Full Version: Backup Methods
Recently, I have been trying to think of a backup method for my files, but I do not have a very great one in mind. If you would please share yours to give me some ideas, that would be great. Thank You
Anyone?Anyone?
Hey James -
Here's my method:
1. Backup RAW files (file type I shoot) onto external hard drive into folder with my client's names
3. Divide RAW files into internal folders such as "Preceremony, Ceremony, Formals, Etc"
4. Deep-burn all files onto a DVD at the slowest speed possible
5. Upload images to www.Pictage.com
I always make sure to tell my clients that I have 3 backup methods when I meet with them for bridal consultations. That if a meteor were to hit my studio, their photographs would still be backed up with my lab in California. I think this info helps justify my prices.
Here's my method:
1. Backup RAW files (file type I shoot) onto external hard drive into folder with my client's names
3. Divide RAW files into internal folders such as "Preceremony, Ceremony, Formals, Etc"
4. Deep-burn all files onto a DVD at the slowest speed possible
5. Upload images to www.Pictage.com
I always make sure to tell my clients that I have 3 backup methods when I meet with them for bridal consultations. That if a meteor were to hit my studio, their photographs would still be backed up with my lab in California. I think this info helps justify my prices.
Hey James:
1) We download all of our RAW files using Downloader Pro. This is an amazing piece of software because it can automatically rename the files according to time stamp. This cuts hours of workflow time (we don't have to sort them) for us since we are two shooters. To make this system work, just time sync your cameras at the beginning of the day (works great for single shooters too if you use two bodies).
2) Once all the RAW files are downloaded, we use ACDSee 7.0 to rename everything starting with "0001".
3) I burn the entire wedding to DVD. We shoot with two 5D's for the wedding day, so this can range from 25GB to 40GB depending on the event. This will typically take between 6 and 10 DVD's, using single layer discs at approximately 4GB per DVD.
4) Next, I upload the "ORGS" to our server. We use a 2TB Network Attached Server (NAS) (one per wedding season) to store everything. The servers run between $1100 and $2000 depending on the brand. This is different than a USB based drive because it connects to the computer using CAT5 cabling, and acts like a normal server...but with no server software.
5) When I get around to it (usually once per quarter), I'll move the DVD backups to a safe deposit box at our local bank. Cost for the boxes is $110 per year, and we currently have 3 boxes full of DVD's.
6) We just keep backing up at every step...XMP's and the EDITS. A copy of each is burned, and then stored offsite. Both are stored on our server as well. The client always receives a copy of the EDITS too, so this is a triple backup.
Hope this helps!
~ Charles
1) We download all of our RAW files using Downloader Pro. This is an amazing piece of software because it can automatically rename the files according to time stamp. This cuts hours of workflow time (we don't have to sort them) for us since we are two shooters. To make this system work, just time sync your cameras at the beginning of the day (works great for single shooters too if you use two bodies).
2) Once all the RAW files are downloaded, we use ACDSee 7.0 to rename everything starting with "0001".
3) I burn the entire wedding to DVD. We shoot with two 5D's for the wedding day, so this can range from 25GB to 40GB depending on the event. This will typically take between 6 and 10 DVD's, using single layer discs at approximately 4GB per DVD.
4) Next, I upload the "ORGS" to our server. We use a 2TB Network Attached Server (NAS) (one per wedding season) to store everything. The servers run between $1100 and $2000 depending on the brand. This is different than a USB based drive because it connects to the computer using CAT5 cabling, and acts like a normal server...but with no server software.
5) When I get around to it (usually once per quarter), I'll move the DVD backups to a safe deposit box at our local bank. Cost for the boxes is $110 per year, and we currently have 3 boxes full of DVD's.
6) We just keep backing up at every step...XMP's and the EDITS. A copy of each is burned, and then stored offsite. Both are stored on our server as well. The client always receives a copy of the EDITS too, so this is a triple backup.
Hope this helps!
~ Charles
QUOTE(CharlesBaisden @ July 24 2007, 11:20 PM) 
Hey James:
1) We download all of our RAW files using Downloader Pro. This is an amazing piece of software because it can automatically rename the files according to time stamp. This cuts hours of workflow time (we don't have to sort them) for us since we are two shooters. To make this system work, just time sync your cameras at the beginning of the day (works great for single shooters too if you use two bodies).
2) Once all the RAW files are downloaded, we use ACDSee 7.0 to rename everything starting with "0001".
3) I burn the entire wedding to DVD. We shoot with two 5D's for the wedding day, so this can range from 25GB to 40GB depending on the event. This will typically take between 6 and 10 DVD's, using single layer discs at approximately 4GB per DVD.
4) Next, I upload the "ORGS" to our server. We use a 2TB Network Attached Server (NAS) (one per wedding season) to store everything. The servers run between $1100 and $2000 depending on the brand. This is different than a USB based drive because it connects to the computer using CAT5 cabling, and acts like a normal server...but with no server software.
5) When I get around to it (usually once per quarter), I'll move the DVD backups to a safe deposit box at our local bank. Cost for the boxes is $110 per year, and we currently have 3 boxes full of DVD's.
6) We just keep backing up at every step...XMP's and the EDITS. A copy of each is burned, and then stored offsite. Both are stored on our server as well. The client always receives a copy of the EDITS too, so this is a triple backup.
Hope this helps!
~ Charles
1) We download all of our RAW files using Downloader Pro. This is an amazing piece of software because it can automatically rename the files according to time stamp. This cuts hours of workflow time (we don't have to sort them) for us since we are two shooters. To make this system work, just time sync your cameras at the beginning of the day (works great for single shooters too if you use two bodies).
2) Once all the RAW files are downloaded, we use ACDSee 7.0 to rename everything starting with "0001".
3) I burn the entire wedding to DVD. We shoot with two 5D's for the wedding day, so this can range from 25GB to 40GB depending on the event. This will typically take between 6 and 10 DVD's, using single layer discs at approximately 4GB per DVD.
4) Next, I upload the "ORGS" to our server. We use a 2TB Network Attached Server (NAS) (one per wedding season) to store everything. The servers run between $1100 and $2000 depending on the brand. This is different than a USB based drive because it connects to the computer using CAT5 cabling, and acts like a normal server...but with no server software.
5) When I get around to it (usually once per quarter), I'll move the DVD backups to a safe deposit box at our local bank. Cost for the boxes is $110 per year, and we currently have 3 boxes full of DVD's.
6) We just keep backing up at every step...XMP's and the EDITS. A copy of each is burned, and then stored offsite. Both are stored on our server as well. The client always receives a copy of the EDITS too, so this is a triple backup.
Hope this helps!
~ Charles
Wow! That is seriously crazy...I feel so under prepared for disaster. I would love to figure out a way to back up like you are, but that was something I could understand and do easily. I am not tech savvy ATALL!
Thanks for sharing.
Currently, I back my pictures up to an external hard drive, but I am afraid that will fail one of these days. I need an effective way to backup my backups. Are dvds a good idea? That would be a lot of dvds. Any other ideas?
Currently I am using multiple external hard drives to back up to. I have an active drive that I use for projects in process. During the workflow I back up to a master archive drive (1TB) using Silverkeeper. That hard Drive is mirrored to a second external drive (same). Whenever I leave town etc I take the drive with me to make certain there is a copy away from home in case of emergency.
As an extra level of security I keep everything on file at my lab - exposure manager.
At one point I was backing up to my web server as well, but that was very time consuming and more difficult to keep track of.
As an extra level of security I keep everything on file at my lab - exposure manager.
At one point I was backing up to my web server as well, but that was very time consuming and more difficult to keep track of.
QUOTE(roro @ July 24 2007, 10:42 PM)
Currently, I back my pictures up to an external hard drive, but I am afraid that will fail one of these days. I need an effective way to backup my backups. Are dvds a good idea? That would be a lot of dvds. Any other ideas?
There was an excellent article in a recent addition of Rangefinder about this very subject. It covered deep-burning, types of DVDs and other useful information. I'll have to look to see what issue it was...I want to say May 07'. I wish I knew off-hand the month. Anyone know?
Some of my photographer friends and I have talked at length about this very subject (backup measure). A lot of us burn onto a DVD, save onto an external hard drive, and have 1 more source in case of emergency. I really like to promote Pictage to my clients for this purpose. Even if I don't sell enough prints to cover my monthly $99 fee, simply having my photographs archived in California is worth the money to me.
QUOTE(Time After Time Studios @ July 26 2007, 07:42 PM)
There was an excellent article in a recent addition of Rangefinder about this very subject. It covered deep-burning, types of DVDs and other useful information. I'll have to look to see what issue it was...I want to say May 07'. I wish I knew off-hand the month. Anyone know?
Some of my photographer friends and I have talked at length about this very subject (backup measure). A lot of us burn onto a DVD, save onto an external hard drive, and have 1 more source in case of emergency. I really like to promote Pictage to my clients for this purpose. Even if I don't sell enough prints to cover my monthly $99 fee, simply having my photographs archived in California is worth the money to me.
Some of my photographer friends and I have talked at length about this very subject (backup measure). A lot of us burn onto a DVD, save onto an external hard drive, and have 1 more source in case of emergency. I really like to promote Pictage to my clients for this purpose. Even if I don't sell enough prints to cover my monthly $99 fee, simply having my photographs archived in California is worth the money to me.
That would be great if you could find out for me. Currently, a family member has mention a backup service website called mozy backup. It seems like a great website and a great investment.
QUOTE(roro @ July 25 2007, 12:42 AM)
Currently, I back my pictures up to an external hard drive, but I am afraid that will fail one of these days. I need an effective way to backup my backups. Are dvds a good idea? That would be a lot of dvds. Any other ideas?
That very thing happened to me on Wednesday. Just after I bragged on my experience with Lacie rugged drives, one of mine went ka-put. I had 98% of the files backed up to other sources (in most cases, multiple sources). But the 2% I didn't have backed up were the PSD files to two albums I literally had just finished designing in the previous few days (fortunately on one of them I had the jpeg files on another drive). We're on vacation this week and I stayed up until about 4 AM the other night in a hotel in Holland, MI recreating one of the albums in time to upload it to Asuka and have it printed.
Over the past 5 years I've had 3 drives crash on me...a Maxtor, a Western Digital, and now this Lacie drive. At least each time I get closer and closer to learning my lesson!
A note about hard drives crashing. I, too, have had several fail on me. I determined that it was the heat. Of course, this isn't always the issue, but for me it seemed to be the common denominator (or whatever). I put a desk fan on the desk blowing right on all the external drives and haven't had any heat issues since. The enclosures are always cool to the touch. And before they were usually quite warm -- hot, even. It's kind of a pain to have a fan on all the time, but it's not too loud and it's worth every penny it cost. Like $5.00 or so. 
We backup to a second drive every night. And offload to DVD when it starts to get too full. I make two copies of the DVD backups. One copy goes in a box, and the other copy is off site. Weddings in a safe deposit box, other stuff in a closet at my mother-in-law's house. That way if our house burns down, we still have copies. It's not perfect, but it's better than what we were doing before (which wasn't nothing, but wasn't as much).
We backup to a second drive every night. And offload to DVD when it starts to get too full. I make two copies of the DVD backups. One copy goes in a box, and the other copy is off site. Weddings in a safe deposit box, other stuff in a closet at my mother-in-law's house. That way if our house burns down, we still have copies. It's not perfect, but it's better than what we were doing before (which wasn't nothing, but wasn't as much).
I also run http://www.mozy.com every night while I sleep to backup my image files and documents. The first download takes forever, but after that, it's complete by the time I'm awake.
QUOTE(Skye Hardwick @ July 28 2007, 07:42 AM)
I also run http://www.mozy.com every night while I sleep to backup my image files and documents. The first download takes forever, but after that, it's complete by the time I'm awake.
Skye....do you have a personal account of business account for this?
If you use the business account, how much do you estimate it costs you for this???
Thank you in advance,
Jen
Backing up files is for sissies... 
J/K
We backup to two ext HDs and slowburn DVDs...
J/KWe backup to two ext HDs and slowburn DVDs...
Hi,
I am new here (today!!!!) and I was going to start a thread about file back up, and in particular, file size.
Right, I realize that what I am about to ask will probably have everyone throwing their hands in the air, but here goes.
Why keep CR2, DNG or PSD files at all???? Why not just jpgs?
My wife and I have just ordered our first sample wedding album from La-Vie, and I noticed that the first image in the album, with all its layers, is a whopping 157mb.
Now, if the album company only want files in jpg format, around 6-7mb, then why would we ever need such a huge original? All the work has been done on the image, so why do we have all these layers stored? We could flatten to a smaller psd, but why not jpg? The finished images will either be in an album, a frame, or on a computer screen, none of which require huge file sizes.
Especially since we can now edit jpg's in camera raw (CS3), it seems to me like we are storing lots of stuff for absolutely no reason.
Please don't misunderstand, we shoot EVERY image in RAW. I am simply asking about the ongoing storage of files. The files we might never ever need again, and if we did, what would we output them from? Jpg?
For those folks who will sell on the images to the client, now or in the future, what format will you hand them over in? I would guess jpg, but maybe that would be a wrong guess. Do you normally sell the RAW images?
Anyway, I am ready for the barrage of abuse I may be about to get!!! :-) I just want to know if we should keep on buying large SATA drives to store all these huge psd's we seem to be putting together.
Thanks for any help you can give.
Hugh
I am new here (today!!!!) and I was going to start a thread about file back up, and in particular, file size.
Right, I realize that what I am about to ask will probably have everyone throwing their hands in the air, but here goes.
Why keep CR2, DNG or PSD files at all???? Why not just jpgs?
My wife and I have just ordered our first sample wedding album from La-Vie, and I noticed that the first image in the album, with all its layers, is a whopping 157mb.
Now, if the album company only want files in jpg format, around 6-7mb, then why would we ever need such a huge original? All the work has been done on the image, so why do we have all these layers stored? We could flatten to a smaller psd, but why not jpg? The finished images will either be in an album, a frame, or on a computer screen, none of which require huge file sizes.
Especially since we can now edit jpg's in camera raw (CS3), it seems to me like we are storing lots of stuff for absolutely no reason.
Please don't misunderstand, we shoot EVERY image in RAW. I am simply asking about the ongoing storage of files. The files we might never ever need again, and if we did, what would we output them from? Jpg?
For those folks who will sell on the images to the client, now or in the future, what format will you hand them over in? I would guess jpg, but maybe that would be a wrong guess. Do you normally sell the RAW images?
Anyway, I am ready for the barrage of abuse I may be about to get!!! :-) I just want to know if we should keep on buying large SATA drives to store all these huge psd's we seem to be putting together.
Thanks for any help you can give.
Hugh
QUOTE
Skye....do you have a personal account of business account for this?
If you use the business account, how much do you estimate it costs you for this???
Thank you in advance,
If you use the business account, how much do you estimate it costs you for this???
Thank you in advance,
It costs just $50 something a year if you buy the year in advance - not too shabby!
For image files, the raw files are imported to my main computer and an external hard drive and on export, they are exported as jpgs to both the main computer and exernal hard drive. I also use Pictage as a back up and love the security of knowing the images are in a separate location. Prior to the upload, I have 5 copies of every image - CF card, RAW on external HD, JPG on external HD, RAW on main computer and JPG on main computer. After I upload to Pictage, I delete the RAW files from the main computer and clear off the the CF cards.
I don't burn DVDs but maybe I should? Maybe I am mistaken, but I was under the impression that HDs were a more stable storage than DVDs.
What I am not great at is backing up my other files - PSD files while I'm in the middle of designing an album, accounting files, contracts, etc. All of my contacts are in my webmail so that I can access them no matter where I am and there are copies of contracts emailed to the client located there.
I am in the midst of a very trying computer day - my HP laptop's display went completely black over the weekend. It is still under warranty and I was preparing to ship it to HP today when I discovered almost by accident that they automatically wipe out the entire harddrive and do a system restore on it back to the factory settings prior to returning it to me. They would do nothing to help me - I understand if the hard drive failed and they need to restore it, but WHY delete all my data for no reason? So, luckily I caught the package before FedEx picked it up and sent it off to my local computer service people to have the data backed up. Virtually everything is on my external HD, except the PSD files of an album I'm in the middle of designing, some images I was tweaking and playing around with but weren't printed or ordered yet and all of my accounting spreadsheets - with my expenses and receipts since January. Why, oh why didn't I back those up??? I even backed up all my actions. Now I have an additional expense when my computer is still under warranty. And I'm in minor freak-out mode until I find out they were able to get everything off the hard drive.
So, make sure you back up everything - not just your image files!
I don't burn DVDs but maybe I should? Maybe I am mistaken, but I was under the impression that HDs were a more stable storage than DVDs.
What I am not great at is backing up my other files - PSD files while I'm in the middle of designing an album, accounting files, contracts, etc. All of my contacts are in my webmail so that I can access them no matter where I am and there are copies of contracts emailed to the client located there.
I am in the midst of a very trying computer day - my HP laptop's display went completely black over the weekend. It is still under warranty and I was preparing to ship it to HP today when I discovered almost by accident that they automatically wipe out the entire harddrive and do a system restore on it back to the factory settings prior to returning it to me. They would do nothing to help me - I understand if the hard drive failed and they need to restore it, but WHY delete all my data for no reason? So, luckily I caught the package before FedEx picked it up and sent it off to my local computer service people to have the data backed up. Virtually everything is on my external HD, except the PSD files of an album I'm in the middle of designing, some images I was tweaking and playing around with but weren't printed or ordered yet and all of my accounting spreadsheets - with my expenses and receipts since January. Why, oh why didn't I back those up??? I even backed up all my actions. Now I have an additional expense when my computer is still under warranty. And I'm in minor freak-out mode until I find out they were able to get everything off the hard drive.
So, make sure you back up everything - not just your image files!
Ok, so QUESTION! I've been reading through EVERY thread with the word "backup" in it and there are some great ideas. My backup system is NOT good. Just 2 copies of DVDs and that's it. Uhh...yeah. With the wedding I shot last month I was super careful and actually kept a copy of the originals with me in the car incase my house burned down before the clients got the images.
That is my question! FIRES. I can handle the whole "computer failure" or hard drive failure thing...have backups. But what if you shoot a wedding, go home that evening, do your DVD and hard drive backups...and your house burns down. All the drives/dvds are in your house and they all disappear. Well...too bad your "off site" back-up only happens once a week?? This scares me!!
Do any of you use a fire-proof safe to put the disc of images in, at least until you can take them off-site?
Thanks!
That is my question! FIRES. I can handle the whole "computer failure" or hard drive failure thing...have backups. But what if you shoot a wedding, go home that evening, do your DVD and hard drive backups...and your house burns down. All the drives/dvds are in your house and they all disappear. Well...too bad your "off site" back-up only happens once a week?? This scares me!!
Do any of you use a fire-proof safe to put the disc of images in, at least until you can take them off-site?
Thanks!
I give my DVD's to a friend as soon as possible, but sometimes it is a few days or a week after the wedding. Can you keep a copy at a neighbors house until you can bring it to your backup location?
QUOTE(Jamie Delaine @ June 3 2008, 10:04 PM)
Ok, so QUESTION! I've been reading through EVERY thread with the word "backup" in it and there are some great ideas. My backup system is NOT good. Just 2 copies of DVDs and that's it. Uhh...yeah. With the wedding I shot last month I was super careful and actually kept a copy of the originals with me in the car incase my house burned down before the clients got the images.
That is my question! FIRES. I can handle the whole "computer failure" or hard drive failure thing...have backups. But what if you shoot a wedding, go home that evening, do your DVD and hard drive backups...and your house burns down. All the drives/dvds are in your house and they all disappear. Well...too bad your "off site" back-up only happens once a week?? This scares me!!
Do any of you use a fire-proof safe to put the disc of images in, at least until you can take them off-site?
Thanks!
That is my question! FIRES. I can handle the whole "computer failure" or hard drive failure thing...have backups. But what if you shoot a wedding, go home that evening, do your DVD and hard drive backups...and your house burns down. All the drives/dvds are in your house and they all disappear. Well...too bad your "off site" back-up only happens once a week?? This scares me!!
Do any of you use a fire-proof safe to put the disc of images in, at least until you can take them off-site?
Thanks!
Let me start by saying I do not use this service and can not claim to its usefulness. I have a friend who uses Pictage and archives their work with the company. Once the wedding is uploaded to Pictage, they host it data on their secure computers in the desert in Arizona or something. That would defiantly not burn down if your home caught fire. But in all seriousness here, are you really that worried that your home is going to catch fire the night you come home from photographing a wedding?
What worries me more than a home fire would be someone stealing my equipment during the reception. I know I should keep my cards on my body at all times, but I just dont do that. My bag grows legs and so do the pictures. Hello lawsuit.
I'm just trying to cover all my bases here! I'm not a "worrier" -- I just want to be safe rather than sorry. But I guess a lot of people seem to leave the files "on-site" for the first few days.
I'm signed up with Pictage and do use them for backing up my FINISHED jpegs about two weeks after the wedding. However that doesn't help me when I'm looking at the prospect of 30gb of unedited wedding images the night of!
Thanks for your answers though; I'm reading them all studiously.
I'm signed up with Pictage and do use them for backing up my FINISHED jpegs about two weeks after the wedding. However that doesn't help me when I'm looking at the prospect of 30gb of unedited wedding images the night of!
Thanks for your answers though; I'm reading them all studiously.
QUOTE(James Allen @ June 4 2008, 12:17 AM)
What worries me more than a home fire would be someone stealing my equipment during the reception. I know I should keep my cards on my body at all times, but I just dont do that. My bag grows legs and so do the pictures. Hello lawsuit.
Ummm, why don't you keep your cards on your person? You're self-admittedly asking for trouble.
Jamie, the fire proof safe isn't a bad idea and definitely look into long-term, tangible offsite storage whether it's DVD's in a relative's basement or as I'm looking into a safety deposit box to keep external HD's in.
QUOTE(Jamie Delaine @ June 3 2008, 10:04 PM)
Ok, so QUESTION! I've been reading through EVERY thread with the word "backup" in it and there are some great ideas. My backup system is NOT good. Just 2 copies of DVDs and that's it. Uhh...yeah. With the wedding I shot last month I was super careful and actually kept a copy of the originals with me in the car incase my house burned down before the clients got the images.
That is my question! FIRES. I can handle the whole "computer failure" or hard drive failure thing...have backups. But what if you shoot a wedding, go home that evening, do your DVD and hard drive backups...and your house burns down. All the drives/dvds are in your house and they all disappear. Well...too bad your "off site" back-up only happens once a week?? This scares me!!
Do any of you use a fire-proof safe to put the disc of images in, at least until you can take them off-site?
Thanks!
That is my question! FIRES. I can handle the whole "computer failure" or hard drive failure thing...have backups. But what if you shoot a wedding, go home that evening, do your DVD and hard drive backups...and your house burns down. All the drives/dvds are in your house and they all disappear. Well...too bad your "off site" back-up only happens once a week?? This scares me!!
Do any of you use a fire-proof safe to put the disc of images in, at least until you can take them off-site?
Thanks!
I keep my CF cards in my pocket until my DVD backups have made it to my safe deposit box. Look at the Think Tank Photo Pixel Pocket Rocket - it'll store all your cards on you in a very compact case, and it has a latch that you can hook to a belt loop that keeps it from falling out of your pocket and getting lost.
I am working on an off-site backup system -- it should be done in a month or so and I will post pics of the process... I am a network geek @ heart so this is exciting stuff for me...
You sleep with the cards in your pocket? 
Hahah! I think I understand everything but protecting them that first night...but I guess nobody else seems to worry about the very first night they are home after the wedding. If there is a fire, I just run and grab the hard drive and run out the door!
Hahah! I think I understand everything but protecting them that first night...but I guess nobody else seems to worry about the very first night they are home after the wedding. If there is a fire, I just run and grab the hard drive and run out the door!
Jamie,
you'll never be 100% sure. But keeping a backup in a safe place even the first night can be done:
- cellar
- garage
- car
You can actually get hit even before you make the back up so keep the cards safe too untill everything is safe on site and off site.
One of my internat hard drives caught fire on Saturday straight after booting. I had to pull the plug, open and slice melting cables. I have 2 drives and fortunately it hit the C:/Windows drive not data, so I did not have to pull out my backups. In the process I lost only an hour and a few minutes of my life (stress and toxic fumes).
I try to keep Ghosts of my current clean setup in the event of a new HD installation or major virus/crash.
Niall
you'll never be 100% sure. But keeping a backup in a safe place even the first night can be done:
- cellar
- garage
- car
You can actually get hit even before you make the back up so keep the cards safe too untill everything is safe on site and off site.
One of my internat hard drives caught fire on Saturday straight after booting. I had to pull the plug, open and slice melting cables. I have 2 drives and fortunately it hit the C:/Windows drive not data, so I did not have to pull out my backups. In the process I lost only an hour and a few minutes of my life (stress and toxic fumes).
I try to keep Ghosts of my current clean setup in the event of a new HD installation or major virus/crash.
Niall
Thanks Niall: Wow, that's scary. I'm on a Mac so I wouldn't know what to do! I think I've decided on buying a small little fire-proof container:
http://www.staples.ca/ENG/Catalog/cat_sku....;affixedcode=WW
That's where I'll keep my four double-layer (8.5GB) DVDs of the originals the first night, as well as copies of that on my two external hard drives that I'm buying ASAP!
http://www.staples.ca/ENG/Catalog/cat_sku....;affixedcode=WW
That's where I'll keep my four double-layer (8.5GB) DVDs of the originals the first night, as well as copies of that on my two external hard drives that I'm buying ASAP!
jamie, that link doesn't work, but make sure when you buy a fireproof case that it's rated for digital media....
paper's flash point (the temperature at which it ignites) is much higher than the melting point of plastic (which DVDs are made of) so most "fireproof" containers wont protect digital media adequately since they're actually going to heat up more than a dedicated digital media storage box/safe.
good luck.
paper's flash point (the temperature at which it ignites) is much higher than the melting point of plastic (which DVDs are made of) so most "fireproof" containers wont protect digital media adequately since they're actually going to heat up more than a dedicated digital media storage box/safe.
good luck.
Thanks for the info Trevor. Anybody else have info on fire proof safes or which one you use?
I haven't seen this thread in a while...ahh...painful memories of my Lacie crassssscccccccchhhhhhh last summer...
One thing I've started doing is backing up to an Epson storage device as the shooting day goes on. When I get home, I already have (in theory...assuming I haven't filled the Epson to capacity) a complete set of backed-up files. I don't go to bed until I've uploaded the files to two computers (it's not really about two computers...it's about two hard drives being written to simultaneously). Now I have four copies (and it's almost daybreak...just kidding...it only takes me about an hour to copy around 30-40 GB to two computers). I leave the Epson in the locked trunk of my car and the card wallet is on my dresser -- in a totally different area of the house from the computers. When I wake up...I start burning DVDs (which is the most time consuming part of my back-up process) -- one set for home, one set for off-site storage.
Less than twenty four hours after a wedding I have the files...
-- on the original cards (which don't get formatted until I'm done editing a wedding)
-- on an Epson storage device (which doesn't get formatted until the next wedding)
-- on an archival external 500 GB hard drive at home (usually fill one and a half to two of these per year)
-- on an external "work" hard drive at home (where I do all of my editing -- "final" proofs get copied to C: drive)
-- on a set of DVDs at home
-- on a set of DVDs for off-site storage
So...am I a redundant data nut or is this pretty similar to what most people do????
One thing I've started doing is backing up to an Epson storage device as the shooting day goes on. When I get home, I already have (in theory...assuming I haven't filled the Epson to capacity) a complete set of backed-up files. I don't go to bed until I've uploaded the files to two computers (it's not really about two computers...it's about two hard drives being written to simultaneously). Now I have four copies (and it's almost daybreak...just kidding...it only takes me about an hour to copy around 30-40 GB to two computers). I leave the Epson in the locked trunk of my car and the card wallet is on my dresser -- in a totally different area of the house from the computers. When I wake up...I start burning DVDs (which is the most time consuming part of my back-up process) -- one set for home, one set for off-site storage.
Less than twenty four hours after a wedding I have the files...
-- on the original cards (which don't get formatted until I'm done editing a wedding)
-- on an Epson storage device (which doesn't get formatted until the next wedding)
-- on an archival external 500 GB hard drive at home (usually fill one and a half to two of these per year)
-- on an external "work" hard drive at home (where I do all of my editing -- "final" proofs get copied to C: drive)
-- on a set of DVDs at home
-- on a set of DVDs for off-site storage
So...am I a redundant data nut or is this pretty similar to what most people do????
Great info! Thanks!
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