How do you store and archive your images?

[iKenndac]

My photography machine has an SSD and a hard drive inside it. For day-to-day use, my Lightroom Catalog lives on the SSD for fast load speeds, and the RAW files live on the 1TB hard drive.

All of this gets backed up to an external 3TB drive for redundancy.

All of *that* gets backed up to an online provider. Being in the Land Of Fast Internet (Sweden), my upload speed makes this a breeze. I'm using a Mac application called Arq to back up to Amazon Glacier - the pricing is pretty great and Amazon's services are incredibly reliable.

People seem to dislike online storage - "just because it's online doesn't mean it's any safer". That's true, but that's not the point. The point of data redundancy is to reduce the chance of all of your copies failing at once to an acceptable level. Having a local backup to an external drive saves me from a drive failing. Having an online backup as well saves me from all of my local drives failing at the same time (very unlikely) and my house catching fire (statistically, probably less unlikely). And, let's face it — if something so catastrophic happens that causes all of my drives *and* Amazon's services to fail beyond recovery, my data will probably be the least of my worries!

[FTb-n]

First, thanks for the feedback.  It's a tremendous help.

For those who burn BluRay, what brand media do you like?  I'm using an ASUS external drive and recently went through a 25pk of Verbatim BD-R 25GB 6x discs.  Of the 25, 8 were unusable, the drive simply rejected them.

[dilbert]

1st backup onto an external hard drive that is periodically connected

2nd backup to DVD/BluRay

[Botts]

1st backup -> Daily Aperture Vault on external NAS
2nd backup -> Monthly vault on external HDDs kept at work.  Brought home only to backup.  (Currently using an OWC 4-bay enclosure)
3rd backup -> CrashPlan+ backup 1,500 miles away.

I'd consider blurays, but the cost is too high per GB right now for me.

[JaxPhotographer]

I currently use RAID 1 (mirroring) on 2x2TB Drives in my primary computer just for image storage. I have SSD's for my OS and primary Apps and non-redundant HDD's for non-critical files.

I keep an active 3 TB External connected for nightly scripted backup of the RAID 1 files.

I keep another 3 TB External at work that I bring home once a month to backup and store as my off-site.

I replace all my drives every 2-3 years to reduce the risk of aging drive failures.

In the event I have any failure in either drive in the RAID 1 array, the other is still fully functional. I perform an immediate backup to the external, grab a spare 2TB spare, and swap the problem drive out and allow it to automatically rebuild the mirror image on the new drive.

Perhaps at some point I may consider cloud storage but have found that my current system has served me well and survived a hard drive failure once already. If I am able to increase client level work (more paid work), then I will probably make the move to cloud storage as my off-site method.

[mws]

I have 1 TB in my laptop, that is only about half full, I back everything up to a 3 TB NAS in RAID 1 with Carbon Copy cloner. I also have a 2nd 3 TB NAS in RAID 1 in my detached garage that serves as offsite incase the house burns down. The NAS in my basement replicates itself to the one in the garage twice a week. I thought about adding another layer of backup with Amazon S3, but decided against it due to cost. I figured the two NAS was good.

My real concern is when my laptop fills up, I really don't want to keep something attached to it to use Lightroom, since LR doesn't play well with network volumes.

[viggen61]

I use Aperture on a Mac, and here's how I do it:

• Active Aperture Library
• Separate HD for RAW files (these are never touched)
• Separate HD for Vault (copy of the Library)
• Bare HD 1 for Vault local with the rest
• Bare HD 2 for Vault at a remote location.

Aperture handles the vaults seamlessly, and doesn't skip a beat if one is offline. I swap the bare drives back and forth as needed. At worst, I'll lose a few months of images (yes, I'd like to lessen that, but...). Hopefully, though, I'll have at least copied the best of them up to Flickr or iCloud, so I'll have something!

[eos650]

• I start with the originals in my camera.
• I import all files to the local drive on my computer (1st copy).
• I then kick off a process that copies the files to my file server (2nd copy).
• At any time after this I will remove the images from the camera. I usually wait until just prior to my next shoot. One of the steps I go through while setting up the camera is to clear out the old images.
• Each evening my file server is automatically backed up to another drive (3rd copy).
• Once the local drive on my computer has accumulated enough to fill a blu-ray disc, I burn and verify three copies. I use at least two different brands of media and burn on at least two different burners (4th, 5th and 6th copy). I'm paying sixty to eighty cents per disc. I generally use Memorex, Ri-Data and Maxell and have had a very high success rate (95%+).
• After burning the blu-rays, the 1st copy is removed from the local drive, bringing me back down to five copies.
• Each blu-ray is stored in a different fire proof safe, one of which is off site.

I recently purchased a large safe that has both power and Ethernet inside. I'm considering moving either my file server or one of the backup drives into this safe as my computer and file server are currently vulnerable to theft, fire, flooding, etc.

Also, several of my better images are loaded at full resolution to an online site. If all of my other backups failed, I would still have access to the cream of the crop.

I don't use raid 1 (mirroring) as raid is NOT a backup strategy. Raid is a tool for reducing down time and can be very effective for this, however as others have said here, additional backups are still required. In my case raid would be an unnecessary use of resource, since should my drive fail, I could bear a couple of days of down time, while recovering from a backup.

[thedge]

I use a NAS running a form of Solaris, giving me the ZFS file system. My catalog, previews and all photos are stored on a RAID6 of 8 hard drives (RAID5 is dangerous with large drives, RAID10 isnt really redundant enough). ZFS is discussed in another thread, but the rundown is that it has built in checksumming (prevents file bit rot) and built in filesystem snapshots. Mine snapshots the photography array every 15 minutes and keeps hourly, daily, weekly, monthly and yearly snapshots of the file system state. I can go back one year (server is about a year old, eventually ill be able to go back further) and retrieve pictures deleted at that time.

That is replicated to external eSATA drives that are rotated off site. The snapshots are replicated as well.

I don't bother with online backup. I may at some point export all my photos as jpegs and back those up online but until then I don't see it as a viable enough backup strategy given my upload speed and size of my data (both photos and other important data).

I wont ever not use RAID for important data, far too much of a risk to the data. Its a vital part of data security, just like off site backups. It is IMHO completely foolish to not use both together.

[thedge]

First, thanks for the feedback.  It's a tremendous help.

For those who burn BluRay, what brand media do you like?  I'm using an ASUS external drive and recently went through a 25pk of Verbatim BD-R 25GB 6x discs.  Of the 25, 8 were unusable, the drive simply rejected them.

as i wrote, as soon as the millenniata BLU RAY´s are on the market i will buy them.

for the time being i use the normal verbatim (not LTH) .. never had a problem with them.
make sure you did not buy LTH media.. or make sure your ASUS drive supports them.

U.S.-based Millenniata (www.mdisc.com) today announced it will offer Blu-ray M-DISCs in the second quarter of 2013, increasing both the storage capacity and the accessibility of the M-DISC.
 
The announcement, made at the Storage Visions Conference in Las Vegas, marks a major step forward in permanent data storage solutions for businesses and consumers by making the M-DISC available in all the standard optical disc formats.
 
The other major advance in the growing world-wide acceptance of the M-DISC DVD and the forthcoming Blu-ray M-DISC is the marketing and distribution partnership with Imation Corp. announced at the Storage Visions Conference by Millenniata. Millenniata and Imation, the leading world-wide distributor of data storage products, have agreed to co-brand and distribute both the M-DISC and Blu-ray M-DISC under Imation's TDK, Memorex and Imation brands.
 
RITEK Corporation, the leading manufacturer of optical storage media in the world, will produce the new Blu-ray M-DISC as part of its manufacturing agreement with Millenniata. In addition, RITEK has signed a license agreement with Millenniata to distribute and co-brand both the DVD and Blu-ray M-DISCs through its established distribution and reseller channels as a secondary distribution channel for the M-DISC products behind Imation.
 
The new Blu-ray M-DISCs will be writable and readable on any Blu-ray combo drive - an enormous step for Millenniata and the convenience of this permanent storage technology. The Blu-ray M-DISCs will also offer at least five times the amount of storage as the standard 4.7GB M-DISC.

Whether you’re a scrapbooker, a business owner, a genealogist, a photographer, or all of the above, you can’t afford to lose your priceless memories or data. M-DISC™ is designed to last for up to 1,000 years, which means once written, your documents, data, medical records, photos, and more can be read forever.
 

Unlike computer hard-drives and optical discs (CDs and DVDs), M-DISC™ preserves and protects your files by engraving your information into a patented rock-like layer, resistant to light, temperature, humidity, and more. In fact, The U.S. Department of Defense put this to the test, and M-DISC™ was the only solution that passed. The M-DISC™ cannot be overwritten, erased, or corrupted by natural processes. Best of all, it’s compatible with any DVD player, which means you can access your data anywhere and anytime.

Those have a pretty terrible $ to GB ratio.... $3 for only 4.7GB.....

[Jamesy]

- Current images on Win7 laptop (SSD)
- All other archived images on NAS
- NAS is backed up daily to 2TB external drive
- NAS is backed up monthly to an encrypted drive for offsites

So with the scheme above I have three to four copies of my data. I have used SyncBackPro for years and highly recommend it for Windows environments.

[Dylan777]

I'm not a pro...just an ave Joe's with 2 kids, who enjoy photography alot.

I'm using two 5TB ext. drives to save raw. Once the photos are done with PP in JPEG, I save them on ext drives and online Phanfare for backup and viewing.

[tomscott]

I use a Mac Pro which has a 128gb SSD (which I keep in my spare DVD drive bay via a DVD-2.5" converter) which I run all my applications from then 4 storage drives two 1tb drives and two 2tb drives. Both drives are mirrored so they are backed up in two places incase of a drive failure. The 2tb is for my images which is nearly full and the 1tb is for general stuff.

I then have a 4TB back up drive which does an overall back up of everything. I also archive everything on DVD because if the worst happens flooding etc at least they can be retrieved only problem is they are cumbersome.

Storage is so cheap your better off being safe. I dont like having drives all over the place clutters my desk and also my brain lol! So I like to keep everything internal and have one external drive which takes care of a third back up.

3 is the magic number to safely store your data. Best thing to remember is that HDDs fail, its a fact of life they aren't very reliable, many say to swap the drives after a years use to fresh drives.

I have had a drive fail and it is the first and last time it will ever happen without a proper back up. Can be very emotional loosing your digital life. Fortunately in that instance I managed to restore some important data so not all was lost.