Backing up pics onto external H/D

[bikehikeskifish]

My complete backup solution is this:

I run "full" backups, five versions deep, to a NAS device. Incremental changes become the 2nd, 3rd, 4th or 5th revision. The 6th revision wipes out the 1st. Unchanged files do not get copied. I do this nightly. Would I grab the NAS device on the way out in a fire? Maybe, maybe not. But I would grab the two laptops if at all possible. This is with a 300Gb Maxtor One-Touch, in NAS mode, using the supplied Maxtor software. It also functions as a print server. For the truly curious it runs a stripped linux kernel + Samba off flash memory.

I also run a full backup to a USB drive which I keep in my office. Either I backup by bringing the laptop to work, or bringing the USB drive home.

Finally, once per year I archive everything onto DVD and keep them in my office as well.

As an operational step when dealing with photos, I don't format the camera SD chip until the backup has been completed.

<EditorialComment>
The two times I've need personal backup restores, aside from user error (accidental deletion) have been for a mother board failure (my wife's laptop) and in that case I was able to put the drive in a USB enclosure so I truly didn't need the backup, and I had a hard drive failure in my laptop - manufacturing defect, when it was only 2 weeks old. With today's hardware and file systems, you are very unlikely to copy a corrupted file unnoticed. Still, server-class machines have ECC (error correcting) memory and RAID (redundant hardware drives) disks which further reduce the chance of hardware-induced data loss.

You could buy yourself $10M in life insurance, or a professional backup solution, but chances are neither one is cost-effective for the average reader of this post.
</EditorialComment>

Tim

 

[WinterWarlock]

Tim -

That's pretty thorough for sure...all you need now is a fire proof safe to put the drive in when not being used!

Over my career, I've lost five laptop hard drives...I do travel a lot, so I probably bang on them more than most, but I now have two pocket drives. My SyncToy backs up from laptop to one drive, then from one drive to the other each night. It ain't perfect, but it gives me better protection than I had the first couple times I lost the hard drive!

Scott

 

[bikehikeskifish]

Tim -

That's pretty thorough for sure...all you need now is a fire proof safe to put the drive in when not being used!

I have one. I keep important paper documents in it. I have high-grade wireless encryption (WPA) and MAC address filtering turned on on my household WiFi network too.

I don't encrypt the DVDs in my office though as I'm not really worried about theft. They're locked in my desk drawer. Someone could steal my USB office drive though -- I use that to backup my work computer too.

No solution is 100% perfect.

Now, if only Outlook wouldn't keep the PST file locked in exclusive mode so the backup software could read it

Tim

 

[WinterWarlock]

Now, if only Outlook wouldn't keep the PST file locked in exclusive mode so the backup software could read it

Tim

That is a problem, which is why I have to shut it down at night. For me, I still get my emails on my BlackBerry, so if I see something urgent, I can always kick it back on...

Apparently there is a SyncToy extension that gets around this, but I haven't been able to make it work.

 

[Neil]

I have to point out that for photo backups, an external hard drive is not much of a solution. It protects you from hard drive crashes on the main drive, but that's it. In the event of fire, flood, etc, your external drive is sitting next to the the main drive and will likely suffer the same fate. If you want your photos for many years, you need *off-site* backup.

I learned this the hard way when my apartment was broken into. I'd left the Zip drive connected to my laptop, with that month's backup disk in the Zip drive. All of it went into one of my pillowcases and out the door.

PS I don't bother with software; I just routinely copy photos to backup when I download them from my camera.

Simple and effective.

I was thinking more about internal drive failure and not about the physical loss of everything. That would be so depressing.

 

[yvon]

Simple and effective.

I was thinking more about internal drive failure and not about the physical loss of everything. That would be so depressing.

I came very close to loose everything on my HD last november when my internal HD crash.
But I backup of everything just before it happen.
Now I have a 160G for my OS and programs, 1 x 500G for all my files and my photos, and an other 500G external HD. I back up those last 2 every week with Alway Sync.