What are the pros and cons of various ways to back up photos? I've heard: Burn CDs.... Flash drives.... and External hard drives.... How do you all decide which method to use? Flash drive seems most convenient... but are there reasons to consider the other options instead? I will appreciate your input as I've got a LOT of photos on my computer and in my camera that need to be in a more permanent home.
This answer is just what I do, and I have been criticized for it. I keep the photos on the memory cards that the camera records them on. When the card is full, I record the number sequence and dates on the card, and buy a new card. I store the full cards in a safe place. I never delete photos from the card, or alter them in any way while on the card. I have a picture frame that plays the photos that are on the card inserted in the frame, and that allows people interested, to look at them, and those not, to go about their business. The photos that I want to use are copied to the computer and then copied to a second file where I re-size, and or alter as I need. The con is the cost of the cards, but that has come down of late, so I pay $35.00 to store 4000 pictures @10.4 MP, on a 4 GB card. It works fine for me. The concern I have is, what new storage device is in the future? Will my grandchildren be able to see my pictures?? Paper worked for my grand parents, and I'm still enjoying those photos. Sometimes the old ideas aren't so bad . Tom
Since I take all my photos like raw-images, and a lot of them, none of the suggested ways works for me. My file size is between 8 and 13 Mb and I took, for example, over 2000 images one week now in August I have 1,3 Tb hard drive space in the PC, and some external USB-drives as well. It's difficult to store a lot of files, and expensive of course :-x I have 12 Gb flash memory for the cameras...
Christer, when you say an external USB drvie, are you referring to one of those little flash drives? I've heard people call them USB drives or thumb drives. Or are you talking about what I've heard called an external hard drive? I think I want to choose between these two ideas. I am not especially technical but trying to figure it out.
It is easy to see why Calomaar has been criticized for his backup system, that has got to be the worst backup plan I have ever heard of. Memory cards are very expensive (he is getting ripped off at $35 per 4 gigs, I paid $69 for my 32 gig CF card) and memory cards fail. The number one rule of backups is to do multiple backups and keep them in different physical locations. The biggest problem people have with backups is that they don't know how to edit their collection. I take about 3000 images per month with my Canon 50d in Raw format which is about 25 megs per photo. That's about 75 gigs per month or almost a terabyte a year. I would be spending most of my free time backing up if I didn't know how to edit. I download my memory card to a folder on my hard drive every day. At the first of the month I load them into Lightroom and pick out the thirty best images (that is one per day) and post process them. Then I save the original and the post processed jpg and delete the rest. At the end of the year I have 360 images for the year and I pick out the 100 best and dump the rest. Keeping every shot you take is just silly and massively time consuming, not to mention storage space consuming. Right now my entire photo collection takes up 7 gigs. As far as backing up goes, my entire collection of stuff (photos, mp3s, software, videos and documents) is less than 20 gigs. Once a month I back it all up to a 32 gig flash drive that I bought for $49. I then copy the files to my girl friends hard drive. That takes about 3 hours. Then once every three months I burn 5 DVDs and mail them to my sister who stores them in her safe. So at any given time I have three or four different backups in three or four locations. That kinda makes it impossible for me to ever lose my collection. I get a giggle out of the fact that my photos are 25 megs per shot. My first hard drive 22 years ago was a whopping 20 meg and I could never imagine how I was going to fill it up. It took me hours to back it up.
If you want to store a lot of files, more then 100 Gb, then it's an external hard drive (USB-hard drive) you looking for. 16 Gb or less then you can use a thumb drive (USB Memory Stick), those are really safe BUT easy to loose or misplace But as we speak I have to store more then 20 000 raw-images somewhere, so I have to use an external hard drive. (Note to my self; clean up and delete some bad images )
Hmm. That is a good point about the flash drive being easy to lose... Thanks so much for your opinions.
Seilerbird, I'm sorry that you think my backup system is the worst that you have ever heard of. It is apparent that your needs and mine are vastly different. I am not a professional, nor do I even qualify as an amateur, my photographic status is best described as hobbyist. While I take maybe 1000 shots a month, only about half are in RAW format. There is no way that I would be able to delete any, I'd likely wind up in divorce court. One picture a day as a keeper won't work. I may take 45 or 50 pictures of the grand kids in one day, those are just too precious to delete. My nature photography is just for fun, and and my own personal enjoyment, and I have only had 15 photos published. As far as the 4 GB cards go, the cost is nothing @ $35 a card, you only get "ripped off" if you are unaware , and I am not unaware, I choose not to use the big cards. $35 a card is nothing when you consider the thousands you spend for a good lens. The early cards are from the point & shoot I started with, the others are from the DSLR I'm using now. I have 37 cards, that go back 10 years, and there has never been a failure, so it's only a matter of opinion that they are unsafe. Hard drives fail, memory sticks and flash drives fail. Even cd's & dvd's fail, so one is as good as another. The photos are in the computers, and on the cards, the cards are in one home, and there's a computer in each. I think I have it covered. By the way, the question on this post was "How do you back up your photos", not what is the best method for back up. I'm not knocking your system, if it works for you that's fine, so don't knock mine, it works fine for me. Tom
Calomar we each use what works best for ourselves. My hubby would be in deep doodoo if "delete" was in his vocabulary :twisted: I have an eleborate system spanning decades back to my grandparents/greatgrandparents. I save on my computer and back-up onto an external hard drive right now. Who knows what I will do in the future. It works well for me at this moment. The formats have changed several times since I began taking digital photos. (I used to use flops, then CDs, but they are both obsolete now). I agree that only the paper copies are fool-proof against modernazation, but not water and fire. Even the external hard drive is not full-proof since mine failed last spring, but fortunately I also had everything on my laptop. The externals are really pretty cheap now so I got 500GB for $60. As technology keeps changing it is hard to decide what is best for storage, but it sure is fun taking all those pictures and saving the memories
Thanks for another opinion Jewell. I am thinking that whether I decide on an external hard drive or flash drive, or both, holding onto the memory card is another back-up for worst case scenario. Doubtful that everything would fail at once. I don't delete that much either. Unless I'm the one looking awful! lol.
With the electronic market the way it is right now, you can go to Fry's Electronics or Best Buy and pick up a 500 gig external hard drive for about $75. They are extremely cheap at this point and very durable, not nearly as much as the flash drive, but they are pretty small and easy to move. The extra disk space is worth it though.
I use a memory stick to store from my camera. then I used to have extra memory space (or hard drive) that I would store my memory stick but then it filled up and is slowing down my comp. I'm having to go back and put them onto a backup disk so that they are saved. Deleting before backup isn't in my vocabulary either. I need every pict. I take. once on the disk then I'll delete them and have more space on my comp. making things run better also. Differant ways work differant for everyone-thats the beauty of it.
I think an external USB hard disk is the most convenient. Flash drives are easily lost, cost more per GByte and I don't know how long they retain data. You shouldn't forget to transfer to new media as technology evolves, so your grandchildred will still be able to look at the pictures. That's also a reason why I don't like most backup SW, because it often stores files in proprietery formats. I use a simple batch file to backup new and changed files to an external hard disk, where the folders then look exactly the same as on my PC. If you're interested, you can read here how to do this hard disk backup: http://www.cleverandeasy.com/Multim...software-is-already-installed-on-your-pc.html
