External hard drive storage vs DVD vs online

I'm not sure where to post this so if some one can direct me to thread about this that would be great.

This fall I attended an educational session in our local camera shop that was given by a Canon rep. I will try and quote him as directly as I can here: He said that he highly discouraged backing up pics on an external hard drive since they have moving parts "that eventually crash and fail" (this just happened to me this week so I understand that one too well). He said that online storage is not really recommended either because 1) most sites have hidden in the "small print" that they now own your pictures and 2) just how long will a site be up--you can't guarantee longevity of a site! He highly recommended using DVDs to store your prints and then launched into a speech that not all DVDs are equal either. He said that the DVDs/CDs that are mass produced start to lose image quality in 3-4 years. He said that, and I believe he said "only" brand that has proven to have lasting quality (100+ years) is Delkin. Now that I've personally had an external hard drive crash this week I would like to go to DVD myself and am wondering if it's worth the pricier Delkin brand (runs around $80 on Amazon currently). OR, do you have other advice for me?

Hi

My personal archive is initially to secondary HD on pc, then copied to external HD, then burn a DVD, any brand. Once on the DVD, then deleted off the secondary HD on PC. This way, have a copy on external, plus a copy on DVD which can be kept anywhere in case of house fire etc. Also, I have smaller copies of the JPG files up on my website, so in theory, I should never be able to lose a picture.

Just my way, not the only way or even the best way.

Chris

Holy cow, what a load of misinformation.

Pictures stored on a DVD will not "lose image quality". It's a digital file, the only reduction in quality is the inability to read the file.

Optical media (CD/DVD) has (for me) proven to be unreliable. I have some CDs that are over 10 years old and still read just fine while others are unreadable junk.

In addition to that, DVDs only store 5GB (9GB if you use DL media), but I have in excess of 750GB of pictures (and growing monthly). That is an awful lot of DVDs to store safely.

For much the same reason (amount of images) online storage isn't feasible. Assuming I maxed out my cable connection to would take me over two months to upload it all to an online storage provider (like Mozy or Amazon). Additionally, I have heard rumors that online storage providers will throttle people who are uploading large amounts of data and the actual upload time becomes truly ridiculous.

External hard drives are (IMHO) the only reasonable solution if you are backing up more than a couple GB of data.

That said, they are mechanical devices and they will fail. The only safe backup is a redundant one.

If you go the external route then buy two identical drives and keep the data between them synchronized.

For even more security, keep one out of your house when you aren't syncing it to prevent loss due to fire/theft.

My current backup is redundant but i have already been through a HD failure and DVD failure so im playing it safe this time. I have the originals on computer - Backed up 2x per week to extra internal drive - Files transfered weekly to External HD - DVD created and stored off site weekly of all new files. When my external drive is full i will swap them over to a new external drive and store that of site as well. When my last backup drive failed i lost all my childrens and family pics from when they were young. Sorta my fault i had to format my computer and did not check my backup first before doing so.

mbellot wrote in post #11592101
Additionally, I have heard rumors that online storage providers will throttle people who are uploading large amounts of data and the actual upload time becomes truly ridiculous.

Not a rumor in my case. I tried using paid Mozy and while that gave me "unlimited" online storage space and I have fast fiber upload speeds from my home, my upload rate to Mozy was throttled by them to such a low rate that uploading the photos from a single shoot sometimes took 2 or 3 days of constant uploading time.

When I canceled the Mozy service, their first choice on "why are you canceling?" was "upload speed." I'm convinced that upload speed is where they limit their exposure on data storage space per user.

Yeah, while some of the points the Canon rep gave you are worth noting, I think you got some bad information... at the very least, extremely paranoid information. Though it's important to be proactive about back ups.

The most commonly recommended method of back up right now is the 3-2-1 method and following this philosophy will help ensure that you have the best chance of retaining all those files and photos for years to come.

The break down:

3 - 3 copies of ANY important file that you want to keep - one primary copy then two back ups
2 - You should use 2 different types of media - ex: Hard drive, physical media (DVD/CD), cloud storage, hard copy
1 - one copy of the backup should be kept at a different location - so a cloud/online storage method, DVD/CD or external hard drive kept at a different physical location

The reason you want to keep something offsite? Sure, hard drives crash and viruses can destroy data, but sometimes people forget that in the event of fire or flood or theft having all your backups in one location isn't going to do you any good.

You can never have too many copies of your really important files.
For me I have a couple computers and a couple external hard drives and some important bits burned to dvd. In the cloud I have docs uploaded to Google documents, Flickr, dropbox and sometimes, yeah... I just send an email attachment to myself.

When dealing with photos and video, external drives are really the best solution. Having a couple of those really helps and they are getting cheaper all the time.

Thanks all--now THIS thread sounds like advice I should have gotten from the rep!

Ues a raid 1 system on your computer, that way if one HD goes bad the data still resides on the other one. Replace the bad one and the data gets copied back over to the new drive, Then backup to 2 different portable HD's. 1 attached to the computer and 1 you take with you offsite. If you have a fire at home all the backups in the world wont matter if they all get destroyed in a fire.

I use portable HDD, store it in the bank's safe deposit box. I also make multiple copies to CDs and DVDs of family photos, and distribute them to anyone whose photo was taken. Only a HDD can backup completely your PC's HDD.
I do not use Bluray yet as it's not universal and is untested, and will be replaced by another format soon anyway.

spacepants wrote in post #11592538
2 - You should use 2 different types of media - ex: Hard drive, physical media (DVD/CD), cloud storage, hard copy

Why? How is having three copies of my data on hard drives, stored in three different locations) less safe than having two copies on hard drives and one copy on floppy disks?

I should really start burning DVD's. A couple of weeks ago I bought a 2 Tb external drive. I ended up knocking it on the ground (on carpet) and it died. Fortunately for me I still had the files that were on it backed up on a previous external. Unfortunately I had just transferred a recent shoot and had just deleted it from my main rig. I only lost one shoot.

After reading this thread, it sounds to me that most of you guys are backing up raw files. What about jpegs? Who's to say that raw files will always be supported? Also what about printing on quality paper as a form of backing up?

The problems with DVDs include having a large number of discs make data migration difficult, particularly when DVD technology is replaced by something new. If I gave you a stack of 5.25 inch floppy discs, would you be able to get the data from them? Even given a drive you may find the interface no longer fits any of the computers you have. Also consider what does long term mean to you - 10 years, 20 years, ... ?

Long term storage is an issue we all have to face, even the govt is looking at it (spending quite a bit of money on a study) with the library of congress now storing data in digital format. Another problem with DVD's, if it goes bad there is no recovery method tjat i have ever heard of that can recover it. A HD, on the other hand can be recovered even if you cant access it. Its not the platters that are bad, it is the drive bearings that are frozen keeping the platters from spinning and thus being read. A equipped shop can recover the data by removing the platters in a clean room and putting them into a working drive..Where I used to work, we had it done a number of times with full recoverability each time.

hollis_f wrote in post #11597229
Why? How is having three copies of my data on hard drives, stored in three different locations) less safe than having two copies on hard drives and one copy on floppy disks?

EMP (Electro Magentic Pulse) from a nuke detonation would wipe them all out.

But I figure in such an instance there would be bigger things to worry about than losing some photos.

ratempa wrote in post #11597329
After reading this thread, it sounds to me that most of you guys are backing up raw files. What about jpegs? Who's to say that raw files will always be supported? Also what about printing on quality paper as a form of backing up?

I back it all up (RAW, JPG and the XMP sidecars that Bibble generates).

In theory I could skip the JPGs since most of them are also kept online (Smugmug), but I'm a digital packrat.