External HD as a backup option...

I've begun using external HD's as my backup. They hold a ton of photos and are affordable and easy. I load them up and then put them on the shelf. Is this a reliable long term backup solution? Will an external HD have any problem sitting on a shelf for several years without use and still retaining my info? Is this a bad or good idea for long term backup?

I've heard from reputable sources that hard drives don't like sitting on a shelf for extended periods of time. You'll want to spin them up once every six months or so. I keep everything on my main hard drive, back that up to an external, and also back it up to online storage like Amazon S3.

Not matter where it is having a single copy is NOT a backup.

All pictures should be on 2 hard drives at least and if possible in separate places.

What I do is put all my pictures of the current year on my laptop and keep a copy of all pictures since forever on 2 external hard drives, one at home and one in the office. Hard drives grow so fast that whenever you outgrow one you can probably buy one at least twice as big for pretty cheap.

Right now I have 80GB in my laptop
750GB at home
500GB at work
Every day I send new pictures from my laptop to my drive at home
Every monday morning I send all new pictures from my laptop to my drive at work

Make some DVDs too...

jra wrote in post #8614875
Is this a reliable long term backup solution?

It can be if you stay far away from Seagate FreeAgent drives. I mean far, far away. As if a disease. A plague. A pox on all humanity. The ending of everything in existence. Avoid. Circumnavigate. Ditch, dodge, and flee.

Remember, a backup is just a second copy of something in case something happens to the original. In order to be thorough in your backup preparedness you need to think of what could happen to the originals and prepare a contingency for that.

So, if all you are worried about is accidental deletion of your files (or of your hard drive crashing) having copies of your files on an external hard drive, DVD or another computer (or NAS) at your house is sufficient. Obviously, this won't protect you if you get robbed or your house catches on fire. To deal with those situations you need "offsite" backup. In that case, a DVD or your files taken to, say, your office, would be plenty.

There are other issues to consider as well. How stable is your backup media? For example (and I don't know if this is true), but some people say that DVDs go bad over time. In that case, DVDs are good short-term solutions but not good for the long-term (i.e you can't put them into a safety deposit box for years and just leave them). Once again, I have just heard that but I don't know if it's true. Same goes for an external hard drive. Find out what the limitations are and deal with them.

Accidentally deleting files, a hard drive crashing or your house burning down are all risks that can be easily mitigated. There are some risks that you are just going to have to accept (or not, I guess). For example, if your town gets whacked by a nuclear bomb having a backup at your office (assuming you work in the same town you live in) will not help. But at that point you may not care anyways. But if you do, send your backups to Iron Mountain or something.

As mentioned it's not good for hard drives to sit for long periods of time. As I understand it the bearings and moving parts can seize up if not in use. Makes sense cause I haven't had a hard drive fail in my PC in many years, but the PC is on 24/7.

Another solution would be to back up online... this can be done easily with a zenfolio or smugmug account with unlimited storage.