Back up those files!

[Tracey]

This is really just a query, or jumping off point for a discussion about various ways we store our photos.

As I'm spending so much time scanning my old photos I've been thinking about the different ways to store the electonic files. The photos are important to me, I've yet to start scanning the photos from when the kids were born, and I really dont want to lose those memories.

So what alternatives are there for storage?
I currently have an external drive which I plan on moving all the photos to when they're scanned and organised. Is this enough? Should I consider writing them to either DVD or CD? I want to future-proof the photos as much as possible as I dont want to go through a similar thing again when storage method become obsolete, or a drive fails.. or..any other issue that might make you lose my photos/data.
Should I create a back-up and store "offsite" somewhere?
What other things should be considered?

So.... do you back up your photographic memories

[Alan Cullen]

Tracey, at work here we have a few different methods we use.

Backup to CD is one, but CDs have a problem, they deteriorate with time, and you really need to do two each time, one stays in the office, the second goes offsite somewhere to be in a different enviroment. That's the theory. But who ever checks both every month to see which one has gone?

Second is an external hard drive.

Third is a second hard drive in your computer.

We currently back up every Monday morning to 2nd HD in our computer, plus back up to central external HD, plus write to CD. We have had to go back to one of them on many occasions.

Choice is yours mate.

Cheers,
Alan

[PS_Port]

Hey Tracey,

I agree with Alan on the cd/dvd deterioration......

Here at work I have 3 internal HD's , I use one of them for my personal use, backing up my home pc.
I have 2 internal HD's on the desktop pc at home and an External HD, also there is the wifes laptop.
plus a 16GB flash drive on my keyring.

So the process goes photos -> wife's laptop, - backup to home pc and external hd, then backup to work hd. with favourites also backed up on my keyring flash drive.

Wow that all sounds like I'm a bit paranoid.

Anyway my theory is lots of backups prefferably HD's in different locations, problem with this is keeping them all up to date.

Paul.

[Ed Geraghty]

All this talk about backing up and maintaining data integrity reminds me... I need to do some of this at some point...

[Tracey]

Thanks

I currently store on my laptop and once the scanning is done they will be copied onto my external drive (like the photos from the camera are) I think I'll also store on a second external hard drive when the task is complete rather than using CDs. Now its just the "offsite" backups I'm still trying to figure out whats best for me to do.
Thanks again for input and advice

[Mark]

I hate to say it but offsite backup is the way to go for the really important stuff. That is store it on a local drive/external drive but also an offsite service.

[Tracey]

I was thinking about having my most important ones backed up elsewhere. I've toyed with the idea of having a seperate external hard drive at my mums, with a duplicate of what I have here. I'm not sure thats the way to go.

[Mark]

I was thinking about having my most important ones backed up elsewhere. I've toyed with the idea of having a seperate external hard drive at my mums, with a duplicate of what I have here. I'm not sure thats the way to go.

that'll work.

[PS_Port]

I hate to say it but offsite backup is the way to go for the really important stuff.

You couldn't recommend one, could you Mark....

[Grendel]

I use some free software called Toucan, you can set it up with all your regular sources and destinations, then just run the backups, it can copy directories and once they are copied compare them to keep both directories the same as each other, there is also an update feature that will copy any new files since the last backup (useful where the destination has files not in the source directory)
Grendel