using file archive software to compress pictures and videos for backup?

Sorry if this question has been asked, I have googled it but can't find any answers I must be using wrong keywords

I have a lot of family pictures and videos I am wanting to back up them up. I already have them backed up on a external hard drive but am looking at improving my back ups. At the moment I can't afford another hard drive or online storage. I have a lot of DVD's lying around so I am going to use them.

My question is does using software like 7zip damage the quality of the images. They are mostly jpg's and mp4 files but will be backing up my scanned pictures which are saved as tiff. I am either gunna compress the files so I can upload them to a free file hosting or split them over multiple Disks.

Thank you for any help

Win 7 pro
4GB Ram
AMD 64x2 Dual Core 6000+ 3.0GHz

EDIT: Also is 7zip the best program for this?

phoenix830 wrote in post #17576617
Sorry if this question has been asked, I have googled it but can't find any answers I must be using wrong keywords

I have a lot of family pictures and videos I am wanting to back up them up. I already have them backed up on a external hard drive but am looking at improving my back ups. At the moment I can't afford another hard drive or online storage. I have a lot of DVD's lying around so I am going to use them.

My question is does using software like 7zip damage the quality of the images. They are mostly jpg's and mp4 files but will be backing up my scanned pictures which are saved as tiff. I am either gunna compress the files so I can upload them to a free file hosting or split them over multiple Disks.

Thank you for any help

Win 7 pro
4GB Ram
AMD 64x2 Dual Core 6000+ 3.0GHz

EDIT: Also is 7zip the best program for this?

Backing up to DVD is very inconvenient, but you say you are going to use DVDs...

You don't need to store JPGs in compressed volumes because they are already compressed. TIF files can also be compressed and would then need no further compression. DVDs can become corrupted, so consider using QuickPar to make recovery volumes. Then include a copy of QuickPar on each DVD.

You could also use WinRar to store the files in .rar volumes, and use the WinRAR recovery feature, but using compressed volumes seems like an unnecessary complication - unless you want to password-protect the data. 7zip doesn't do recovery volumes.

DVDs are a very poor backup medium. They are too small, too slow and too expensive. It's normally a real pain to try to find which disk contains the file you're looking for.

Hard drives are much, much better. A 250GB drive can be had for less than £25. That's the equivalent of around 50 DVD-RWs - which would cost you about the same amount of cash but take about 50 times longer to backup.

jpg and mp4 video are already compressed, you won't gain anything significant with compression. If you want to compress them further you need to:
- (jpg) resize or save in lower quality in Photoshop, using image processor
- (mp4) resize or save in lower quality, using Handbrake (official site here)

Hard drives (multiple) are a better bet than DVDs IMHO. Every hard drive fails some time, just like every DVD, so you need to keep multiple copies in multiple locations.

Mozy backup is free up to 2GB.

I just made a different post talking about this same thing

Agree that DVD's are the most horrible backup media available. They are easily damaged. Files can easily become unreadable even when the media is not physically damaged. They don't hold much. It's a very poor solution.

External hard drives can have a pretty high failure rate too sadly. What I suggest doing, is getting two HGST (Hitachi) drives, which are by far the most reliable ones out there. Then get a couple of USB3 -> Sata enclosures (something like http://www.amazon.com/​dp/B003CJQ69A). This will give you the most reliable HDD inside of an enclosure that you can easily replace should something happen to it (USB port goes out, power port stops working, very common problem on external drives).

Now that you have this get a program like FreeFileSync. Setup batches to backup all of your relevant data (pictures, videos, important files, documents) to your external drive. One note, recently the installer for FreeFileSync will try and give you bundled crapware. If you're careful with the installer you can choose not to install these, but if your paranoid like me, and you still want the best backup software, you can take a few extra steps. Using a program like 7zip, just unzip the installer EXE. Make your own directory in Program Files, and copy the BIN directory to the location you made for FreeFileSync. Then create a desktop shortcut or whatever for the proper EXE for your system (32bit or 64bit). Free File Sync does take a little time to get perfect, but you can setup batch jobs, and it is hands down the best at what it actually does. I have some complicated backup scenarios, and it has done me great for the last few years.

Now, I said get two drives, that's because if you're out at dinner and your house is robbed, or you house suffers from a catastrophic accident (fire, flood, etc....) then that drive at home as your backup does no good. So get a safe deposit box, they are very reasonably priced (my credit union charges 12 dollars... PER YEAR, for a box big enough to hold HDD, valuable jewely, and important documents). Once every couple of weeks just swap your drive from home with the one at the bank.

Be wary of online services, because for all of these services you are trusting _THEM_ to do the right thing with your data. I've done some contract work with big companies, who offer supposedly very reliable storage, and the truth is, there's a lot of holes in a lot of the providers. Just google "Cloud Provider Loses Data" and you'll see plenty of stories and empirical evidence that cloud storage is not as safe as we think it is. Don't rely on someone else to protect your most valuable data.

I've lost a lot of digital data once, and now I do everything possible to ensure I don't lose it again.
--
Richard Maynard

Ephur gave good info, except IMHO for the sync part. If your primary data is corrupted, either through virus or slow disk degredation, this corruption gets mirrored to your backup disk. Better to use proper backup software that does incremental and/or differential backups. I wrote an article about windows backup software for photographers which reviews some software and explains how I do things.

Thank you for all the post, and sorry for such a delayed reply.
I remembered a unused laptop hard drive (incorrectly order by brother), I will use that so I don't need to use dvd's.
I will have a look at the software when i can get another hard drive and have a decent back up system in place.