I've been searching the forum for awhile to try and find this topic with no luck - so I apologize if this has already been covered somewhere. If so, maybe you could just direct me, please

Those of you who are backing up off-site, what do you do? Are you using a monthly service? Are you filling an external drive & leaving it elsewhere?

Any info you have would be much appreciated!

We take drives and CDs to my in-laws' house and put them in an upstairs closet.

We don't have any online backup solution but I did see that someone on here uses Mozy. Flickr also offers "unlimited" storage with their Pro accounts, but I'm skeptical.

Good luck!

You could always get a climate controlled place in a SelfStorage for 20 a month and drive DVD's down there. And if your're really paranoid, keep an external in there with the dvd's. Always always make the off site your absolutely last option try to have an incredible onsite backup solution.

I have a most wonderful tech guy. His company, www.ironcomet.com gets into my system and backs it up nightly. I just started this service, so I can't say this yet with the utmost confidence, but I feel sure I'm gonna love it. Stuff like this keeps me up nights, so it's worth it to me to know that if the place burns down (I'm in a building that has commercial space on top and apartments below), I still have the images I need to fulfill my contractual obligations.

I think there are other good options, too. Hassel uses Photoshelter if I remember correctly.

Good luck!!

One word......"Pictage". They keep two copies of any images on their servers, one at the main site in CA and one more out of state at a top secret location. That will take care of the photo part of the back up. I know they saved a ton of memories when katrina hit.

Carl Stevens
http://axisphotography.blogspot.com/

Erik, I signed up for S3, but couldn't figure out how to set up a simple directory for images. All the info was over my head as it seemed they were talking to programmers. It seems like one of the best options out there. Do you have any pointers?

Here's my backup work flow. I have 3 drives on my desktop (1 internal for system/applications, 1 internal for current working files, 1 external as a mirror to the working drive) and 1 external drive that I bring in from off site once a week to backup to.

Shoot to CF cards
Backup to laptop HD after wedding
Copy from CF to working HD+mirror drive on desktop as soon as I am home
Cull bad shots (as in blinks, unuseable images)
Burn RAW's to DVD, they are stored off-site
Make jpg's
copy jpg's drive that I keep off site.

Don't format CF cards until there are at least 2 other backups
Don't delete from laptop until there are at least 2 other backups
Don't delete from working drive until there are 2 other backups.

Once my mirror is full I pull it out and put it off site sealed in a plastic bag for long term storage. I fill about 500GB a year so this is about 1 drive a year. At $150 or less, that is pretty cheap.

But if you raised your rates slightly and offered it as a value added service, more people would take is seriously and choose BF over the "other" guys.

That JungleDisk is a really interesting program/service.

Thanks, Erik!

I keep a copy of my files in a safety deposit box in the cayman islands

... well not really.

Thanks guys, that's really helpful!

I am currently backing up to an external drive as well as dvd's, but both sit in my office. Erik, I think you may be right that driving a backup to someone else's house might not be as inconvenient (in comparison to some other options) as I'm thinking, especially considering my sister lives around the corner

Thanks again for your help, everyone!

I just went to start looking for an external drive and look what I found:

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.as...amp;language=en

I don't know the details yet, but it's intriguing. Perhaps one of these could be set up in someone's home that you trust (like, say, my parents'), and I would then have the ability to send my backup files to the hard drive without having to drive over there? I might be misunderstanding, but it sounds like it could be a really good idea??

Colin, I like everything you said EXCEPT sealing the drive in a plastic bag. You should probably let it breath a little, or at least put some dessicant in there. I'm no expert, but a tightly sealed bag might be asking for trouble.

I recently asked a similar question on the forum and one of my family members recently recommended mozy backup. It is around $5 a month with unlimited storage. You can't get better than thay. Check it Mozy.com for more information. I think it is a great storage service. I hope you enjoy it.

Hmm, interesting point.
I live in a very low humidity area but I am actually switching my off-site storage from my parent's house (which is less than a mile from me but we live in the woods so in theory a forest fire could take us both out) to my wife's work down in San Luis Obispo. Her office is A/C all the time but still closer to the ocean and has fog so maybe moisture could be an issue?
Thanks for the tip, I think I will keep it in an unsealed camera bag instead.

The other 'hole' in my backup plan is that once a week I end up with everything in the same location and that's no good. I think I might get a second off-site drive and bring a different one home each week so I am never exposed by more than a week or so.

That's what I'm working up to also... a second backup drive. But I also don't like the thought of having to recreate a week's worth of work if the primary drive dies. A week is a long time. I guess it's better than losing EVERYTHING!

Also, as a RAW shooter I have thought about just backing up the xmp files nightly with some type of internet storage, but other larger files somehow always pop up and need to be backed up as well.

i put my server and DVD backups in two separate off-site locations when i'm away. otherwise, the DVD backups stay in my house, separate from the studio

Note that Mozy says right on their site "for personal non-commercial use only". Their pro site is significantly more expensive: $3.95 + .50 per GB a month. Just backing up my latest wedding would cost me $5+ each month. That's going to add up fast for a serious shooter.

http://www.mozypro.com/mozy_pro/pricing

My ex-husband works for Iron Mountain, and I know they have climate controlled storage facilities in most major metropolitan areas if you want to physcially send or take disks somewhere. Not sure what the rates are, but I've seen their response in major disasters & wouldn't hesitate to trust them with my images. Looks like they also are providing remote backup services, but at a much higher rate than I can afford at this point.

Sadly right now, I need to figure this one out, as I have backups on DVD & two hard drives, but all onsite in an earthquake zone.....

Most definately definately keep it in a sealed air and water proof bag. However, make friends at your local shoe store (Payless, DSW, Walmart even) and ask the clerks if they have any of those silica gel packets and that if possible you'd like a few. Usually they have mounds of them laying around and they end up just throwing them out. And if for some reason they don't want to give them to you can pull them out of the shoes. Keep that in the sealed bag, I also saran wrap around the bag and tape it up as a "just in case"

Also if you don't want to bother the nice shoe store employees you can go through, buy some kitty litter or that puddle drying stuff from home depot and tape a coffe filter sort of bag and fill it with the kitty litter, and include that. You can also use a cheese cloth instead of a coffee filter.

But please please please make sure it's air and water tight or if the place you're storing gets humid you're likely to ruin the drive.