Digital Image Backup

[airshofoto]

Backing up your digital images is a must. For those of us who shoot a lot, it means probably more than just a yearly CD or DVD. Select the choice that most closely matches your method of backup. Thanks. We all can learn from each other.

[Tonyz]

On an external HD and a cd or dvd.  If it is important stuff at least 2 copies on cd/dvd

[airshofoto]

The volume that I shoot has far exceeded the practicality of doing DVD back-ups, especially with shooting RAW and a 10 mp D200. Shooting a 2 1/2 day airshow with content for writing 2-3 features can mean as much as 10 GB from a weekend and shooting at 20 or so shows a year plus 5 or 6 other shoots like a carrier embark and you can see where DVD's would pile floor to ceiling.

I just tried an online server "streamload.com" but I'm having problems getting it to work well for sync.

Any other thoughts from the group?

[skippyscage]

same - haven't used DVDs for a long time now.

External HD's are now really cheap - I keep the images on my PC (backing that up to a HD) until I have finished all editing etc.

When ready to archive I copy to another HD and sync and backup that one to another HD

basically I always have 2 copies

(the backup copies are kept in a waterproof/fireproof safe in my basement)

[Andyman]

I burn DVD's of all my "keepers", which from my last airshow for example is on the order of 3 disc's.  I keep one copy at home and one at work.  I also keep a copy on an external HD.

[airshofoto]

I have seen a wide variety of recommendations for brands of drives. How large and what brand do you prefer?

[skippyscage]

I have seen a wide variety of recommendations for brands of drives. How large and what brand do you prefer?

at the moment I'm using sizes around 300GB (Seagate external / USB/Firewire)

to be honest I think all brands are pretty much the same - you will always hear someone say "so and so brand is crap 'cause it failed" but ALL hard drives have a failure rate - that's why you use 2.

The people that usually moan about a certain brand because it failed on them are the ones that you find out later used it as their ONLY storage (which means it wasn't a BACKUP)

Longer life? Don't leave them connected and leave them running - only use them when you are actually backing up.

When I need a new drive I just scout around the Frys website for a few days - they are always having specials and sales - I picked up a 500GB Maxtor for around $100 the other day with free shipping for another project.

[Liza]

I am partial to Iomega products. Currently have 1-250GB HD for backing up the desktop computer, 4-500GB HD to make two sets of backups for photos, and use CDs/DVDs for additional backups. Have run into occasional bad CDs, but that's it.

[Mike]

I use Western Digital external HDDs to back up.  Have a 500GB one at the moment, and will pick up a 1TB one in the next few days.  With a show every weekend this time of year, I'm filling up the GB real fast!

[airshofoto]

I've currently got drive from Icom data, Seagate and western Digital. All seem to perform just fine.

[b52hbuff]

Infrant ReadyNAS in RAID configuration.

External HDs are nice until you get a spindle failure.  I have a four drive array that is recoverable from a single spindle failure.

www.infrant.com

[UK_Tomcat_Fan]

Mine are backed up on DVD, a Win 2k3 RAID Server (1.5 TBs storage) and a Windows Media center pc again (1.5 TBs storage) then on my own PC,