going, you will only be a week behind. Worst case you loose a weeks data. Important data should be backed up imediately.


----------



## RustyBrown (May 29, 2004)

Ditto to Grayfish...


----------



## MT Stringer (May 21, 2004)

> Keep one backup in a different location such as your office or a relatives house.


ha ha, I'm retired! ...and my relatives are a bunch of outlaws! 
Well, most of them are anyway.

I also use an external backup. Fry's had a 300 gb hdd on sale for $49 on Black Friday, so I scooped up a couple. I had bought an enclosure off of EBAY for $10 or so. This works fine for me. In fact, I have plans this week to start burning DVD's of the images I have on the PC to recover a lot of room on the ol' hard drive.

NOTE: I had asked the same question on another forum about what program to use. After getting numerous replies - everything from batch files to Robocopy, etc., I settled for SyncToy from Microsoft. It is a free power toy utility and works great for me. Simple but effective. I have it set up to back up only the files that have changed. It's not automatic, but I run it after every photo session. Seems to be working great.
Mike


----------



## grayfish (Jul 31, 2005)

I know some of your relatives. Get a box at the local bank.


----------



## Dolphin (May 21, 2004)

Ditto to all above - and with regards to the sizes of the external hard drives - just remember if one fails it does not matter if it is 10GB or 1TB - all data is GONE! This is my next project - I currently have my photo's (and other important data) on a laptop and an external hard drive, This weekend will be spent with another external hard drive getting the info off the laptop and on to another laptop as well as the 2nd external hard drive.


----------



## Gator_Nutz (Sep 27, 2006)

I'm in agreement with Arlon too on what to keep and what to toss. I have way more images than I should. Some I am sure I will never look at again but I just find it so hard to delete them for some reason. I think it's like being a digital packrat. I keep thinking I will learn some new trick or post processing secret that will allow me to make a decent photo out of a crappy one. I am planning a weekend soon of going through everything I have, naming and storing things a little more logically, and throwing out the trash.


----------



## hooter (Aug 12, 2005)

Thanks for the suggestions. I am finding it is easier to take pictures that to delete them permanently! 

hOOter


----------



## dwilliams35 (Oct 8, 2006)

I'm scared of using a hard drive for permanent storage: seen too many crash. I've got them on HD's, but I have EVERYTHING I shoot on DVD's and CD's as well: lose one of them and you've lost a handful of pictures instead of the whole shooting match.


----------



## boashna (May 28, 2004)

burn it on cd or dvd. one dvd could store possibley 50000 pics and cd about 5000


----------

