Back up hardware- External hard drive

[Nathaniel]

Re: Back up hardware- External hard drive

Thanks for all your good advice folks. I have now bought a 2TB WD external drive on line. Waiting for it to arrive from Amazon- perhaps via it's drone! Re: Stan's comment I did change from normal CD discs to the ones suggested by MX5 and they are still good- no problems. However, it was my innate fear of losing,mainly,my photos that I thought I'd get an external drive as well. Having said all that I did read in the EOS magazine that the only safe and sure way of preserving one's photos is to take prints of your best pictures and they would last for years and years.

[Tigger]

Re: Back up hardware- External hard drive

prints fade & get damaged Nat, have to say seems like daft advice ...

If you can I would change your order to 2 and mirror the backups - they are so cheap its not worth the risk of a backup failing

[Colin]

Re: Back up hardware- External hard drive

Nat, Take a look at FreeFileSync (free) to keep your photos copied to your external drive. Microsoft also have the free Synctoy which does the same thing but may not be available for Vista.

[Nathaniel]

Re: Back up hardware- External hard drive

prints fade & get damaged Nat, have to say seems like daft advice ...

If you can I would change your order to 2 and mirror the backups - they are so cheap its not worth the risk of a backup failing

I was only mentioning what was said in one of the EOS magazines. I might also mention that I have prints taken in the 1950's & 1960's (Black and white of course) and they are still very good. I will try and post a pic taken in 1950 and you will be surprised.

I have already clicked and ordered one from Amazon,yesterday. I will see how I get on with this one and yes, perhaps get a second one as well as suggested.

Thanks Colin. I will look into that as well.

[Tigger]

Re: Back up hardware- External hard drive

I was only mentioning what was said in one of the EOS magazines. I might also mention that I have prints taken in the 1950's & 1960's (Black and white of course) and they are still very good. I will try and post a pic taken in 1950 and you will be surprised.

.

I also have photos of a similar age, but given the choice of having digital versions or print, digital wins hands down

[antoeknee]

Re: Back up hardware- External hard drive

Keeping your images wether prints/slides or digital is always a tricky thing.
Prints can fade or get damaged without proper storage, how ofter do people do this.
Digital versions could be lost due to hardware failure. One topic of discussion has been the format of image files, will the format we're using now be readable in 20-50 years time.
Some people will argue that one copy of your digital images should be stored 'off-site' however I don't know of any one who keeps a second copy of prints 'off-site'.

For sure a minimum of 2 copies of digital files is a must just to guard against hardware failure.

[Nathaniel]

Re: Back up hardware- External hard drive

Thanks Ian and Ant for your comments. The question of what will happen in the next 10-25 years is an unknown factor but if one can print the best pics pictures and keep them safely in perhaps an albumn, I am sure it will last the test of time. I attach herewith a photo (print) taken in 1950 and it is still in good condition.

[Robert Scott]

Re: Back up hardware- External hard drive

prints fade & get damaged Nat, have to say seems like daft advice ...

That's the problem when comments are quoted out of context. Here is the complete piece I wrote:

It is estimated that over 2 billion photos are shared across social networking and media apps every day. How many of these will be accessible in a few years’ time? Does it matter that most of these images will be lost and forgotten?

Perhaps you are wary of cloud storage and prefer to keep all your digital photographs on hard drives and memory cards – physical containers for your virtual images. But how safe are these? At EOS magazine we still have Syquest disks and Bernoulli drives which we can no longer read, not to mention the boxes of tapes which were used for computer back-ups. Fortunately, we copied important files to new media as it came along. Only a few years ago we were still archiving EOS magazine page files to CDs. Last month we copied all the files from the CDs to a 1TB (terabyte) drive and then backed this up to a second drive.

These thoughts were triggered by our article on slide copying (page 44). Many of us have large collections of film transparencies and negatives taken in the days before digital photography. Now we would like to view the images on our computer screens or smartphones, partly because we no longer have or want to use a slide projector, and partly because we want to free up space in cupboards.

However, think carefully before you throw away the originals you have copied. Some of them might be over 50 years old, either because you have been taking photographs for a long time or because you inherited them from parents or grandparents. Will the digital images you shoot today be available to your children or grandchildren in 50 years time? Will they be able to access your cloud images, or plug your hard drives in to their tablet computers. Will there even be tablet computers?

Think about this. In the mid-1980s around a million people contributed material to the BBC’s Domesday Project – a record of everyday life around Britain. Sixteen years later the special computers required to play the 12-inch video disk were obsolete. Only with much work has the data been salvaged and now sits on a website (http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/domesday). The Domesday Book complied in 1086, on the other hand, is still readable in its original form.

If you want to pass family photos on to future generations, my advice is to print the images, mount them in an album, add information about who, where and when, and store in a dry, dark place. The chances are that the printed photographs will remain accessible for a lot longer than their digital counterparts.

[Tony Hawkins]

Re: Back up hardware- External hard drive

Sounds like Nat is sorted but just to throw a different perspective re back up in the mix this is what I do. My PC at home is backed up to external USB drive. I also am able to use a little used PC at work to store the same files and synch the two via Dropbox, which of course also keeps a copy of the files on their servers. I know everyone does not have the luxury to two machines in different locations but I’m fortunate in that respect and know I have duplication (triplicate with Dropbox) to protect against the worst case scenario and they are all fully synched.

[antoeknee]

Re: Back up hardware- External hard drive

Tony you're in a fortunate situation.

In the unfortunate event of a house fire most people would lose all their images wether prints or digital.

Digital images can be stored off site via things like Dropbox but unless you high speed internet as sync could take a long time.

[Tony Hawkins]

Re: Back up hardware- External hard drive

Tony you're in a fortunate situation.

In the unfortunate event of a house fire most people would lose all their images wether prints or digital.

Digital images can be stored off site via things like Dropbox but unless you high speed internet as sync could take a long time.

Hi Ant, I try not to think about the possibility of a house fire or theft but as you say I am in a fortunate situation to be able to store the files in two different locations both served with reasonably quick internet speeds. Having said that once the bulk was synched any changes and additions are synched almost immediately without a huge demand on the internet. If there's a lot a raw files I synch it overnight.

[JanHarper]

Re: Back up hardware- External hard drive

I back up to an external drive, but also send all my JPEG images to Flickr. I upload after I've done some "tweaks". You can turn auto upload on and off. I also send my iPhone images to Dropbox Carousel and Flickr automatically uploads them from there. The images and folders are all "Private" until I decide to change the settings for them.
The first time I uploaded all the images in "My Photos", it took days! I name all Folders by date: Year/Month/Day followed by the Place or occasion. Flickr uploads them in the folders, making them easy to find. I highly recommend it if you believe in "Belt and Braces"!

[jimsphotography]

Re: Back up hardware- External hard drive

Actually just checked and these were drives I got.

3TB and £76

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B...rch_detailpage

That's cheap and USB 3.0 too ! Thanks for guiding us to that offer.
James

[Nathaniel]

Re: Back up hardware- External hard drive

Thanks to all the members for their advice and help.