Photo Back-ups

[BigOgre]

Hey All. Finally decided to tackle the long-neglected job of organizing and backing up the various digital photos we've accumulated over time. At one time I used a Maxtor 750GB external drive, partly as a back-up but mainly because of the limited space on the computer of the time. Then about four years or so ago I purchased a family Mac with plenty of storage and the Maxtor got unplugged. Forward to today.

With the improvement in phone cameras, several laptops and more devices being used there seems to be more and more photos being stored all over. What I would like to do is gather (copy) them all in one place and also be able to view them from any device being used at the time. I've been looking at an external drive with a usb connection to my router which should allow all users signed into my network access for this. My concern though is going forward and protecting all the files I move onto this drive.

We're not prolific picture takers, just the usual stuff over the years, so I don't think there's a need for mega-storage. A 3TB external drive at about $100 hooked up like I described would solve the immediate problem. Even the old Maxtor probably has enough space left but I've been having a problem getting that recognized (changing technology?) which brings me to my main concern of being able to safely access these files years into the future. Just like we go through grandma's boxes of old photos, I'd like to think others may look at these a long time from now. But the reviews I'm seeing on some of these hard-drives aren't very comforting with many saying they crap out after a couple of years and varying (expensive) luck trying to recover files. And even if one lasts a lifetime, would you run into the problem of hooking it up to newer systems? On-line accounts/cloud storage might solve this issue but they come with recurring charges which I don't need or want. Besides I'd rather directly 'hold' my files rather than entrust them to some business located somewhere in the world who might get bought and sold who knows how many times.

So other than buying a new drive every couple of years and backing up the back-up, would anyone have some suggestions as to what I might want to look at? TIA.

 

[bluesdog]

The better quality USB drives seem pretty robust, so you might want to set aside one for archives, and another for regular backups, occasionally adding files to the archive unit.

I'm currently using Amazon cloud for media sharing, and for website content delivery. The costs are quite reasonable, and there's even less expensive options for storage of infrequently accessed data.

Doubtless there will soon be more advanced and sophisticated data storage options as technology marches inexorably towardsThe Singularity, but by then reliable data storage and retrieval will have become ubiquitous and trivial, since everyone will be assimilated into a great, soulless and impersonal matrix

 

[Gmann]

Western Digital My Cloud. Usable with both Mac & PC's. WD drives seem to last longer than other brands (WD owns most of them: Seagate, Maxtor etc.)

Format files to Adobe's PSD. They will be readable for ever (according to Adobe).

Backup to separate 3TB drive and store off site in case of fire, robbery.....Back this up at your leisure.

I also use my photo website as a backup.

My 2 bits.

 

[dcarver]

Here's what I use..

 

[gixxerjasen]

Nice thing about cloud...if your house burns, you still have your files. How important are those images?

When we had my son, my wife threatened me with my life to find a way to not lose our baby pictures of him. USB external drive that is backed up nightly to a cloud service provider. Yes, there's a recurring monthly charge, but it's small, and certainly peace of mind when my life is at risk.

 

[Tyler]

Backup to separate 3TB drive and store off site in case of fire, robbery.....Back this up at your leisure.

I also use my photo website as a backup.

My 2 bits.

I have two 1TB backupdrives... one at work, one at home... I've got about 10 years worth of photos and am only through about a quarter of the space on the drives. I also use SmugMug as an additional backup in addition to being a place to host my photos for ride reports. B)

 

[Ignacio]

I debated the standard MyBook or Cloud thing myself and decided I didn't want my stuff purposely outside my firewall. I went with an IoSafe from Costco some years ago in a 1TB flavor. It supposedly would withstand a housefire and I've stashed it in a location that likely won't get stolen.

The HDD did fail in it some years back, but I was able to open it up and replace it with a 3TB recently from I cribbed out of a MyBook. I'm reasonably sure it remains as fire resistant as originally installed. It's like a MyBook, but bigger and fire resistant.

 

[fjrob1300]

all my pics are on my lap top, on a Tbite external drive, photobucket and burnt to disc. Just in case.

Rob

 

[dcarver]

I debated the standard MyBook or Cloud thing myself and decided I didn't want my stuff purposely outside my firewall. I went with an IoSafe from Costco some years ago in a 1TB flavor. It supposedly would withstand a housefire and I've stashed it in a location that likely won't get stolen.
The HDD did fail in it some years back, but I was able to open it up and replace it with a 3TB recently from I cribbed out of a MyBook. I'm reasonably sure it remains as fire resistant as originally installed. It's like a MyBook, but bigger and fire resistant.

Hey Matt, can I test that for you? I'd love to see what it can really stand!

 

[DesignFlaw06]

I have a Synology NAS DS212j. Quite a useful bit of hardware. It has two 3TB drives in a RAID 1 configuration (mirrored drives). Also acts as a photo server, media server, and web server. It can do other things, like a streaming audio service, security cameras, mail server.

The photo server is a feature I like. Makes it nice for sharing pictures with family, I don't have to make sure I give everyone the latest pictures of my son. They can just go to the link and see them, download full quality if they wish to print.

https://searles.no-ip.org/photo if you want to take a look.

 

[mcatrophy]

I have a Synology NAS DS212j. Quite a useful bit of hardware. It has two 3TB drives in a RAID 1 configuration (mirrored drives)....

My backup hardware is identical. Simply works. I don't normally use it to serve to my house although it can. It is firewalled against access outside of my house.

All my photos are primarily on my Mac in the same form as on my web server, I simply push changes in the Mac server area to my web server as needed. The Mac uses Mac's Time Machine to back up to the NAS.

One of the disc drives in the NAS was reporting failing sectors. Swapping with a new drive was absolutely painless, the worst party was getting the NAS down from the loft where it is kept (to make theft very unlikely). Just power off, remove the deteriorating drive, plug in a new one, turn it on, let it regenerate the new disc all by itself.

This means all my pictures exist on four drives, one in the Mac, one on my web server, two in the NAS.

I used to have off-site backup at my son's house (as he had in mine). That's got left behind in one of my upgrades, I intend reinstating it.

 

[BakerBoy]

+1 on Synology Diskstation in my home--it is secured/firewalled so I can access it and my security footage from anywhere.

But a Diskstation or NAS it is still a physical device that can be stolen or will burn if the house were to burn. Therefore, we've an additional external drive that we backup all data onto 1x per month, stored offsite. And even more, I've an external drive that contains our main computer's image, which is updated 1x per year and stored in a fire-rated, water-proof safe.

Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean someone isn't out to steal my data!

 

[BigOgre]

Thanks for the answers. With all the great photos we've seen here I knew some of you would have thought this through. Guess I was hoping for some simple, magical solution that I wasn't aware of but that would've been too easy. Think I'll go with a new external drive and copy everything over to that for starters and then look to see what's available on-line to back that up. Worst case: even if the drive takes a dump, at least the files will be scattered amongst the various devices and it won't be a total loss.

I have a Synology NAS DS212j. Quite a useful bit of hardware. It has two 3TB drives in a RAID 1 configuration (mirrored drives). Also acts as a photo server, media server, and web server. It can do other things, like a streaming audio service, security cameras, mail server.
The photo server is a feature I like. Makes it nice for sharing pictures with family, I don't have to make sure I give everyone the latest pictures of my son. They can just go to the link and see them, download full quality if they wish to print.

https://searles.no-ip.org/photo if you want to take a look.

This is waaay more than I need but it's grabbed my attention like a new toy. Started reading up on them and fear it might be something to play with come a long winter.

 

[DesignFlaw06]

Thanks for the answers. With all the great photos we've seen here I knew some of you would have thought this through. Guess I was hoping for some simple, magical solution that I wasn't aware of but that would've been too easy. Think I'll go with a new external drive and copy everything over to that for starters and then look to see what's available on-line to back that up. Worst case: even if the drive takes a dump, at least the files will be scattered amongst the various devices and it won't be a total loss.

I have a Synology NAS DS212j. Quite a useful bit of hardware. It has two 3TB drives in a RAID 1 configuration (mirrored drives). Also acts as a photo server, media server, and web server. It can do other things, like a streaming audio service, security cameras, mail server.
The photo server is a feature I like. Makes it nice for sharing pictures with family, I don't have to make sure I give everyone the latest pictures of my son. They can just go to the link and see them, download full quality if they wish to print.

https://searles.no-ip.org/photo if you want to take a look.

This is waaay more than I need but it's grabbed my attention like a new toy. Started reading up on them and fear it might be something to play with come a long winter.

If you're tech savvy, there are some open source solution. Free NAS is one I attempted to get to work on an old desktop. Didn't try very hard and gave up. But it could be an option to look into if cost is a concern and you have some old hardware lying around.

Photos were all I bought for the Synology originally, but it quickly became more useful. Being able to access it from anywhere, having the mobile apps, and setup was painless. I host a couple small websites on it, one for a calendar contest and the other for rally information. The media server is a big plus because I've ripped most of my movies to it. As simple as select the movie and I'm good to go. No more worries about scratching discs.

I do need to do an offsite solution still. Maybe I'll see if I can get that old desktop running FreeNAS correctly. Then I'll just leave that at my parents house and do the offsite backups that way.

 

[Cibrd0wn]

+ 1 on the NAS solution I have a Qnap brand similar to the Synology and it is great just upgraded the 5 drives to 4TB in raid 6 allowing me 2 drive failures and 11TB of storage. I backup all my pictures from all my devices to it and then I backup to google cloud storage. Any name brand NAS should have a google backup app in its repository. I pay less than .50 for my monthly 100gb backup. If i remember right a restore could get pricey but the savings more than pays for itself. Never trust a single disk external hard drive.

If you are tech savvy evenbetter than FreeNAS is Amahi home server.

I tell all my clients a backup is only a backup if it is accessible in two locations otherwise it is just an archive.

 

[gixxerjasen]

stored in a fire-rated, water-proof safe.

Just remember, fire rated safes are safe for storing certain things in them. Just because they won't burn doesn't mean it won't get hot as all get out inside them. Hard drives and other things don't like high heat and might not be usable after a fire, even though the fire never breached the safe. This is why "Offsite" backups are a must.

I researched and tested all the available cloud backup solutions some time ago, and then checked them all recently. Depending on what you want, someone out there has it. I ended up with www.idrive.com for mine as it met my needs for storage size and cost. I also have done a full restore test (used it instead of my local copy when my HDD crashed in my computer) and was satisfied with the ability to have a satisfactory restore. I do still want to know how they secured that domain name and Apple didn't snag it.