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?
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?