Nervous! How do I store photos?

[Katy Noelle]

My computer is pretty darn full. I need to clear space every time I download photos. Anyway, I mentioned a hard drive as a good Christmas gift. My dad got very excited about zip drives, maybe, being the way to go and said that he'd look into it all for me. I just don't remember a thing about zip drives in Sean's tutorial. Help! I'm so new to computers, I don't have even a clue.

[jiro]

Try an external drive instead. I use a 320GB Seagate External Drive as my backup. I think you can get one now for less than $80.00. It connects to your computer via a USB cable. Hope this helps.

[mythlady]

I have a zip drive (two, actually) -- they're just little things you plug into the computer. The trick is not to lose them -- An external hard drive is bigger and not so easy to misplace.

[Crovean]

Zip drives are things in the past and would not recommend at all.

Have you looked in to external hard drives? They are very affordable now and the capacity is very large.

Check this out: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136505

[AlanP]

To be safe I store my pictures on two seperate hard drives. Hard drives can fail.

Alan

[Geoff F]

I agree with Alan, but I use one external drive and burn everything to DVD instead. That covers you if your computer equipment gets stolen, etc; and if you keep a DVD at a different location, you are also protected from fire.

[Katy Noelle]

I hear what you're all saying. Thank you! My dad was saying that, nowadays, zip drives can store an awful lot more than they used to but, I wonder, are they even safe (besides losing them)? I guess you're using one, Elise, and it's okay?

[Colin Southern]

I think we might be talking about different "zip" drives here. Zip Drive in the true sense of the word was a 100MB and then 250MB "glorified floppy" disk going back probably at least 10 years ago. At the time they were the best thing since sliced bread, but in the end they turned out to be hopelessly unreliable (google "click of death").

These days - personally - I write each session to 2 DVDs (one kept at the studio and one kept at home), and whilst on my editing PC they're stored on a RAID 1 mirror combination. External USB hard drives are great ... very cheap ... huge capacities ... BUT (and as you can see, it's a BIG but), as Alan pointed out, Hard Drives can AND DO fail. Storing images on any single hard drive (ie not backed up anywhere else) would be foolish in the extreme. Again - personally - I wouldn't sleep at night unless at least 1 copy was also stored offsite somewhere (and I think DVDs are perfect for this ... they're cheap, and you don't need to bring them back and forth to add files ... just burn a new one and take it home).

[Katy Noelle]

Oh, thanks, Colin! I know that my dad isn't talking about floppy discs. He's talking about those plug thingamajigs.

BTW, I did, also, go through the search and saw and read through another thread (or two?) that was about this, also. I was so worried that hard drives would be hundreds of dollars but was relieved when my dad said that they weren't. It was, then, that he got all excited about the newer kind of zip drive.

[Clactonian]

I agree with Alan, but I use one external drive and burn everything to DVD instead. That covers you if your computer equipment gets stolen, etc; and if you keep a DVD at a different location, you are also protected from fire.

Me too, but am even contemplating a second external drive as well. Paranoia is setting in!!

[carregwen]

Katy

Let me get this right. Are you actually backing up your shots at the moment?

You really ought to have two backups, preferably to external hard-drives. Keep one of them in a safe remote location, the other in your house (but hide it somewhere remote). For small back-ups between major backups use DVDs as Colin said.

• I do my backups to drives at the end of each month.
• For the following month I download all my photos to a folder called 'bucket'. The bucket folder is divided into date folders which are automatically created on download from the cameras. All my edits get saved there, all in one folder.
• At the end of the month I move all the bucket files to their correct folders elsewhere, leaving the bucket empty. I do the backups again and start all over again!

Works well. Don't forget to back up other stuff - Excel files, Word files, browser bookmarks, Donald's fan club list, etc.

[Katy Noelle]

Weeeeellllll, NO! I am not backing anything up. See, I stole my son's laptop (not having one of my own) and started getting into blogging. Trouble is, the disc drive is broken. I've only really been into this "photography thing" for about five months and I think that people are starting to just think, now, that I might be serious. Anyway, think "poor as church mice." Besides, I laugh at danger - I like to live on the edge - you know, photograph roulette - NOT!

Don't forget to back up other stuff - ...Donald's fan club list, etc.

However, I never stopped to think that I was risking this! Wow! Thanks, Rob! You've saved us!

P.S. Very good advice noted!

[Colin Southern]

Hi Katy,

I'm reminded that there are only two groups of people in this world ...

... Those who HAVE lost data, and those who WILL!

If all else fails, there's always www.drivesavers.com ... they recovered all data from a failed drive for one of my clients a few months ago ... at a cost of USD 2300.

[carregwen]

Katy

As an initial step, just get some DVDs from a local store and backup all your shots. You can't have that many after so short a time. You may have to split them over 2-3 disks but it won't take you long. We don't want you posting on here saying "Help, I have lost all my data..." Cyber tissues are not very absorbent.

[Glenn NK]

Hi Katy,

I'm reminded that there are only two groups of people in this world ...

... Those who HAVE lost data, and those who WILL!

If all else fails, there's always www.drivesavers.com ... they recovered all data from a failed drive for one of my clients a few months ago ... at a cost of USD 2300.

I had a crash once - it was definitely not much fun.

Only $2,300 - I wonder how many large external drives one could get for that pile of cash.

Both my machines have C drives and I drives, and they both have external J drives (which I only turn on for backup once a month - or when I remember). I don't recall it costing that much.

As for DVDs, there has been disucssion on the longevity ot them on other sites.

Glenn

[PopsPhotos]

I'm reminded that there are only two groups of people in this world ...

... Those who HAVE lost data, and those who WILL!

There is a saying in the motocycle world which is similar.

"There are those who have dumped and those who lie about it."

I have a 360Gb, a 500Gb and a 1Tb I use for back up. The pair of 250 Gb drives I use for classwork and take back and forth to school. I bought the 1Tb from Seagate a few months for about $250, in the door. If I remember correctly, the 1.5Tb is going for about that, now and the 2Tb is not much more.

These prices are a little dated, but I got mine from the factory, so I'm prejudiced.

http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/produ...nt_go_1tb.html

Note that they say it is a little bit slower than the Western Digital. The difference is not enough to make it significant, unless you are backing up 1/2 a T at a time.

Pops

[Crovean]

Has anybody tried Solid State Drives(SSD)?

This should be more reliable than the HDD since there's no moving parts. SSD are still high priced compared to the HDD though.

[speedneeder]

I recently started an online backup service. You might consider that.
I was backing up on an external USB hard drive, but found that my discipline wasn't sufficient to do it regularly, plus you really should have your backup someplace other than where your computer is in case of fire/theft. So for me, the automatic remote backups work well at a cost of $5/month.

[MiniChris]

I use a WD 1tb portable HD and I back up every night to Carbonite. I am not even sure the 1TB will hold all I have but I also have use of the district's storage base for my school related stuff so that frees up a lot of info...of course realizing that a novel the size of War and Peace can easily fit on a standard CD with a lot of room left over.

[benm]

>> NO! I am not backing anything up.

1 TB portable hard drives cost about $120 (US). Back up regularly to one or preferably two of them. If that's too much money you can get 500 GB hard drives for $69 (US). 500 GB can hold around 50,000 photos of 10 MB each. Additional back up onto DVDs is also good though they only hold around 4.7 GB (single layer). You should keep in mind that nothing is archival so use multiple back ups and consider them all to be temporary, may be good for 5 years or so before you have to transfer to new media.