What is your backup method?

[Manzur Fahim]

Hello everyone,

Hope you are well.

Just wanted to see how are you keeping your images / files safe? File corruption, malware problem, hard drive dying and so many other issues that can, in a moment, take away all the files you have. All that memories, gone in a second. I have lost my data once, though it wasn't super important, it was enough to make me paranoid about data backups. This is how I do it:

1. My first stage of backup happens in my camera. I always use two memory cards, and always in backup mode. So, that in case of one card failure, I will have another copy. I have had card fault happened 2-3 times so far, and those were some good brand cards. So, instead of trusting the card and the manufacturer, I trust having a second copy more. I use large capacity cards, and I do not format the card after every shoot. The photo stays in the memory card until the card is full, and then I switch to my second set of cards. Once the second set is full, I then format the first set and start using it. This is how I cycle through my memory cards, and the cards acts as backup until they get formatted.

2. I installed an enterprise grade hardware RAID controller in my PC. These controllers can heat up very easily, so I modified the heat-sink to accommodate a fan, which keeps it cool enough. I added 8 x 16TB enterprise grade hard drives (Not desktop or NAS drives), configured them in RAID6, so it can still be operational if up to two drive fails. I have additional hard drives which I can use to replace a faulty drive when it happens, and it will start rebuild. This is my main storage, this is where I copy the files from memory cards.

3. First of every month, I do a backup of all my photos and catalogs to an external RAID0 drive. I know that RAID0 is not giving me any drive protection, but this is there so that I can backup files faster than a normal external drive. Currently I have about 18TBs of files, and backup to RAID0 drive takes around 14 hours.

4. 10th of every month, I initiate a backup to another set of external drives. One drive goes to my sisters place after the backup is complete, and I switch it with another drive next month.

5. 20th of every month, I backup the most recent 4TB files to 2 x 4TB SSDs in RAID1.

6. Some important photos and shoots, I also backup to cloud, where I have 4TB storage.

24th of every month, the RAID controller does a petrol read, which scans all my drives to check for physical errors. 26th of every month, the RAID controller does a file consistency check to make sure everything is ok. These are just maintenances I do to make sure that everything is working well. These tasks are scheduled in the controller software, so they are automated.

I set reminders on my phone, so I know when a backup task is due. I do not do automation when backing up, so I choose what to backup and where, and since backup drives are always offline, I have to power them on manually. The least amount of time my backup drives are online, the better.

My website serves as a backup too, but just for jpeg files.

I am very interested to know how you do your backups.

 

[Captain America]

I have Amazon Prime and use Amazon Photos for backup. I have unlimited storage for pictures (original resolution) and pay the annual fee for 1TB of additional storage for videos.

I keep it simple: Amazon Photos is setup to do an incremental backup of the PC folders where I save the pictures taken with my Nikon D500 and D90.
Same for my phone (Samsung S22), the Amazon Photos app makes a continuos backup of all the pictures I take and those in the folders of my choosing (i.e.: folders where some of the apps, like Messenger or WhatsApp, store their media).
Occasionally, I also make a backup of the most recent pictures folders in my PC on a USB drive, manually adding (simple copy & paste) the new ones since my previous backup.

 

[grsnovi]

I have three "My Passport" usb drives. One I keep off-site in our bank safe deposit box. On Saturday I copy all new photos to the photo directory on one of the drives (along with everything in my wife's folder). The next Saturday I use the other drive so each week the save goes to a different drive. I rotate the third drive back in every six to ten months.

I thought I was doing great but last year I had a hd failure and had the computer rebuilt and backed up (they were able to recover the hard drive). However I've noticed completely empty folders in my scheme of back-ups. Bottom line: I lost data.

 

[Manzur Fahim]

I thought I was doing great but last year I had a hd failure and had the computer rebuilt and backed up (they were able to recover the hard drive). However I've noticed completely empty folders in my scheme of back-ups. Bottom line: I lost data.

Ohh no! That is sad. Did you implement a different backup method after that?

 

[Manzur Fahim]

I have Amazon Prime and use Amazon Photos for backup. I have unlimited storage for pictures (original resolution) and pay the annual fee for 1TB of additional storage for videos.

I keep it simple: Amazon Photos is setup to do an incremental backup of the PC folders where I save the pictures taken with my Nikon D500 and D90.
Same for my phone (Samsung S22), the Amazon Photos app makes a continuos backup of all the pictures I take and those in the folders of my choosing (i.e.: folders where some of the apps, like Messenger or WhatsApp, store their media).
Occasionally, I also make a backup of the most recent pictures folders in my PC on a USB drive, manually adding (simple copy & paste) the new ones since my previous backup.

My backup size is huge, and also I found that, when needed, cloud can be a very slow source to retrieve data from. We always upload and it is usually very fast, but when I try to download, it slows down after a while and it is a pain to retrieve data. On top of that, uploading images as they are means, they could be accessed by someone at the data center. It is unlikely, but can happen, and has happened to someone I know. So the only way I upload to cloud is by archiving them in password protected, encrypted parts. Also due to many issues that can happen, files can get corrupted when uploading or downloading, and archiving them is a good way of preventing these issues.

My phone backs up its files to One Drive (S23 U), Samsung cloud has Microsoft one drive integrated and it does the backup of any new files instantly when wifi is connected. But I still do a manual backup each month.

 

[Michael Meissner]

Lets see:

I have 3 computers that each have a copy of the various files. One desktop is the file server, one desktop tends to be where I do most of the editing, and a laptop.

The stills files are grouped into active albums and finished albums. Every night, the desktop creates a backup of the active albums (plus mail files, etc.). Active albums include the unprocessed albums as well as the albums I'm working on.

In terms of albums, I group everything by year, and within the year, I either use general month albums, or I use specific albums for an event.

This backup album is done via Linux hard links, so that if a file doesn't change since the last backup, it doesn't use more space. As part of my editing process, it asks if I want to create another backup before the nightly backup (and I usually do). At the moment, I have files going back to October 2020, but likely in a few months, the program will have to start deleting the older files, as the disk is starting to get full (or I will just manually delete the 2020 files).

When an album is finished, it is copied to a separate disk in an archive. There are two forms of the copied albums. One set of albums is grouped into sets that are 4GB or less. This is back from the days when I would make DVD backups, but I don't really do that any more. This 4GB grouping includes the original file, the large file after editing, the smaller file after editing used in the web, and the thumbnail photo. The other set of albums is all based on pictures taken in a given year. This album does not include the original photo, but just the large, small, and thumbnail photos.

In addition to the stills photos, I have a directory of all of the video files that have been mildly processed (copyright message inserted, and I reformat it with a more space efficient CODEC). The files are arranged by year, and by event within the year. I have separate sub-albums for files that I've uploaded to youtube, and files that for whatever reason I have not uploaded.

Yet another collection is the raw files. This mainly has the raw videos that came out of the camera. Lately, I've also been making a copy of the active files when I download them from the camera, and I usually delete those files when I'm done processing them.

The raw, video, and archive files are copied to each of the computers.

I have two USB removable disks that I rotate between. After I'm editing, my software asks if I want to back up to the removable disks that are currently online. Note, these disks are not connected to the computer, except when I'm doing the backup to prevent them from being corrupted unintentionally. In the past, when I worked in an office, I would keep one disk in the office, and monthly swap out the disks. I keep meaning to start using our bank safe deposit box for this (or at least keep one of the disks in the car to provide for backup in case the house burns down).

In addition to the USB disks, I have an external web album that contains the large, small, and thumbnail pictures. The external albums have 3 variants:

• All public pictures
• All public pictures taken at renaissance faire, steampunk, science fiction, etc. conventions
• All pictures including the private pictures (I don't give this URL out except to very few people).

Assuming the files are public, I will typically create a facebook album to hold the small photos from a particular albums.

When I go on vacation, I typically take a laptop and one of the backup disks. Every night, I put copies of the photos into both the laptop and the backup disks. When I'm traveling, typically the backup disk goes into checked luggage, and the laptop is carry on. I also tend to not erase the SD cards until I get back, and until the files are stored in the unprocessed files, and 3 computers are updated, along with the web server. I don't backup files to the web server when I'm on vacation, because I don't always have enough bandwidth to do that.

I've been shooting digital since 2002, and as I write this, I have 57,746 files that I have taken (this will go down a little bit as I process the 8 groups of files waiting for editing, and delete the various duds).

At the moment, the space used is:

• 550G: Stills photos (both active and finished albums)
• 574G: Archive of stills photos
• 400G: Raw video files and unprocessed stills files
• 448G: Processed video files.

So compared to some of you, I'm not using that much space.

 

[Serge]

I keep three copies of the RAW's and I also keep TIF's which are used for exhibition purposes and etc.
At the moment I am using single Seagate Exos X16 ST14000NM001G hard drives. SSDs are not allowed.
I don't use raid arrays/NAS at home to avoid raid controller write errors.

And all the current copies are made directly from the SD card's, i.e. not one after the other (the first copy, the second copy from it, etc.). This prevents errors in sequential copying. Checksums (md5) are used to verify the copied files.

I have 1 copy on my computer at home and 2 copies outside my computer.
The computer itself is archived with 1 copy on local cloud storage (incremental copy). This is created on the external work servers via Veeam. I don't use any public cloud storage for this purpose.

This means that I have 4 copies at my disposal. I check the validity of my copies once a year.

 

[grsnovi]

Did you implement a different backup method after that?

Annoying but no, I'm still backing up the same.

 

[ph.]

I use a couple of USB-harddisks which I store in my childrens houses nearby . Texts, programs and pictures fill about 3GB. I rotate about every month, but do copy much more frequently to a local HD. I used to empley two double NASboxes, but gave up on them after Microsoft decided to ditch the connection command that their Linux OS used amking it impossible to connect also, the more recent laptops had no ethernet.cable connection, so secure in-house NAS was made diffiult.

p.

 

[ph.]

Corrrigendum: 3 Terabyte!