12 replies to this topic

[canon eos]

We've all heard about it and some of us (you) have experienced it..................

Consider that sooner or later that you will lose your wonderful digital images. It's always a good time to consider backup scenarios for your computer files, but these recent weather conditions with unexpected storms should awaken everyone to seriously ensuring that their photos, at least, are backed up (saved) somehow, somewhere.

Here are a few things to consider:

• there is no 'power bar' that is foolproof in that it will guarantee that no damaging current will reach your computer; use one, but take the extra step of actually unplugging the power and phone/cable lines if a storm is imminent
• there is hardly any virus protection or firewall that can prevent all instances of intrusion; run (approved) detection and cleaning software regularly
• use at least external hard-drives (HHDs) to backup your data onto, but...........
• external HDDs do fail, and often at a higher rate than your computer (internal) HDDs since they are often in closed cases which overheat (the prime cause of HDD failure itself!)
• and do not leave your external HDDs hooked up continuously; power spikes and lightning just love to travel along connecting cables

I'm not trying to be an alarmist.
My life-long Passion is photography and I treasure my images.
Although I am very happily retired I continue to pursue a second interest I have had for years, that of building and repairing computers, strictly as a hobby as I want no hassles of business matters (my friends and clients love that approach!).

Backing up your images (at least*) is not that difficult, and there are good free programs available; Windows7 for example has a simple and good program.

*I back up, or should I say, CLONE my entire hard-drive on a regular basis. Takes about 2-3 hours, gives a complete 'spare' copy of my whole computer on another HDD which I keep in another location.

[cabirds]

"Back up my photos? I couldn't find the reverse switch!"

I'd assume anyone serious about preserving their photos would be moving their "keepers" off onto _quality_ DVDs.

Environmental testing has them at 55 years average these days - and satisfying a requirement of Sarbanes/Oxley

[meghann]

There's also getting them printed. Then, if the zombie apocalypse happens and all electronics are wiped out, you'll still have your photos.

Priorities, I have them.

[cabirds]

It's funny that you should mention that. Funny, of course, in the context of ZOMG! Zombie Apocalypse - but also funny in the not-so-funny-way.

Over the years of early digital imaging and not being nearly so careful with my backups, I lost a lot of photos of Thor! which suddenly had tremendous value to me.

Although at least second generation, scanning the printouts and then cleaning them up with modern tools allowed me to recover some really important photos that would otherwise have been lost.

Given that, I'm now contemplating purchasing a pretty high-end printer...

[canon eos]

Yes, the main point is to actually backup or save your images before 'something' happens.
Using DVDs used to be a viable option but it has the limit of capacity. Given a typical DVD capacity of 4.7Gb, you could only back up less than 250 of RAW images of about 20Mb each. And even with typical JPGs of the 5-10Mb size most of us will need a heck of a lot of DVDs, not to mention the time to burn them.
External hard-drives are a good on-site option as long as some consideration is made to keeping those managed well.

[cabirds]

Actually - they're pretty poor for long-term storage. Bit-rot is a serious problem with drives, which is the reason they can't be used in mission-critical backups.

BluRay largely answers your storage size concerns (at > 10x DVD) - although we still need to be a bit concerned for their longevity as environmentals are still ongoing.

[folkeye]

SO it seems the good ol DVD/CD is still the best way to go for now. Thankfully they're cheap...just have to take the time to do things the hard way. 'Manually' label them. Get out the good ol' Sharpie since I've never had luck with lightscribe (though I do have it).

Anybody have an experience with the life span of a not every day use External HD?

[canon eos]

..just have to take the time to do things the hard way.

enjoy the burning process ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

[cabirds]

Bit-rot on a typical hard drive begins to be noticeable typically around 18-24months. By eight or nine years it could be a real problem generally.

Another thing to be aware of is regular replacement with _quality_ burners. The laser head will get out of registration with regular burning and that leads to unreadable optical media down the road. We run verification on our media on several different machines with different readers to make sure they're long-term readable.

Lightscribe is tooooo darned slow.

Speaking of slow - if the media is important to you, burn it slow. Faster write speeds make for less readable discs.

[folkeye]

enjoy the burning process ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Naps are a good thing

But in general I've just been using the external and guess I should really look to a secondary investment. Burning sounds the easiest.

[canon eos]

The whole point is to back up, or save or duplicate your digital images.
Whether one chooses to perform (scientifically approved) archival methods, or backups on your computer-installed DVD/CD player or using online 'Cloud' resources or by using the extremely easy and popular external hard-drives is up to the individual.
Yes, it's good to know of caveats such as 'disk-rot' and more but again we all should consider some way of saving our images.

Storms and other 'situations' occur all the time, and often without notice. Sometimes we just need our images backed up for even short-term insurance............

Scenario:

• I backed up my images yesterday
• let's say, onto an external HDD, which I then un-connected from computer
• storm or whatever wiped my computer overnight
• had computer replaced/repaired
• restored digital images from external HDD to my computer

[Doug Herr]

I have backup hard drives stored in multiple locations: home, office, brother's house (2 hours away) and daughter's house (2 days away). The hard drives are only connected to the computer when copying files.

[lyceel]

RAID 1 Array (that is, mirrored drives) on the main workstation + external RAID 5 array on a home server + annual Blu-Ray archive back-ups, stored in a fire safe at my folks' place. Hopefully that'll be enough.