Silly Question or Being Really Safe????

Angelaine

I am new to SmugMug and little by little have been uploading my digital pictures--not super great---but wonderful memories for me. My question is this. Do most people who store their photographs on SmugMug still back them up on a flash drive or somewhere else, too, just to be on the safe side? I was thinking that I would delete my photographs from my hard drive and just have them on SmugMug, but would you suggest that I still back them up somewhere else, also, just to be on the really safe side? Thanks so much for any and all advice.:dunno

gus

I trust smugmug. Some people do like to keep their raw files but i dont.

W.W. Webster

gus wrote:

I trust smugmug.

So do I, but I wouldn't rely on anyone else to be the sole backup for my images - that's my responsibility. For me, SmugMug is just a place to display some of my work.

I back up all my RAWs to CD-ROMs which are stored off-site, and also my developed and undeveloped image files to an external drive kept disconnected from both my computer and the power supply when not actually in the process of backing up (done at least daily).

Call me super-conservative, but 40 years in the IT game has taught me a thing or two!

Richard

Angelaine wrote:

Do most people who store their photographs on SmugMug still back them up on a flash drive or somewhere else, too, just to be on the safe side?

In addition to SmugMug, I keep two copies of everything on separate media at all times. I shoot only in RAW, so the originals can't be on SmugMug. I don't doubt that SmugMug does a better job of protecting data than I do, but since storage is cheap these days, I see no reason to take a chance.

Cheers,

denisegoldberg

SmugMug is certainly a safe storage location, with our pictures living in multiple physical locations - but I don't upload all of my photos, so that's not good enough as a backup.

I have files backed up to an external drive at home, plus I use Amazon S3 as a backup. I use JungleDisk to get to S3. I used to keep backups on two external drives, but I had one of them fail. It scared me enough to add an external multi-site option to my backups.

In case you need it, here are links to S3 and to JungleDisk. There are other options out there too, but these are the ones I'm familiar with.

http://www.amazon.com/s3
http://www.jungledisk.com/

--- Denise

Angelaine

Oh, I appreciate the advice sooooooooo much. I am going to backup my own photos to other place also, plus put them on a flash drive or CD. My photos are not professional as of yet, but none the less they are special to me. I have some photographs that I shot of my Yorkshire Terrier during one of my "photoshoots" and they are irreplacable. Thank you all for your valued opinions.