Photo Back-up/Storage

I gather this isn't the correct forum to post this question. I just couldn't figure out which one was the right one.

I'm looking for a method of organizing my photos, backing them up and making them easy to look for in the future. Is there one source that takes care of this? Even if it's an on-line photo back-up.

Thanks for any suggestions.

~Robin
http://robinredd.typep​ad.com/american_girl/

I import all of mine into Adobe Lightroom, with tags. For backups, I make a second copy of every raw file onto an external 500GB hard drive. As each external hard drive fills up, I get another 500GB and move the full one to "off-site storage" in my desk at work.

I haven't considered off-site storage on the net because uploading alot of RAW files would take forever.

I have a External HDD to store my files on. I also burn another copy on to DVD just incase. IT is still very inconvenient and I am thinking of having 2 x external HDD that have the same data just incase one fails OR run RAID.

Hope this helps.

How do those systems work for searching for particular photos?

How much storage space are you thinking about?

I would like to have all my photos together in one place. Or at least as few places as possible. So maybe like 10 years of digital photos? No professional photos, but my personal family photos.

~Robin
http://robinredd.typep​ad.com/

My primary Lightroom catalog has slightly under 67,000 photos in it currently and works great. I have another catalog with pre-DSLR photos.

I use a programme called IDimager for downloading, cataloguing (tags, ratings GPS data, etc.) and backing up to 2 500Gb external HDs. Works for me.

I use Image Ingester to copy files from CF card to HDD.
Then iView to catalogue
Then either LR or DPP to process.

Images are backed up on an external HDD and DvD.

Forgetting workflow and just concentrating on backing up the photos, I have them firstly on a drive in my computer other than the system drive (I use the system drive solely for apps and windows files). Then, as soon as they are off the card and on the drive, I copy them to a nas setup for safety.

I bought a $50 Linksys NSLU2 NAS box for the job. Basically, it's a tiny (smaller than a paperback book) little box that allows you to connect two USB drives to it. I have a 500gb and a 750gb drive connected and I use this as central storage for all of the computers on my network. You can also use it as a pseudo-raid setup by having the first drive copy itself to the second drive every night, but I'm pretty sure two copies work just fine.

There's a HUGE number of NAS boxes on the market now - most don't get good reviews. The one advantage to the NSLU2 is that it allows you to use any USB external drive. You need to update the firmware to the latest and greatest BEFORE attaching drives. That will allow you to use FAT32 or NTFS drives - which in turn allow your windows machines to read them directly. Otherwise, since the NSLU2 is a linux device (with a TON of linux distros for you to replace the on-board one with), it will format the drives EXT3, which means if the NSLU2 dies, you'll have to hook the drives to a linux box to read them. The fact that it's linux will have no bearing on you using it, however.

I simply map drives to the the NSLU2 and use synctoy from MS to replicate to the NAS. Cheap and easy.