Backup strategies for photographers

[Yogesh Sarkar]

While we have had numerous threads on how to backup photographs effectively and choosing backup drives, we never had a dedicated thread for data backup for photographers, until now. Please use this thread to share your backup strategies with fellow BCMTians or to seek advice for building a backup strategy, which works for you, based on your budget and requirement.

 

[invincible]

Well I am no photographer, however what I do is upload all my pics on google drive, I am not sure if we can add the raw files there however jpeg is no issue at all. Its free too

 

[Yogesh Sarkar]

My backup strategy:

1. Internal storage and backup: All my images are currently stored in a 3TB WD Green internal drive. All data on this drive is daily backed up on my second drive in the computer (2TB WD Green) using Windows 7 backup.
2. External Backup 1: A single 4TB WD My Book contains backup of all the images.
3. External Backup 2: 1TB Seagate Drive which contains my trip images.
4. External Backup 3: 1TB Buffalo Drive which contains all my client images.
5. Cloud Backup: I have a smugmug pro account for my gallery and also to backup JPEG copies of my edited images. It has over 8GB images at this moment.

 

[Ankur003]

How to safeguard from natural disasters like flooding/earthquake, theft, fire ?
[MENTION=5276]invincible[/MENTION] : You can copy anything to Google drive, but space is limited to 15 GB.

 

[Yogesh Sarkar]

Only way to protect your data against such scenarios is to have cloud backup. As far as theft and fire is concerned, that can be handled with keeping an external HDD at friend/family home or at bank locker.

 

[iamsomnath]

Very important & often ignored topic. I follow the route as discussed below :-

1. My primary working setup is an old Vaio laptop fit with a screen. It has limited capacity of 500 GB internal. So I have attached 2 X 4 TB Western Digital my book external drives. Coming back from a shoot I first dump everything into this set-up in two broad categories of "Professional" and "Personal" and keep the two eHDDs mirrored. Then I delete the obvious bad ones. Keep the obviously good ones and mark the "may bes" , all through lightroom (suitably tagged). Till the culling is complete I don't delete the camera memory cards.

2. I have another very old PC which is used offline and have been retrofitted with 2X5 TB of internal HDD and the same holds the same folders as the Vaio. This is used ONLY as a storage PC . I am planning to buy a more recent PC / NAS which can be wirelessly synced with the VAIO ( I am hopelessly ignorant of such things ).

3. I keep a third copy in another offline PC at my office ( separate physical location).

4. All the three units are manually synched every weekend by me ( I am planning to do it automatically through software in future) . In fact the two eHHDs are copied and updated by a software called "second copy".

5. I keep the final keepers in cloud and I also Cut DVDs ( planning to migrate to Blue-Ray discs soon).

This method is the outcome of my belief "two is one and one is none". Currently I am achieving redundancy, physical separation as well as locational separation and a backup copy in the web. But all at the expense of a lot of manual baby-sitting. I am aiming at higher degree of automation in a month or two.

cheers
Somnath

 

[Ankur003]

Only way to protect your data against such scenarios is to have cloud backup. As far as theft and fire is concerned, that can be handled with keeping an external HDD at friend/family home or at bank locker.

I think One local backup in HDD + backup in cloud storage is the way to go

Google drive offers 1TB at $9.99 a month is quite reasonable IMO

 

[iamsomnath]

I think One local backup in HDD + backup in cloud storage is the way to go

Me, being a victim of failure of cloud storage at one point of time is always skeptical of them. Keeping only one HDD drive plus backup in cloud storage is a bit thin. At least 2 physical back-up is minimum IMO.

regards
Somnath

 

[Ankur003]

Me, being a victim of failure of cloud storage at one point of time is always skeptical of them. Keeping only one HDD drive plus backup in cloud storage is a bit thin. At least 2 physical back-up is minimum IMO.

regards
Somnath

Somnath Da, were you using a personal cloud storage?

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My backup strategy:

1. Internal storage and backup: All my images are currently stored in a 3TB WD Green internal drive. All data on this drive is daily backed up on my second drive in the computer (2TB WD Green) using Windows 7 backup.
2. External Backup 1: A single 4TB WD My Book contains backup of all the images.
3. External Backup 2: 1TB Seagate Drive which contains my trip images.
4. External Backup 3: 1TB Buffalo Drive which contains all my client images.
5. Cloud Backup: I have a smugmug pro account for my gallery and also to backup JPEG copies of my edited images. It has over 8GB images at this moment.

Yogesh, how do you ensure that your HDD are not corrupt?

 

[Yogesh Sarkar]

I don’t. I manually access and backup files, format them regularly. So if they do get corrupted, I will easily find out. In any case, any data is stored locally in at least 4 drives, 2 of which are completely separate from the computer and from each other.