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When was the last time you backed up your work?
No, I'm not that interested in exactly when; this is more of a heads-up to all you digital mavens out there. But since we're already here, a discussion of general backup techniques is in order. I'll start: My images are on an internal drive. I have 2 external firewire drives which I rotate weekly for backups of the entire image drive. The most recent is kept in a fireproof safe which I can grab and go in case of a fire. Incremental backups (daily changes) I burn to CD and discard after the next weekly backup. Remember, equipment can be replaced. Your images, whether they're digital, prints, slides or negs, cannot. Jul 14 05 11:12 am Link I burn my images to DVD after every shoot and just keep adding to it as I go. I have seperate DVDs for each model I work with of course. Jul 14 05 11:16 am Link You speak of something that hits home. My studio was broken into about 9 months ago. I was devistated that the guy stole my equipment, but insurance replaced that. The jerks also stole 2 of my portfolios (which is super icky to think about because god only knows what they are doing with it.) My external hard drive that I saved all my images to was stolen as well. HORRIBLE feeling of loosing everything. BACKUP YOUR DATA!!! Jul 14 05 11:31 am Link encrypt (so he cant look at them) and i send copies to my dad! likewise .zipping them makes the possibility of even partial data loss much lower. a .zip file is easier to 'rebuild' than a half a .jpg ! Jul 14 05 11:44 am Link I don't understand why you're backing up your images over and over. They're not going to change. I burn a CD after myself and the model have made our selections and that's that. Paul Jul 14 05 11:48 am Link I bought 2) 80GB external USB 2.0 drives. One is my music server and the other is a photo & file backup drive. I rewrite over it whenever I feel I have enough new work to worry about. I'd like to leave it at my friend's home at some point. -TMH Jul 14 05 11:49 am Link Posted by PhotographerMV: In a similar vein, WinRAR (www.rarlab.com) will encrypt and generate parity files (extra files that can be used to rebuild archives in case of loss) in one step. If you're archiving tons of material it will split your archive into convenient CD- or DVD-sized pieces. Jul 14 05 11:58 am Link Posted by Paul Ferrara: He backs up an image of the entire drive which changes everytime he adds files to it. Jul 14 05 11:59 am Link off-site location is always the best way to store your files. Jul 14 05 12:11 pm Link 0. Shoot 1. CF cards through DNG Converter to hard drive 2. Copy DNGs from hard drive to external hard drive 3. Burn DVD of DNGs 4. Only then, toss CF cards back into bag 5. Work on internal hard drive, deleting DNGs I don't want. Full set stays on external hard drive and (of course) DVD 6. Convert keepers to PSD with attendent layers and such 7. Copy cache files (with RAW settings) to external hard drive and burn another DVD with cache files. This DVD stays in my studio, the first DVD goes to my safe-deposit box 8. Delete DNGs from internal hard drive to make more space 9. Burn final PSDs to DVD Then I can make prints. It's not as arduous as it sounds - most of these steps are automated by Photoshop or scripts. Yes, I'm a computer geek :-) Jul 14 05 12:20 pm Link Posted by Low Tek: Duh! That was my point. The only images that change are the new ones. Jul 14 05 12:20 pm Link Posted by Paul Ferrara: Agreed, I still have many of the first CDs I ever bought 16 years ago and they still play like brand new. If you handle and store them properly, CDs will last a LONG time. Jul 14 05 12:23 pm Link Posted by Paul Ferrara: I have cds that I burned, put in a jewel case and stored, never touching them. Two years later, I've found them to be unreadable. It varies. But yes, cds degrage. Some faster than others. Why would you trust an unproven media for something so important? Even hard drives degrade. Anyone using the same drive for more than two years is pushing their luck. You need mulitple redundancy for something so important. Jul 14 05 12:26 pm Link Posted by Paul Ferrara: Come on, guys, why argue when people have done the research already? Jul 14 05 12:27 pm Link Posted by Chris Ambler: Umm, can we get the Cliff notes version? Jul 14 05 12:50 pm Link http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/7751 Here is another study. I hate the internet. You can find a 'scientific study' conclusively proving every conceivable position. If I go off of my own experience, then I don't trust them. I've had some last many years, and others last months. CDs are fragile. Jul 14 05 12:56 pm Link While I have not yet have had a faulty CD or a messed-up hard drive (now knocking on wood), I've read enough to know that it might happen one day. So, I back up on two external hard drives. The full ones go to my parents in Holland. I also sometimes burn on CD or DVD, but less so since I got the external hard drives. In general, I never delete an image without having at least two copies of it. I actually care much more about the personal images (kids, family) than I do about keeping my model shoots/landscapes for posterity. Thing is, though, my film negatives and slides are a mess. Jul 14 05 01:56 pm Link CDs do not last forever nothing does.. Backup almost every day just got finished backing up.. I burn multiple CDs and DVDs of all my work.. Plus back it up to a 120 gig drive When you pop in a CD and it doesnt work,youll be glad you backed up multiple times.. Same with Hard drives they go bad New means nuthing there are many defective new items.. Play it Safe And back it up!! Jul 14 05 02:08 pm Link Posted by MichaelBell: Posted by Paul Ferrara: Agreed, I still have many of the first CDs I ever bought 16 years ago and they still play like brand new. If you handle and store them properly, CDs will last a LONG time. You can take the chance if you want, I'm not. I was burning to CD now everything is burned to DVD (2x's) 1 DVD stays with my computer the other is taken off site to be stored. In addition I have a file server and external drives with copies on both. You can trust a single CD all you want to. average life span 5 years. Jul 14 05 02:12 pm Link Posted by MichaelBell: Posted by Paul Ferrara: Agreed, I still have many of the first CDs I ever bought 16 years ago and they still play like brand new. If you handle and store them properly, CDs will last a LONG time. The point is how MANY of those original CDs do you still have.. Jul 14 05 02:26 pm Link Can't agree more. You just can't say this enough. To most of us, this is our life. Why would you want to trust something so important to something so fragile. One scratch and it is gone forever. At least make multiples and store them in different locations. Hard drives are highly desireable but still require redundancy. I've had about 8 in 20 hard drives fail in the first two years. For your main system, consider a raid, either mirrored or raid-5. Jul 14 05 02:34 pm Link CDR's are going to be more fragile than music cds. I have music cds that are over 15 yrs old and they play fine. But I also have burned cds that did not play after only a few months. These days I back up everything on dvds. Robert Jul 14 05 02:37 pm Link Posted by Paul Ferrara: Posted by Low Tek: Duh! That was my point. The only images that change are the new ones. Studies are inconclusive. When studies relating to vital data are inconclusive, it would seem the path of wisdom to assume the worst. Jul 14 05 02:38 pm Link Last winter I lost approx. 80 GB on Image files... Hey who does backups??? Now I store my files on several different harddrives, DVD and even different computers... People might think I was getting a little paranoid lately, but learning, that some of your pictures now truly are unique makes you become that way... Jul 14 05 02:43 pm Link Posted by Paul Ferrara: That's nice. I don't believe your asinine comment either. Jul 14 05 03:19 pm Link I have a process in place where after I burn copies of disks for clients, I also burn a copy for myself, a copy for my secretary to file with the client's info and upload a copy to my online file storage space. Anal-retentive, yes. Effective, yes. Only one glitch in the system, my secretary's last day is the 23rd. Her husband is in the Navy and they're moving to San Diego. I'm in deep trouble I think. My organizational skills are legendary, but not in a good way. Jul 14 05 06:11 pm Link I as a human back up my work 3 times or 3 ways as much as possible. Just this week. excuse me -- (no Jack, the mussle stays on...... Yes, I know you have a funny one but you have been a bad boy. Sit Jack, sit.) Jul 14 05 08:25 pm Link I'll tell you why you back them up over and over. I had data on a CD from about 5 years ago that I tried to read a while back. Guess what! The disc had bubbles in it... that's right BUBBLES! So of course I couldn't get anything off of it. Luckily it wasn't anything I couldn't stand to lose, but it's still unnerving. CDs and DVDs, despite common belief, are NOT archival storage mediums. They have a delicate data layer which can be affected by heat, sunlight, moisture, scratches (the top is more fragile than the bottom!!!), as well as manufacturing defects. The best way I know of to ensure long term storage is multiple copies on different types of media. I've been using DVD-RAM as a backup solution (not DVD-R or DVD-RW). DVD-RAM drives verify every single pit that is written to the disc on the fly rather than doing the verification step *after* the whole disc is written (a step a lot of people skip). They cost about $4-10 per disc, hold 4.7/9.4 Gigs, and can come in they're own protective case that you never have to take them out of. Since they're designed to be rewritten over 100,000 times, I trust them for my backups. You have to have a special drive, but I found one cheap on eBay for $60. If you're shooting medium format digital, where single files can range between 50 - 512 megs, the best solution is just buying a new removable hard drive for each job. As long as you're not transporting it or using the drive after the data has been written, theoretically (barring nuclear disaster), a hard drive should last you forever :-) Jul 16 05 02:28 am Link my portfolio itself is backed up on my ipod, and well, i guess i have smaller versions of the pics with watermarks up on my site. but yeah, im a fucktard for not having backed everything up. i'll do what i can tomorrow. Jul 16 05 03:31 am Link Posted by Todd Steinwart: Like never? Jul 16 05 07:25 am Link |
I couldn;t care less about what people claim, I go by how long MINE last, and I have only had a problem with a few not lasting. 
