UKC

I have a 32GB SD card which I keep everything on and and also store on my laptop and desktop (both Macs).

The lap and desk tops are now really slow and am debating buying an external hard drive. How many places do you store your photos/videos? I don't trust technology and have a fear that if I only store my memories in one place I am risk of massive loss due to tech failure, however I really do need to tidy up my desktop etc.

In reply to Father Noel Furlong

I keep all my photos on my laptop and on two external hard drives, one of which I keep at work in case my house burns down (or, more likely, falls down).

In reply to Robert Durran:

So it's not just me that's paranoid.......thanks.

In reply to Father Noel Furlong:



SD cards are a very dodgy place to store all your eggs in one basket.

I have my images storred on

A set of DVD's at a mate's house
A set of DVD's at my parent's house
A set of DVD's in an ARGOS fireproof safe
An external hard drive in the same fireproof safe
On a small Network Storage Device on my home network

Paranoid?

I think not. Over the years I have stupidly wiped, formatted and destroyed hard drives which contain my images and operating system and without backups, all my photos would have vanished in the blink of an eye.

I've also had quite a few SD cards fail on me.

Top tip, make at least two backups, possibly onto DVD as this is the cheapest method, and store at least one copy in somebody else's home.

In reply to Father Noel Furlong:

Flickr, and a back up internal HD.

In reply to The Lemming:

can i add to your paranoia?

home burnt DVD's and CD's "go off" after a period of time. re-create them every couple of years to be on the safe side

In reply to rallymania:



I had some cheap CD's that I bought from a Computer Fair/Flea-market which were unbranded and shrink wrapped. These discs lasted 10 years before showing signs of de-laminating.

However today's task is to burn some more DVD's of my photos.

In reply to Father Noel Furlong:

Internal HD backing up to two external HD.

Would not rely on dvd or cd. And replace HD every 3-5 years.

Theft and fire are my main concerns.

Paranoid is good.

In reply to Father Noel Furlong:

Another vote for Flickr as an addition to a HD back-up. Practically unlimited storage of jpegs; all organised into sets/collections; select private and the world and his wife can't see them.

In reply to Father Noel Furlong:

Back at home my mother has shoeboxes full of old photographs, some belonged to her mother.

These are never looked at.

How often are your stored images viewed?

In reply to Father Noel Furlong:

I use DVD writer, a couple of external hard disc drive's, and for anything really important I sometimes store a back up in a cloud account.

In reply to Father Noel Furlong:

er how about 7x5 prints done of your most important images, stored in archival sleeving / boxes.

At least in 50 years time someone can open the box and see the work - as opposed to attempt to source someway of getting access to 50 year old technology.

If only kodachrome was still with us….. http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/photoblog/2010/12/end_of_the_line_for_kodachrome...

In reply to stroppygob:



More often than the box in the wardrobe.....but it's a good point

In reply to stroppygob:



Mine are viewed quite a lot, thanks to the hard work I put in with every single one of my photos. It took me for ever, but I tagged every single image with as many words as I could think of to describe them.

Now, if I want to see a specific image or crank up a slide show, I simply put some choice words into the search box and enjoy what pops up. Its a much better way than trying to remember what folder a particular image may or may not be in. I have a comprehensive filing system for my images but it can never compete with the speed of searching for them by using Tags.

Backing up to DVDs? Really?

I predict that before long, you will all be using some form of cloud storage. No need to 'back up', when the cloud is an exact mirror. It's obviously not stored locally and it removes the most unreliable part of data security; the human.

In reply to The Lemming:

it's not just delamination though

it's also the reaction layer that can decay. it is possible for the disks to look perfectly OK, but no longer be readable. although in interests of balanced reporting, i've yet to see one of mine that actually stop working, almost all manufactures of the disks advise this may / will happen.

just worth bearign in mind

In reply to Father Noel Furlong:

I suggest Amazon S3, though there's a small learning curve.
http://aws.amazon.com/s3/faqs/#How_durable_is_Amazon_S3

I'd say data on Amazon S3 probably has a higher survivability than data on home brewed DVD/HDD solutions.

In reply to rallymania:

>



Of the 20 or 30 odd CD's that were around 10 years old, these discs had been forgotten about in a CD case and were living in a box unloved. One or two had delaminated and one or two healthy looking disks would not work. The rest were fine, but I suspect they were on the raggedy edge of usefulness.

In reply to Jonny2vests:



Fixed that for you

In reply to Jonny2vests:


Isn't "the cloud" just a silly name for a remote hard drive looked after by other humans?

In reply to Robert Durran:
The cloud is a silly name for somewhere that's quite likely to disappear if the particular owner goes out of business!
I'm glad I've got all my precious photos backed up onto floppies

In reply to digby:

this type?

http://www.amazon.com/Maxell-5-25-Floppy-Disk-10-Pack/dp/B00004Z5EL

In reply to Robert Durran:

Yep.

And that remote hard drive can be deleted on a whim or if the company goes bust or gets taken over. If you pay a subscription and the subscription runs out, then bye-bye data.

We can all create our own personal clouds for the price of one year's subscription, and these personal clouds can be accessed from anywhere in the world, too. You could share your photos with whoever you wish, provided you have internet access.

In reply to rallymania:

I always wanted one of these bad boys, but could never afford them. That and the fact that I would never be able to max out their storage limits.

http://www.amazon.com/Iomega-31310-Zip-USB-Powered-Drive/dp/B000058EGT/ref=...

In reply to The Lemming:

250 MB !

Is this the wrong link, I have a 1 TB drive that was maxed out years ago.

In reply to Robert Durran, The Lemming and Digby:

Don't be dizzy. Stop me if you think I'm stating the bleeding obvious.

Data is typically stored on raid controlled storage clusters that have local redundancy and which are also mirrored remotely.

And you're not just saving files, you're saving changes to files, which means any version can be regenerated easily.

And there isn't some bloke at the other end driving a mouse, it's (obviously) automated. It doesn't rely on sporadic copying of DVDs with a shelf life shorter than Amazon, that sit in the drawer next to the PC.

And let's say amazon or Dropbox go belly up, you still have your local copy, and will have time to react accordingly.

In reply to Jonny2vests:


I havce absolutely no idea what any of that means.



Is that supposed to be reassuring? Anyway, someone must be responsible for the running of the thing.


So it's just another backup/basket, but not one I would want to put all my eggs in; I definitely don't trust my laptop (it'san evil,vindictive thing), so want at least two backups of some sort.

In reply to Father Noel Furlong:

I lost about 4000 photos when a hard drive died a couple of years ago.

I was gutted for a while but I haven't really missed them since. It made me realise
a) memories and photos are not the same thing.
b) most of my digital photography was rubbish

That said I now back up to an external hard drive but only one, I'm not that paranoid still.

In reply to Jonny2vests:


I'm as dizzy as they come. I'm an armchair punter when it comes to computers.

In reply to The Lemming:


You can get help for OCD.

In reply to Robert Durran:


It means that removing hard drives from the server cluster with your data on it won't matter up to a point. A lot of drives would have to fail at once. But even if that happened (because the building burn't down!), there are copies (mirrors) in other facilities.


Yes, its administered by gangs of geeks who fix it when it goes wrong. But they don't have to DO anything to backup your data, it just happens. How else could it work?


Well good luck with that, but putting your eggs in one basket is exactly what you are doing. And more than one backup can be a dangerous thing unless they remain exactly in sync.

In reply to Jonny2vests:



Why are two physically separate removable hard drives kept in separate bulidings only one basket?


Why? (They're not - I update the one I do not keep in my house less frequently)

Amazon provides a really good service, if you're so inclined and have the bandwidth.

I'd not overly worry about Amazon losing your data:

Within the region you nominate for storing your data, "Amazon S3 is designed to sustain the concurrent loss of data in two facilities".

Should you want you could store a copy of your data in multiple regions, which currently are:
- US Standard (Northern Virginia or the Pacific Northwest)
- US West (Oregon)
- US West (Northern California)
- EU (Ireland), Asia Pacific (Singapore)
- Asia Pacific (Tokyo)
- Asia Pacific (Sydney)
- South America (Sao Paulo)
- GovCloud (US)



Probably the biggest hindrance to backups in my observation is that they often require regular effort. You get busy, you have more important things to do, you'll do it tomorrow. By using a 'cloud' solution, you can automate all of it, every now and again you'll want to check up that things aren't silently failing - but it's not much of a burden as compared to dealing with graphically distributed DVDs and HDDs (which should include regular verification that existing backups are usable).

In reply to Robert Durran:


Well fair enough, if they're not together, that's not a terrible solution, I was more having a go at the DVD crowd, that's crazy talk.


Because it can get very confusing unless you are absolutely rigorous and consistent about how you go about backing up. This goes back to the problem of humans, they are generally not consistent, backups become un-synced, and it becomes an uber-faff with more than one backup to work out which files from which copy are for keeping, inevitably at some point good data gets deleted. I'm not saying you've done this or even that you will do this, just that it becomes much more likely that you will at some point unless you are a Robot Robert.

In reply to rallymania:



Wow, there's some powerful stuff coming onto the market. I'm going to have to upgrade.

In reply to George Fisher:


Video is interesting as you can hear the crap your kids used to say when they were three.....although maybe they won't thank me for that


Mine too. Part of my tidy up has to be to delete the multiple pish shots i've taken.

In reply to Henry Iddon:



Mine is, but some of my trannies are going mouldy despite having been kept reasonably carefully. Glad I cibachromed some of the best and scanned all of them... Still a fire risk, mind.