Storage forum: photo backup- best method

Computers fail, wipe out, are stolen or get hit with fire, flood or other disasters. For less than a buck I can put a decade of my photos on a DVD. Then later I make a new DVD when it's time to backup again. I can keep that old DVD and soon I have copies in more than a few places.

How much is this collection worth to you?
Bob

I have less than a GB of photos that are precious to me. Besides having them both on my desktop as well as laptop, I have them stored on my free Picasa account as well. I assume Google has redundancy for all the storage they offer...

If you need more storage, upgrade to the "Pro" accounts for a nominal fee. Flickr, Photobucket are my other favorites (both are more "social" as compared to Picasa...).

I create a backup copy to an external hard drive at the time of downloading photos from the camera. Using Lightroom makes it easy as it has a tick box for this purpose. It allows you to save a second copy to another dive. This way I don't have to backup when I remember. It is always up to date.

I do intend doing some DVD copies to archive in my shed. I did it once and its about time I did it again.

No doubt you should have a backup plan and implement it soon. I can't imagine anything worse than losing years worth of digital images just because one didn't take the time to back them up.

Various methods are readily available and some work better than others depending upon how large (in mega- or gigabytes) is your collection. But here is what I do in hopes that I'm covering my bases and trying to be smart.

1) After uploading pictures to my PC from my camera's flash memory and making any adjustments to said pictures (using my photo editing software) I immediately back up those images to an external hard drive. (I also back up to an internal secondary hard drive, but you may not have this option)

2) Next I take two DVDs and burn those images to the DVDs. I keep one DVD at the computer desk and the other in a fire-resistant safe (along with other important documents, etc. - everyone should have a fire-proof safe for important documents like marriage certificates, deeds, insurance packages and backup media of pictures).

3) When the DVD that I keep at the computer desk is full I mail it to my father. This way there are copies of my pictures away from my house. Fire-resistant safes are only rated to a certain temperature for a certain time and a house fire could exceed those guides. There are other natural disasters whereby you could lose or find your safe destroyed. Having a backup off-site is a very prudent course of action. Mail that DVD to a family member or friend, preferably one that lives away from your geographical area.

So to recap: on-site storage to a backup hard drive (either internal or external). On-site storage to an optical media. Off-site storage to an optical media.

While I like the idea, as mentioned by another commentator, of using a backup web site, there is always the chance such a company could go out of business, thus leaving you in a state of limbo. And it's possible that you utilize dial-up service so online backup wouldn't be a good use of time. Otherwise it's worth looking into, but I feel is unnecessary if you regularly mail a DVD/CD to someone else.

The best way for photos you want to pass on to your family that will still be good years from now is to back them up on CD's. Not just any CD but the ones that have a life of 100 years or longer (gold cds). If you save them any other way then every time you open them they lose some of the quality. So for your best photos and especially if you are a professional use these gold cds. They are a little costlier but worth it.

It has 2 good methods to backup photos. The first one is to back it up on an hard drive disk. The second one is too put it in an offsite server.

The second option very safe because in case of fire you still have your data safe and recoverable. One good place i found to backup data is ( http://fdcanada.ca/en/online-storage/ )