Backing up files

fredjclaus · September 18, 2009

Well, I'm having probelms with my external hard drive. I have been backing up the pictures to DVD every month, but this month I have not backed them up yet. It's strange, the programs on the external will work, and the photos on the external will show up if I ask them to, however I can't go into My computer and explore the external. Whenever i do it tells me to format the hard drive before using it.

In any event, I've signed up for a free trial of Carbonite online storage, and am updating the files so I can format. Has anyone used Carbonite before? What do you think of the service?

Pupator · September 18, 2009

I've used Carbonite. It was fine.

I used Mozy, I liked it better. It's all quite subjective though. If they get the job done and the price is right (and they aren't going to go out of business overnight!) it's six in one and a half-dozen in the other.

Now I'm using SugarSync because I like the sync (not just backup) feature. If I was just doing backups I'd probably go back to Mozy or else that company Andy uses (can't think of who that is but it's a lot of space for cheap).

FedererPhoto · September 18, 2009

Buy another few externals - they are wicked cheap.

Run through through a rotating backup scheme ... I personally rotate through 5 (and keep them in separate locations)

fredjclaus · September 18, 2009

I'm hoping this external will be ok once I reformat. It's working fine except for when I try to install a program to it, or try to go to My Computer and explore it.

What types of externals do you use? I personally have a Toshiba 250GB.

Art Scott · September 18, 2009

fredjclaus wrote:

I'm hoping this external will be ok once I reformat. It's working fine except for when I try to install a program to it, or try to go to My Computer and explore it.

What types of externals do you use? I personally have a Toshiba 250GB.

for reason given on several other thread dealing wit this...I use only SEGATE & HITACHI.....by runnning purely unscientific experiments with various hardrives on my own I have found seagate & Hitachi to be the 2 quietiest hardrives....my evaluation is based on 3 different vox operated digital recorders.....not of which seage or hitachi would turn on......aside from that, coming from the computer manufacturing industry and seeing first hand the amount of failures that come from different brands, the company I worked for settle on seagate and hitachi and sent a literal 40ft semi trailer of western digital and maxtor to a reclamation center, and they had only been run thru out incoming testing department......and that pretty much sums up everything zI have said in the previous threads.....

My externals run 24 / 7 unless I am going out of town overnight then everything is unplugged and rebooted when I return.
Before I found a supplier for seagate, I had to use maxtor and WD and I was having what is known as hard crashes (a hard crash is one that you actually hear the read head slam directly into the disk platter) every few weeks and I was loosing a lot of needed info and photo files.....those were never recovered.........

Then I found a seagate supplier and never looked back, bought one hitachi to try out and it has not given any problems.....oldest seagate is running on 4.5 yrs, about time to order a replacement and transfer all data then wipe and sell the older one..................

Sam · September 18, 2009

I wouldn't trust my images to a third party. What kind of guarantee can they possibly make? If they go out of business your warranty is worthless. If they flat loose them, do you think they are going pay for a trip to where Evey your images came from?

Hard drives are cheap. I have control. I know where they are and how they are being stored.

My images, my responsibility.

Sam

Pupator · September 18, 2009

I keep a copy locally, but it's more likely that my local copy will fail, be stolen, or burned up in a fire than it is that carbonite/mozy/amazon/whoever will go out of business and leave me out in the cold. Why not have both?

Richard · September 19, 2009

The main consideration in devising a backup scheme is how valuable the data are to you. As a serious hobbyist, my method has two copies on separate media plus high quality Jpgs of the best of my stuff on SmugMug. An apartment fire could wipe out all my RAW files, but frankly that would be the least of my concerns at that point. If I made my living through photography, I would certainly beef up my backup scheme to include multiple off-line copies in multiple locations. There's no solution that's right for everybody.

chrisjohnson · September 19, 2009

Strange question and some slightly disturbing answers.

Ironically, maybe, I use SmugMug to back up photos that I would hate to lose in a fire or burglary. Mostly these are not of any artistic merit but they have an emotional value to me and my family/friends. So my back-up strategy is rather simple:
- on each pc on my network
- archived on external hard-disk (s)
- sorted in SmugMug

I recently ordered a copy of my SmugMug galleries on DVD - I would hate to have to sort again in the unlikely event SmugMug and/or Amazon do an overnight vanishing act. I'll be storing this DVD off-site, and I'll order another copy in 12 months time.

fredjclaus · September 19, 2009

ok, so it seems that the hard drive idea is a good one. What do you all think of my burning them to DVD once a month? I take all the files I have photographed on a monthly basis and burn two DVD's. I keep one in my office and one in my mother in law's home office. This way if mine are destroyed some how, I have a back up. The ones at her house are kept in a fireproof safe.

Once I burn the DVD's, I remove them from the hard drive. Could that part of the process be causing the problem?

Art,

Where do you buy your seagates from? It was a toss up between Toshiba and Seagate, but the salesman told me that Toshiba was better.

Art Scott · September 19, 2009

fredjclaus wrote:

Art,

Where do you buy your seagates from? It was a toss up between Toshiba and Seagate, but the salesman told me that Toshiba was better.

I mostly use New Egg and TIGER DIRECT.......here in last 6 or so months it had TD as they have had the best sales.....1 and 1.5 TB drives for under $90+ s/h of course.......I normally do a 3 at a time buy..........

You should not have a proble mby removeing files from you harddrive ,,,,,unless you are trying o access them thru a catalog made by Lightroom or some other data basing software................

Art Scott · September 19, 2009

Sam wrote:

I wouldn't trust my images to a third party. What kind of guarantee can they possibly make? If they go out of business your warranty is worthless. If they flat loose them, do you think they are going pay for a trip to where Evey your images came from?

Hard drives are cheap. I have control. I know where they are and how they are being stored.

My images, my responsibility.

Sam

Actually we have no choice but to TRUST our files to any of the many 3rd parties out there.....
You trust your images to a 3 party everytime you placew them on a harddrive of a cd or dvd.....and in this day and age.......any company can go belly up over night......also none of the drive manufacturers make all the components inside the drive so they have to trust the quality of the platter makers, the diode makers the IC chip makers........and that leaves us no choice but to have trust in the various 3rd parties also...........

I am looking to into these as one of them is about $5/mo with a no limit on stored files......$60/yr is cheaper than HDD's but I would not trust them to be my only archiving system......I would intergrate them as my 3rd or 4th harddrive.....and they are actually offsite.....also I believe you can store raws and dngs at at least one of them.....I could be wrong here and that is one thing I need to have answered for me.................

chrisjohnson · September 20, 2009

I would be a bit careful about DVD.

A good back-up strategy means being prepared to have two legs to stand-on in the unlikely event your hard disk crashes, your house burns down etc.

DVD is part of my strategy but I also see a lot of variance in the quality of media out there, and I'm sure we all had the experience of not being able to read an old disk on a new drive.

I also read some stuff about sticking a hard disk in a drawer and forgetting about it. Well, all digital storage media will degrade over time so you really need to figure when to copy the copy. The big advantage of archiving in "the cloud" is that this aspect should be taken care of by your supplier but I don't know of any that offer a solid guarantee to a) not lose your data or b) to give you substantial financial damages in the event they do.

Art Scott · September 20, 2009

goldenballs wrote:

I would be a bit careful about DVD.

A good back-up strategy means being prepared to have two legs to stand-on in the unlikely event your hard disk crashes, your house burns down etc.

DVD is part of my strategy but I also see a lot of variance in the quality of media out there, and I'm sure we all had the experience of not being able to read an old disk on a new drive.

I also read some stuff about sticking a hard disk in a drawer and forgetting about it. Well, all digital storage media will degrade over time so you really need to figure when to copy the copy. The big advantage of archiving in "the cloud" is that this aspect should be taken care of by your supplier but I don't know of any that offer a solid guarantee to a) not lose your data or b) to give you substantial financial damages in the event they do.

Exactly correct on the DVD aspects.......I bought a name brand bundle of dvd's and filled them with images and then cleaned all images off my "c" drive and figured I'd use the dvd to access my files as I need to ......so on a nice clear blue day a week or so down the road I went to pull a file and print it........and got this....CORRUPT FILES...... the dvd's were stored in their jewel cases and away from any thing that could harm them......it cist me a sale from a client and also cost me a load of time hunting down a software that could recover all my files not jsut my thiumb nail sized ones or a software that recovered and saved full sized files......I found hundreds of softwares that recovered everything but when you save them they were tiny 240x 320......were talking business card size.......
So yesone must be careful of consumer grade disks from you local discount or offices supply store.....

I recommend Mam-A (formely known as Mitsui) GOLD, I used them for almost 5 yrs recording several thousands of disks each school yr at the University I workled at and if 1 out of 300 failed we that was fantastic....as before we had used every brand out there and the last was sony and Sony failed at a rate of about 20-30 per hundred......Mam-A Gold have an actual gold layer (not dye) that gets written on by the laser.....they are the most stable disks available and they cost a bit more also.

I do not think any of the archiving services offer any compensation if data is lost.....that just would not be feasable........it would be great if they did.........

Richard · September 20, 2009

goldenballs wrote:

I would be a bit careful about DVD.

Yes, you do need to be careful about degradation over time. But there's a bigger issue as well. In ___ years (fill in the blank) you will not be able to buy a computer that reads DVDs, just as today's machines don't come with floppy disk readers. So your strategy needs to include some thought about how you will migrate your data to other media when the time comes. DVDs can still make sense, but only as part of a larger scheme that always involves having multiple copies on separate media and testing them periodically for integrity.

DavidTO · September 20, 2009

Sam wrote:

I wouldn't trust my images to a third party. What kind of guarantee can they possibly make? If they go out of business your warranty is worthless. If they flat loose them, do you think they are going pay for a trip to where Evey your images came from?

Hard drives are cheap. I have control. I know where they are and how they are being stored.

My images, my responsibility.

Sam

I agree with half. Back up on hard drives they're cheap, and you can be responsible for it.

But services like Mozy and BackBlaze offer secure offsite backup. If your house burns down the images are still safe. It shouldn't replace local backups, but supplement them.

bendruckerphoto · September 20, 2009

I highly recommend backblaze.

https://www.backblaze.com

fredjclaus · September 21, 2009

Sorry for the delay in replying guys, I've been down sick for a few days. There seems to be a lot of issues to look at here. Thanks for the information.

Backing up files

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