Keeping digital pictures safe - question

[luckymomoftwins]

Hi Everyone,
I have a very important question for everyone...Where do you store your pictures and what do you do to make sure they are safe? I have all of my pictures from 2003- now on my hard drive and I have a back up Maxtor that backs everything up each night. However, I am still worried about my computer possibly shorting out and losing all of my years of pictures. I upload my pictures to Shutterfly and order prints from them, but I know that Shutterfly is not to be used for storage -- they could shut down, start charging for storage and/or their server could blow too.

Even with a back up hard drive, I don't feel that my pictures are 100% safe. Where do all of you store pictures? Would you suggest that I made back up discs of all of my pictures? That would be a huge project but I'm not sure what else to do.

My sister's computer recently just stopped and she thought she lost 3 years worth of pictures. She was seriously freaking out but luckily her computer guy was able to retrieve them for her.

Is there any company that will store pictures for me that you could suggest? We are getting close to hurricane season in South Florida and I want to be ready.

Thanks,
Jennifer

[safehaven]

I have all my photo's and work related files on my internal HD, an external HD, and an external HD that I store outside of my house. I backup to the primare HD about every other week. I backup to the off-site external HD about every other month. So, unless my whole city gets gobbled up in a sink hole are something, hopefully I am fully covered.

External HDs have really come down in price. Having two these days is not unreasonable.

[Roach711]

Safehaven has a good system there. Having an off-site copy of your files is essential. Lots of disasters can befall you: dead hard drives, stolen computers, house fires, floods, etc. Your off-site copies will save you from all or these.

I like to copy my files to DVD every few months. I take the latest copy to work for safe keeping and the older copies get archived in case of DVD failures. I've now got about three years of backups archived and I can go back that far to retrieve that old file that I deleted way back when.

A little paranoia is a good thing where irreplaceable files are concerned.

[kab8715]

Just another idea... after you back up to cd/dvd you could place them in one of those fire/waterproof safes you can get walmart, staples, officemax, etc.

[JTwin]

I keep my photos (and everything else essential) on my internal drive and on two other externals. You can get 2 good externals for $200 or less now.

[safehaven]

Just another idea... after you back up to cd/dvd you could place them in one of those fire/waterproof safes you can get walmart, staples, officemax, etc.

I have one of those that I keep my vehicle titles in. But, I'm not sure exactly how well they will actually hold up in a fire. If I remember correctly, the one I have, for instance, is only fire proof for 30 minutes. Maybe I am just paranoid, but I won't keep anything truly important in there.

[safehaven]

Just to get an idea, here is an external hard drive from Newegg.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822101013

It has decent reviews and you could pick up a pair for right around $150.

I find external hard drives way more convenient than burning your photos to DVD or CD. I currently have 76GB of photos on my HD. That would be 19 DVDs if I wanted to back up. Not only is that an unrealistic number, but also would take forever to do. Instead I have dual Western Digital 500GB eSATA HDs. I can backup in a matter of a couple of minutes and I have plenty of space for a long time to come.

I just though of something else also. I built my system with a RAID5 array, with triple 250GB Western Digital HD's. That gives me 500GB of net internal disk space. The other 250GB is a redundancy check in case one of the HD's fail. So, I am sort of protected that way as well. I do hope, though, that I never have to find out if the RAID5 setup is as good as it sounds.

[Stocky]

I back up to my FREE unlimited size and bandwidth web hosting service. If you can find a similar option I highly recommend it.

Something off site is always a good idea in case something happens to your house. You need to protect from more than just one drive going bad.

[luckymomoftwins]

Has anyone ever heard of/used idrive.com? My sister just told me about it.

[boog69]

I've got three 500gb external hard drives and back up discs. One set at home and the other in deposit box at bank. Office Max now has a system that they use to back up files off your computer. It goes to 4 remote locations and also encrypted. If one location is down, you can get it from another location. If hard drive crashes or get new computer. You can transfer files back to computer. Depending of file size it may take a while to transfer and it checks every so often for new files. May be other programs like that but this is first I've heard of with four locations. Cost is $50-80 depending rather on sale or not. I don't know what renewal costs.

[PhotosGuy]

hurricane season - However, I am still worried about my computer possibly shorting out and losing all of my years of pictures. You should have a UPS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uninterruptible_power_supply). They're only about $40 & will save your hard drive if it's writing & the power has a glitch, so you have time to shut your computer down. Some have software to do that automatically.

[PhotosGuy]

Update: Four years later, the battery died & I had to replace the unit. For another four years, I have peace of mind re: power failures for only $45.

[elContrarian]

I upload my pictures to Shutterfly and order prints from them, but I know that Shutterfly is not to be used for storage -- they could shut down, start charging for storage and/or their server could blow too.

So what's the worry?

They won't shut down or start charing before warning users. So you'll have a few days/weeks to move your stuff. Who cares if their server blows? It's a serious website and as any other serious website, they do multiple backups. The server can explode, the downtime would probably be like under 5 minutes :)

[elContrarian]

If you want to feel save, get a drobo. It's basically a thing with four slots for naked hard drives. That way, when you upgrade you don't need to pay for the enclosure as well.

http://www.drobo.com/

Why this thing? You can set it up very easily to write in "mirroring RAID mode", meaning that it will write the same thing on two hard drives. Start with two. Make them three or four if you really need to feel safe. Of course the problem remains the location. God forbid, a fire should start, you lose all your backups. A simpler, but similar, solution: install a mirroring RAID within your computer. Have it continuously make a perfect copy of your HD. (The "location problem" remains).

If you have an office elsewhere you can probably move files there frequently. If internet transfer limits aren't an issue, install a hard drive at your office computer (or at your home, if what needs to be backuped is at the office) and do backup over the net every day.

Also, it's probably not a bad idea to burn DVDs of everything (or if you don't have enough time), of what matters to you the most. NOTE: I've read that they degrade over time (meaning: much less than stated), so it's a good idea to refresh those backup every few months or so.

Another option (to be combined with those, or not), a portable "mirror" copy in a portable Hard Drive. Carry it with you.



I use a combination of all this.
It varies, I work around it all the time.