Backup question

[Rooz]

ok, so once you back everything up on DVD and Xternal HD etc...do you delete them from your PC ?? if so, you lose all the filing ability in bridge for quick search and viewing on PC for when you want to look for something.

so what do you guys do ?

[tim11]

2 duplicate on DVDs marked Jan - Jun 2006, etc; and a the same on a portable hard drive. At the end of the year, the images on the HDD have to make way for those on the current year. I lose the ability for quick search but something has to go of course. And now that I shoot in RAW the HDD filled up very fast.

[Rooz]

yeah pretty much same as me tim. annoying to lose the quick search though. i wonder if maybe a save of all images to a seperate folder as a low res 800x600 may do the trick. will cut out 90% of the space but still allow a search etc...

[T06]

... maybe try save without projects or folder, just save the pic, which means keep it simple.;)

[talkingdog]

I like to leave the edits on my computer, and delete most of the other stuff.I try to back up with the file structure so I don't have a huge mess if I need to restore. All my data is backed up on Carbonite also

[Visual Reality]

In my regular backups, both of my drives are backed up in their entirety to an external HDD. Its a full computer image, that gets my Images folder too. When I back up again, the old backup is deleted to make room for the current one.

I don't delete them in either place - I need them on my PC to work with and view, and having 2 copies of them is the whole reason why I back up (redundancy). I don't do DVDs.

[JTL]

I have two 1TB drives mirrored (raid 1) and back up to two separate 300 GB external drives. So I'm well protected from crashes and accidental deletions. The big hole in the setup is if there's a fire or a break in, I have no off site back up. The hassle with DVDs is it would take over 30 DVDs to back up my media files...

So, there's definitely a Blu-Ray burner/recorder in my future...

[Rooz]

so JT how do you search for a photo ?

[JTL]

so JT how do you search for a photo ?I don't have any great system. For regular photos I have one main photo tree which has sub-directories for each camera and then another level down by event, project, locale or sometimes simply date. I do it that way because it's the simplest when downloading from the cameras, although a pure subject-based system might make a lot more sense although would require more time making sure that the images were downloaded to the right directories. I've also toyed with the idea of having a staging directory to download everything to and then dragging and dropping the images to their true target directories. Off the main tree I also have other directories such as scanned images, retouching, raw material (for later use to combined with something else) and my various art projects. If I'm working on something for a client, that goes in a Work directory off the main photo tree in a sub-directory named for that client with additional directories below that as needed.

It's not a great system...but I haven't lost anything yet! :D:D:D

I haven't started tagging/cataloging things in Lightroom or Capture One...that's probably something I should explore...

[Rhys]

Three DVDs - one in my firesafe. One in the bank. One in my desk.
Also a copy on a portable HDD.

On my laptop - only the current project. That way I couldn't care less about disk size.

As I use both Windows and Mac systems, swopping the data drive around is the only solution.

[Paradox]

Data backed up to two DVD-R's when the capacity is reached, one sent off site, and data removed from the hard drive. Currently no RAID backup but it's on the list. I also keep a weekly backed up DVD-RW of my edited files. But DVD-RW are SLOW. :p

[GaryS]

I've posted this before, but I know that Rooz is a bit slow, so I'll do it again. ;)

No Raid here. Single drive which has my OS, programs and Photos/Data. I'm not against RAID, I just don't have one anymore.

I have an external drive which is only for backups (its usually turned off). I run a backup of the entire system (including photos) to this drive once a quarter. Then I run differential backups to the drive every Sunday.

I also use JungleDisk/AmazonS3 to do offsite backups of my photo library into the cloud at S3. The automated backup runs every night, copying any new photos (or changes) to my account at Amazon.