Backing up 200GB+ Photos

Shiny

I have searched boards and the FAQ and couldn't find a
definitive thread about backing up large amounts of photos.

At the moment I have an internal 500GB drive and just
copy over my entire photo collection to it, once a month
or so. Not ideal and very slow.

I'm looking to automate the process with a program that
keeps them synced but treats one as the "Source" and
the other as the "Backup".

What program(s) do you use to backup your photos and how
often do you do it?

5uspect

Software wise you could use something like Norton Ghost.
Hardware wise you could invest in a RAID 1 or 2 setup.

challengemaster

Invest in a NAS, stick a few 1TB drives in it, and you'll be set for a while

Check out the drobo - Cool little device.

1TB harddrives are cheap as ever these days.

Jimbo

I use Syncback.

Automatic and very easy to use.

Quackles

I use the same set up as you only with an external drive (in case of power surges, it's not left plugged in). Not ideal, but I can't afford to put money into my photography at the moment, so it'll have to do for a while. I keep meaning to write a batch file to automate the process, but I'm also pretty lazy.

Shiny

challengemaster wrote: »

Invest in a NAS, stick a few 1TB drives in it, and you'll be set for a while

Check out the drobo - Cool little device.

1TB harddrives are cheap as ever these days.

I'm very interested in the drobo but I'm waiting for a version
with USB 3.0 to come out before I purchase it.

jimbo78 wrote: »

I use Syncback.

Automatic and very easy to use.

This also looks very good, what is your process ?
ie internal/external, frequency of backup, etc ?

Jimbo

I have an external USB connected hardrive. It automatically backs up at a certain time each day. AFAIK, you can also set it to continuously back up throughout the day.

challengemaster

Shiny wrote: »

I'm very interested in the drobo but I'm waiting for a version
with USB 3.0 to come out before I purchase it.

Your pc/laptop has USB2.0, so what does it matter to you if its got usb3.0 or not?...

Actually is USB3.0 even out yet?

Shiny

No, its coming out in the next couple of months and I plan
to install a USB 3.0 controller card into a vacant PCI express 1x slot.

External hard drives will actually be good once they come out with
the new spec.

Borderfox

I use Adobe Bridge to import pictures and it saves backups at the same time to external drives. I have 3x 1tb and 1x 750gb

MooseJam

you could always burn them to dual layer dvd or blu-ray then you wouldn't have to worry anymore, then just do smaller backups

stcstc

dont depend on any of the recordable optical disc formats for long life archives


i use a windows server with an LTO3 drive, which can hold approx 800gig compressed on a tape

the trick with this stuff is to not have the drives running all the time. run then for a backup then stick them away somewhere.

and spread things across various disks, so you spread the risk

as for raid, its not a backup, it just add redundancy. I recently spent 2.5K recovering data from a 2Tb raid 5 box that failed

ThOnda

I have external HDD via USB 2.0. It is 320GB, but after less than two years there is 1 TB version available for the same money. And I am considering that now...

Shiny

MooseJam wrote: »

you could always burn them to dual layer dvd or blu-ray then you wouldn't have to worry anymore, then just do smaller backups

Yeah I would consider blu-ray as a viable option but I wont use
it until it gets much much cheaper.
Works out cheaper per GB to get a hard drive than to fork out
for blu-ray discs, never mind the recorder.

Maybe I might do as stcstc said, just get something that is only
switched on during backup, otherwise it is off.