Kind of a philosophical question... How much photo backing up is enough?

Nov 12, 2016
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I'm sure this has been discussed, but searching for "backup" shows a lot of threads talking about backup camera bodies...

What methods does everyone use to back up their photo collections, and how confident do you feel in your method?

When I first started seriously taking photos, I bought a pair of identical external hard drives and kept identical copies of my photos on each one... Logical enough, if one HDD fails, I'd have another copy of all of my photos, go buy another HDD, and copy the photos back onto that one.

That seemed pretty safe to me, but then I got a cloud service and began keeping a copy of all my photos on that. Since all my photos were now on the cloud, I decided that I didn't need to keep two identical HDD copies in my possession, and I had just about filled up one external HDD at that point, so I started using the other HDD as storage for new photos, instead of keeping it as an identical backup of the first HDD.

I also figured that keeping one copy of my photos on the cloud and one copy physically with me would protect me in case of a catastrophic event like my house burning down, which probably would have caused me to lose my photos when I was just keeping two copies on two HDDs stored in the same location.

But now, with the sheer number of photos, the amount I've spent on equipment and traveling to take all of them, and no plans to stop, I'm wondering if I'm doing enough to keep the backups safe.

I mean, I think I am... If my HDD fails or my house burns down, I get a new HDD, and download them all from the cloud to make myself a new local backup. (However, now that I'm pushing 2TB of photos, it would take a long time to download them all. I worry something could go wrong with that.)

If the cloud service somehow fails, gets hacked, etc, then I still have my own local copy on the HDD to fall back on. Pretty unlikely for both things to happen at once, but now I'm contemplating buying another HDD just to have another redundant copy of them on that HDD, maybe store it some place other than the original HDD copy. Maybe it's overkill, but HDD storage is so cheap nowadays, barely any more than a nice CF card. Seems like it might be worth it.

How does everyone else back up their photos?
 

LDS

Sep 14, 2012
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The more separate backups you have, and in different locations, of course, the better. Then there are questions how each backup is reliable. I.e. a single disk is less reliable than a redundant system (i.e. a DAS/NAS with some form of RAID or similar), and not all cloud services are created equal (some may be less reliable than others, they can go out of business, etc.). Usually space/costs - including lost business - boundaries will put a limit to haw many backups you can keep and where.

One often neglected aspect is if backups are actually working... once every n months is advisable to perform a full (if possible) or partial restore and check the result is what expected. More than once people tried a restore when data was lost just to find the backup wasn't working as intended...
 
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Nov 12, 2016
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I dunno, thus far I've kept things pretty simple... Files and folders, copied to multiple places. I'm not really too keen on using an official "backup" program, as I never quite know what they're doing... Case in point, once I used the Mac backup utility to backup my normal computer HDD, then later deleted some things off of it, to clear some space, assuming the old backups still had these files on them. Well, when I went to look for the old files later, I discovered that somehow the backup utility decided to delete those files from my old backups for some reason, I guess when it saw them gone in the current iteration, it decided it should just totally get rid of them. :mad:

Like you said, I don't want to put my faith in some piece of software to be able to "restore" my backup. I just want files on a disk. To me that's the simplest and most reliable backup. As long as the files appear to be reading, should be all good.

When you start talking about multiple disk backup systems, really I would just consider those to be about the same reliability as manually copying the files onto multiple individual disks, it's just more automated.
 
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Mar 25, 2011
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There are backups for different reasons, and differences in how to protect your files.

I use two NAS units as online backups, one backing up the other. I have lost files and had to go to the 2nd backup to retrieve them.

Just last week, I discovered a missing directory of historic images of a ancestor, apparently, they were accidentally deleted sometime in the past few years and were gone from backups during that period. I pulled out my DVD backups from 2002 and restored them.

Its interesting that the reason I found them was because I had purchased a bundle of M Disk DVD's and was reviewing all of my important images before placing them on the new M Disks. I limited the M disk size to 25GB because the single layer disks are said to be more reliable than the higher capacity ones. Saving all my raw photo files to M disk is too expensive, so conventional hard drives will have to do, but I'm considering archiving full sized jpegs of the edited versions to M disk for anything worth keeping.
 
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docsmith

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I would assume (hope) Pros would have a heighted level of backup.

As a hobbyist, I have my photos stored on my primary hard drive, two different backup hard drives at home, and a remote hard drive that I update ~quarterly. I rotate out my back up HDs after every ~3-4 years as HDs do fail.

I do like the idea of M disks, but have yet to take it that far.
 
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Out of my camera, I will copy files to a SSD (that I work off of) and another to a HDD. The HDD then gets cloned to another HDD. I also use Backblaze for my offsite cloud storage. I only will delete/format my cards when I have at least 3 copies of all my files, one of them being offsite (which can take a while to upload unfortunately).

FWIW Backblaze allows you to download files for free or purchase your files on a HDD that gets mailed to you.
-J
 
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Nov 12, 2016
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I looked at the M disks just now. I see the idea behind using them, since obviously magnetic HDDs have a pretty limited life. But the cost for the storage you get is pretty poor. Seems like you could buy new HDDs every few years for the same price or less, or SSDs once the size of them gets to be sufficiently large, as long as you don't mind re-copying files over to them.
 
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Mar 25, 2011
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Kit Lens Jockey said:
I looked at the M disks just now. I see the idea behind using them, since obviously magnetic HDDs have a pretty limited life. But the cost for the storage you get is pretty poor. Seems like you could buy new HDDs every few years for the same price or less, or SSDs once the size of them gets to be sufficiently large, as long as you don't mind re-copying files over to them.

SSD's / Memory cards are probably the least reliable form of backup. I've lost many CD's due to degradation of data, even the "Gold" ones that were supposedly going to last. The one from 2002 was Mitsui Gold, and was getting hard to read, it took a few minutes before it could be read. All of my Sony Branded DVD's long ago lost their data, I tossed any unused ones. Currently, I've been using Verbatim, but lost three of them over the past 3 years due to degradation(I just recently discovered that).

With hard drives, it is not just the magnetic media, but the circuitry that can fail at any time. They are reasonably reliable, but not for long term archive. I'm old enough that I have to consider that I will not be around many more years, so I plan on sending M disks of family photos to cousins, I sent a set several years ago. I have a extensive genealogy database that needs to be preserved, its taken me many years to build it. The photos go with it, and not only include scanned photos but scanned documents as well. Some are available on line, but many are not.

So, there are two basic backup types, short term and long term archives.

To make things worse, using a online drive or NAS is not secure from ransom ware, the files on them can be locked, and the ransom ware does that. A backup in the form of a snapshot is currently immune to ransomware, but for how long before they crack that? How many use snapshots of data on their NAS? I do, and had to upgrade memory and learn something new in order to do it.
 
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Nov 1, 2012
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For one, you shouldn't buy two identical drives. Always buy two different ones to give better chance that they don't die the same moment.

I'm lazy myself, I have random assessment of USB drives on my desk. They are sort-of organized by years (certain drive-pair has specific years), and I make sure to copy everything to two different drives. The lazy part is that I don't have off-site copy, so if house burns down they are gone. At that point I have other pressing matters too so I'm ok with that.
 
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One thing that hasn't been mentioned (while not an electronic backup) is physical prints.

I do a lot of printing -- mostly because I love to actually hold a photograph. Somehow, it just doesn't feel like a photograph until it's printed on physical media. :p Prints also serve as a backup in a situation when digital versions are lost.

Another thing that hasn't been mentioned (though maybe less risk) is EMP exposure.

I'm not wearing a tinfoil hat or predicting doom, but with regimes like Iran and North Korea obtaining nukes, it's possible that an EMP could be detonated, proving destructive to digital archives, backups and cloud-based storage services. Would it be paranoid to store at least one backup drive in a Faraday enclosure of some kind?

My own backup routine is a continuing work in progress. For now, it consists of two identical external drives that I sync when more photos are added (including Lightroom catalog). One drive lives at home. The other goes with me everywhere I go.*

Eventually, I'm hoping to keep a separate collection of my just my best work and apply whatever thorough/paranoid preservation strategies I come up with to those. ;D

* Yeah, it's excessive and inconvenient, but after losing every photo of my daughter's birth (long story), having only the 640x480 compressed versions of a half-dozen I had e-mailed to family, I'd rather be a little over-the-top than go through that again...
 
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The recommendation for backup is The rule of 3-2-1. That is, have 3 backups, 2 locally but on different media, and 1 online.

First is your primary backup. The second is to quickly restore to the primary if that fails. The third (online) is for disaster recovery (fire, flooding, theft, etc).

Finally, make sure not to confuse redundancy (RAID) and backup. Having redundancy isn't a backup; a deleted file is still deleted on a RAID volume without backup.

OP, with "only" 2TB, I'd go for having a couple of single drives for the two first levels. For the third level, look at online providers such as BackBlaze or CrashPlan.
 
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Famateur said:
...
Another thing that hasn't been mentioned (though maybe less risk) is EMP exposure.

I'm not wearing a tinfoil hat or predicting doom, but with regimes like Iran and North Korea obtaining nukes, it's possible that an EMP could be detonated, proving destructive to digital archives, backups and cloud-based storage services. Would it be paranoid to store at least one backup drive in a Faraday enclosure of some kind?
...

I like this, if only because it's thought-provoking. If a random EMP pulse took out your home copy or an online copy, it is unlikely that both would be damaged. Unless you live close to the datacenter, which should be avoided in all scenarios. Just get the backup that wasn't affected. Unfortunately, if there's really a deliberate EMP attack, lots of things are going to be crazy for a while. The bandwidth we are accustomed to may not be available.

On the other hand, if it's a real war, our precious images may not matter as much as we think.

Excuse me - gotta move my latest backup to the steel safe under the house...
 
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Mar 25, 2011
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Famateur said:
One thing that hasn't been mentioned (while not an electronic backup) is physical prints.

I do a lot of printing -- mostly because I love to actually hold a photograph. Somehow, it just doesn't feel like a photograph until it's printed on physical media. :p Prints also serve as a backup in a situation when digital versions are lost.

Another thing that hasn't been mentioned (though maybe less risk) is EMP exposure.

I'm not wearing a tinfoil hat or predicting doom, but with regimes like Iran and North Korea obtaining nukes, it's possible that an EMP could be detonated, proving destructive to digital archives, backups and cloud-based storage services. Would it be paranoid to store at least one backup drive in a Faraday enclosure of some kind?

My own backup routine is a continuing work in progress. For now, it consists of two identical external drives that I sync when more photos are added (including Lightroom catalog). One drive lives at home. The other goes with me everywhere I go.*

Eventually, I'm hoping to keep a separate collection of my just my best work and apply whatever thorough/paranoid preservation strategies I come up with to those. ;D

* Yeah, it's excessive and inconvenient, but after losing every photo of my daughter's birth (long story), having only the 640x480 compressed versions of a half-dozen I had e-mailed to family, I'd rather be a little over-the-top than go through that again...

You need a permanent backup in addition to one that is short term like synchronizing to a drive or a nas. I keep several backups on my NAS.

The issue is that you may not discover a damaged file or missing directory for a long period of time, and end up copying the bad data or empty folder to your backup drive. You might not discover this for perhaps years. If you made DVD backups like M disks periodically, you can go back 5, 10, even 25 years or more to find a file that was lost somewhere along the way. I'd never keep cherished files solely on hard drives, too many things can happen to them.

I lost all of my images in a hard drive crash about 17 years ago. I only had a few drom digital cameras, and lost just a few. I had CD backups, multiple ones, and found that some of my files were lost due to bad CD's, but I did have prints of many, so I scanned the prints. Then I purchased my first NAS to hold multiple backups. I've never lost files on a NAS (except when I deleted them in error), but now I backup one NAS to another.

Uploading files to online storage is also potentially a issue, as many found when a major online outfit bit the dust a few years ago. It would take me years to upload all my files with the slow internet I have, upload speeds tend to be much slower that download speeds in many places. And, when you look at the long term cost of storing a ever growing number of TB's of data online for 50 years, those expensive M disks look cheaper.

No worry about EMP with DVD's either ;)

Offsite backups are a good idea, I send 20+ DVD's of my cherished family photos to cousins, brothers, sisters, and children / grandchildren. (and soon great grandchildren?)

I still have DOS files backed up on floppy disks, they were copied to hard drives long ago, but the backups are still there, I happened to check them out two years ago, most if not all are still there.
 
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LDS

Sep 14, 2012
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kaihp said:
OP, with "only" 2TB, I'd go for having a couple of single drives for the two first levels. For the third level, look at online providers such as BackBlaze or CrashPlan.

About CrashPlan, remember it retired recently from the "consumer" market, and it's now only offering more expensive commercial plans (https://www.crashplan.com/en-us/consumer/nextsteps/ and https://blog.code42.com/data-protection-needs-diverge/)

For a simple standalone backup application for Windows that can backup to external disks or NAS, give a look to Veeam (https://www.veeam.com/windows-endpoint-server-backup-free.html?ad=menu-products)
 
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ethanz

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Mt Spokane Photography said:
Offsite backups are a good idea, I send 20+ DVD's of my cherished family photos to cousins, brothers, sisters, and children / grandchildren. (and soon great grandchildren?)

I've given DVD copies of family photos to many relatives before, but while its a great idea to share the photos and to distribute the data, I don't know how many of them actually treasured the DVD and kept it safe. I wouldn't be surprised if they lost or trashed it already.



I use time machine for short term backups, have a NAS Raid 1 for all my files, then keep a separate hard drive in a separate location that is periodically synced with the NAS. The recommendation to have online backups (as in you can access it anytime and is always running, such as a NAS or cloud storage) and offline backups (such as DVDs or hard drives that are disconnected) is a great idea.

To your philosophical question, it comes down to how much you value your data. Spokane clearly values his photos very much, and so he has spent money to make sure he has a great archival system. Do what you can with the money you have now, but make it a priority to invest in a good storage system.

Everyone here probably already knows this, but if you only have one copy of your data, you don't value it at all.
 
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Nov 12, 2016
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I looked at the cost of M disk blu-rays, and actually, now that I really dig into it, the cost is fairly cheap... I calculate about 0.4 cents per photo, assuming a 50MB raw file.

However, here's another sticking point I have with those disks... Ok, sure, the disk might last 1000 years, but how long do you think you'll really be able to find a functional blu-ray drive to read them for? I'm thinking, with the exponential progress of technology, blu-ray disks have maybe 50 years at best until it becomes very hard to find any working device that can read them. I guess potentially if technology progresses far enough it would be easy to custom manufacture a drive that could read them at that point, but I wouldn't hold my breath. Ideally, to have at least the best long term chance of storage, I think the best thing would be some type of storage media that doesn't rely on any moving parts to function. Anything that does will invariably wear out. We'll certainly reach a point in time where almost every blu-ray drive made today has reached the end of its operational life.

I think anyone who's storing their photos on any type of media with the intent that "that's it," and they're backed up for good, is being pretty short sighted. Unfortunately, truly archiving digital files will probably always be a continual process, migrating files from system to system to keep up with technology.

Also, see this, which is a good argument for making prints...

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-31450389
 
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Mar 25, 2011
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Kit Lens Jockey said:
I looked at the cost of M disk blu-rays, and actually, now that I really dig into it, the cost is fairly cheap... I calculate about 0.4 cents per photo, assuming a 50MB raw file.

However, here's another sticking point I have with those disks... Ok, sure, the disk might last 1000 years, but how long do you think you'll really be able to find a functional blu-ray drive to read them for? I'm thinking, with the exponential progress of technology, blu-ray disks have maybe 50 years at best until it becomes very hard to find any working device that can read them. I guess potentially if technology progresses far enough it would be easy to custom manufacture a drive that could read them at that point, but I wouldn't hold my breath. Ideally, to have at least the best long term chance of storage, I think the best thing would be some type of storage media that doesn't rely on any moving parts to function. Anything that does will invariably wear out. We'll certainly reach a point in time where almost every blu-ray drive made today has reached the end of its operational life.

I think anyone who's storing their photos on any type of media with the intent that "that's it," and they're backed up for good, is being pretty short sighted. Unfortunately, truly archiving digital files will probably always be a continual process, migrating files from system to system to keep up with technology.

Also, see this, which is a good argument for making prints...

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-31450389

CD's have been around since ~the 1980's so 37 years and will certainly have drives to read them for many more, so Blue Ray DVD's should be viable for 50 years. The reason for using media with a very long storage life is that its a bell curve, and if you have 200 units, some of them will be at the edges of the curve and might have 50 year or even less lives. So far, most of the mainstream media can still be read, 8 in floppies and 5 in and 3.5 as well. Tape backups were not mainstream consumer items, and many used SCSI, but I'm sure that they can be recovered and transferred by a professional recovery service.

So, I agree 50 years for blue ray DVD's is a likely max figure without paying a recovery service. B&W prints yes, but probably not inkjet unless archival inks and paper are used. If you want to do that, price some out, but be prepared for a shock. I'm skeptical about color prints, the dyes fade, and pigments are not forever
 
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Nov 12, 2016
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Optical discs as a whole might have been around since the '80s, but specifically blu-rays and the drives to read them have not enjoyed such longevity. Blu-rays actually popped up at just about the worst possible time, when high speed internet and streaming is making most of their uses obsolete.

With widely available cellular data, streaming, and ever-larger and cheaper solid state storage, I don't think blu-rays or any other optical disc are going to stay relevant for much longer. A lot of automakers are already phasing CD players out. Like I said, I think 50 years for being able to read a blu-ray is, if anything, a generous estimate.

I agree with you about prints. Those will break down too, unless they've very well made, and stored perfectly. Ultimately, again, I think if we're talking about really long term archiving of photos or data, it just has to be accepted that it's an ongoing process. Anyone selling a solution that they say will hold up for 1000 or even 100 years is probably selling snake oil. Technology will not move that slowly in the future, not even close.
 
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LDS

Sep 14, 2012
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Kit Lens Jockey said:
Optical discs as a whole might have been around since the '80s, but specifically blu-rays and the drives to read them have not enjoyed such longevity. Blu-rays actually popped up at just about the worst possible time, when high speed internet and streaming is making most of their uses obsolete.

On the consumer side, yes. Still optical disks are still an interesting option for business data "cold storage", even large ones, for example see https://datacenterfrontier.com/inside-facebooks-blu-ray-cold-storage-data-center/, or https://www.wired.com/2016/03/sony-giving-new-life-blu-ray-inside-data-centers/, as an alternative to tapes. Jukebox may require less power and less cooling.

The fact that once written they cannot be modifies, is also useful for legal reasons (albeit now there are other devices offering the same feature, yet it's in electronics, could be less safe).

How long they'll be around, anyway, is hard to guess. Anyway, at least the disc formats are standard, and the technology to read them relatively simple.
 
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LDS said:
kaihp said:
OP, with "only" 2TB, I'd go for having a couple of single drives for the two first levels. For the third level, look at online providers such as BackBlaze or CrashPlan.

About CrashPlan, remember it retired recently from the "consumer" market, and it's now only offering more expensive commercial plans (https://www.crashplan.com/en-us/consumer/nextsteps/ and https://blog.code42.com/data-protection-needs-diverge/)

True, but at USD10/month (vs USD5/mon before) it's still a viable option for OP.
Several other online backup services (Amazon, Google) have been either plugging the plug or severely limiting the amount of data you can upload to them. There are datahoarders with literally PB of data who are screaming over this.

Full Disclosure: I use CrashPlan Home and are converting over to the "Pro".
 
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