How often do you back-up your photo's
 

This past year I've not been very diligent in backing up/organising my photo's.

So my New Years Resolution is to get organised :) :)

I have a dedicated H/drive for my photo's and 2 portable H/drives for all my raw images, so now I have the mammoth task of bringing order to chaos, and I'm already in a totally confused state. Oh well things can only improve, I hope.

I've started by transferring all my Raw images to DVD-Ram, 40 Gbs should take me the rest of the day.

Then will come major job of sorting out all my Tiff images, for this I have either Picassa or PS Album. Can someone suggest anything better.

I'm considereing creating a database using MS Access, as anyone used Access for this type of thing?

No doubt I will be very occupied for the next week or so.

Maybe my chaos will motivate others to avoid the total mess that I have achieved.

Harry

Hi Harry,

I really need to do some serious organising and transferring of many of my image files. I have most on CDR disks but I know even they need to be sorted. Early this year Im hoping to install a DVD writer onto my system, and certainly look into a portable hard drive.

I wish you well in your endeavour :)

When I got into digital photography in 2003 I soon realised I needed a 'system' to keep organised. Until last year 2005 I shot JPEG so disk space was never a problem, organising them was.

I created two folders named RAW and PROCESSED. In raw I transfer all images from CF card(s) into a subfolder named with the date they were shot. The Raw folder contains unprocessed images in both JPEG or RAW format. The processed folder contains more subfolders again named with the date. If a raw image is processed I save it to the processed folder and date subfolder. I then make a note in an A4 jotter pad with the date, new filename and notes where it was taken and about the shot such as aperature priority, RAW convertor used or sharpening method employed.

When it comes to backup I transfer by year from both RAW and processed subfolders to a portable hard disk(s) having two copies of every photo I take.

I store a copy of all of my images on my external hard drive. I then immeditly organise them into folders in my pc manualy. I will then go through them and get rid of the bad ones.

You sound very organised Ollie, something I aim to be by the end of the month. The problem will be when I get back from holiday mid Feb with 20-30Gigs of Raw images to process.

No doubt I'll be totally disorganised again

I often do that. But my images are jpegs. I then go through and resize everything for foroum useage, and my site.
I spent years just throwing all my photos into one folder but then realised i realy did need to organise them.

LOL - Not enough I lost 6 months worth when a harddisk failed, but do I learn no. As they have no commercial value to me I am not that worried. A few shots of family days out I wish I still had but thats all. When I look at some shots I backed up to CDROM a few years back on a second look I think why did I bother.

Rob

I know what you mean Rob, I've got some real rubbish saved on my PC, maybe nows the time yo get rid off it all.

Harry

I go through mine fairly often and clear out some photos. It is suprisiing how much some aeroplanes get into your photos.

Especially if you attend a lot of airshows:) :) This one of the area where I need to be ruthless.

Mm - already saved a load of stuff to CD and deleted from my PC. Lots more to do though. My idea is to put all the originals on CDs and all the worked on stuff on CDs - then remove everything from my PC - then re-upload just the ones I really want to keep into folders and put them onto CDs - and also onto my laptop. That way I'll have the ones I don't want to lose in several places - plus a lot of them are on my web site and my works PC. I think that's covered all the options! Might just get an external hard drive though!!
It's so easy to get bogged down with too many pictures. I've got lots of swans to delete!!

When I upload images I open them in capture 1 sort and name and put a date, delete all I don't want. Go back into my computer and move them all onto another hard disk which is split into folders, a to z for birds, and various folders for landscapes, mammals, ect. When I have enough images to fill a cd with say 3 Folders I then burn them to cd. I do this daily so as not to fill up my upload directory. Its take about 20 minutes if it is done on a regular basis. In some ways I wish I had put just one directory on one cd and left the cd open to add files but not got round to that not sure whether it would work. As it is I have to go through all the cd's with say a-c to find a particular file I want if I can't remember the date.

Christine you obviously an organised person and really that's what you need to be especially when shooting digital.
When I first started shooting digital over 5 years ago I followed a similar pattern saving to CD, but then I upgraded my equipment which resulted in 20-30Mb Tiffs and you don't get so many of those on a CD.

I eventually installed a couple of DVD writers to cope with the volume, unfortunately by this time I had become completely disorganised. So it's now time to bite the bullet and become organised again.

Wolfie. I am not in the least bit organised I was just getting fedup when wanting to view new uploads. I found I couldn't view a photo until all the photo's in the folder was visible which took ages so if I only have to load in whats on the CF card say 100 its not so bad.

I did not attend that many last year actualy. But when i do go i will take 100s of photos. Just to be sure i get some good ones. I will often fill a 512 mb card and almost fill my 128mb card in 1 airshows worth of flying.

Interesting question this. I'm amazed how many of my friends, including professional photographers, fail to back up their work. Twice recently I have had to go through a disc recovery process to recover vital files from friends computers. Before I retired I worked in a technical enviroment where daily backup was mandatory and failure to comply could lead to discilinary action,and I must admit that I'm still a bit fanatical about it.

I have a PC with two innternal 160GB drives and three external 300GB drives drives. The only thing on the primary internal drive is the operatiing system and programme files. The three external 300GB drives are used for backup using a differential backup process. the second internal drive is used for "work in progress"

I organise my RAW files converted to dng into files called disc 1,2,3 etc, each disc is filled up until it contains 4.5GB when it is burned to DVD for archive purposes, using data verify in each burn. these disc are stored in a cool dark place as a last resort.

Each night I run an automated differential back up of my second nternal hard drive onto each of the external hard drives, one of which is stored in a different part of the house.

call me fanatical, but since I retired 9 months ago I have taken over 40,000 shots (thank God for the digital revolution) over a large part of Europe and replacing them would cost a fortune.

One advantage of Adobe bridge in CS2 is that by the use of approriate key words and keyword sets I can locate any of the pictures, either raw or porcessed in a matter of seconds, great stuff modern technology!!!

Eeek, and i thought i had to many copys.

Oh dear..erm!
 

:confused:
Backup files? :eek: Oh my. I've never contemplated losing all my images before :(
Maybe I should think about getting a CD burner or something and saving all my stuff to that?
What is the cheapest way of doing this anyway? Is it to buy a cd burner or is there another way? My computer is quite old and doesn't run fast at the best of times (Windows 98SE) so maybe saving my images elsewhere would free up some disk space!!!!
Jo

I did say I was fanatical, but with external hard drives costing less than 50 pence per GB it does make sense. One friend recently managed to delete all his customer files. I managed to recover them for him, more by luck than judgement as I'd never had to do it myself before, and reckon my next years supply of Malt Whiskey is guaranteed. As they say " In the land of the blind the one eyed man is king " :)

The choice between an external hard drive is realy down to you, i use both myself.

There seems to be varying opinions as to whether CD or DVD has the best longevity (do a search on google). I have had corrupted CDs and DVDs, and over a 40 year career I lost 13 hard drives but much of the data on those hard drives was recoverablle so I would always go for hard drive, doesn't really matter whether internal of external, but if your pictures matter please do something there's nothing worse than losing images, worst of all are those family shots that mean so much

Ollie

At the end of year show at Duxford I filled my 2gb and a little under 1/2 of a 1gb. So you're not on your own regarding taking lots of photo's/
A slit second when shooting fast movers can make or break a photo.

I used to back up to CD and then delete the images from my hard drive to free up space. What I didn’t think of is that the CD was then not really a back up – being the only copy and CDs can fail, as I have found out to my cost losing over 600 images :(

My set up now is with 2 internal hard drives and an external one. I have my OS on C: and my images on D: and back up to the ext HD. What I keep meaning to do and this will be my 2006 resolution, is to take the external drive off site. I’m going to keep it at work and just bring it home overnight, say once/month to update my back up.

At the moment my ext HD sits on top of my system unit, so if some one broke in and stole my PC, or heaven forbid, there was a fire …. it doesn’t bear thinking about :eek: :eek:

Do you remember the series of adverts for the Pru a little while ago using poems? There was one that is particularly apposite here, and I hope they won’t mind me reproducing it

Photographs are smiles that last forever
Snowmen that can never melt away
Birthday celebrations caught in amber
Rescued from the vaults of yesterday

Faces that were once more dear than diamonds
Boys who kept you up until the dawn
Houses filled with bicycles and babies
Ghosts who left their shadows on the lawn

Photographs are holes in time’s grey curtain
Through them we can peek into the past
Call upon our parents and our children
Pop a cork with members of the cast

There they are, the days of jazz and joy-rides
Snaps of magic moments lit by laughs
If you ever find my house on fire
Leave the silver
Save the photographs

Makes you think doesn't it

Thanks everyone for the advice.. I think I should seriously consider getting an external Hard drive, now all I've got to do is find one!! Google here I come!
cheers
Jo

Your image files are proberably larger than mine. Mine are about 500k.

Yes you are quite correct Ollie, approx 160 images per Gb

As i have said elsewhere i plan to ungrade my camera so my photos will be more than 500k.

I use one of these (http://www.xsdrive2xl.com)for backup.

It is essentially an external USB hard drive but you can also use these in the field to copy your cards on to so you never run short of card space.

What are they like to use? I am going to get soomething like that for my gap year for image storage.

I also use a similar 20 gig harddrive and find them to be ok + when away I take my laptop.

Harry

Ollie

Dead easy. They also have an in-built multi card reader that takes all the common card types. To copy from a card in the field you merely insert the card and press the copy button. This copies the card contents to the devices hard drive. Its that simple.

When connected to the PC, the card slots allow direct upload of your images or you can copy from the devices hard drive to your PC hard drive. You can of course backup images from your PC to the devices hard drive.

It fits comfortably into a pocket.

There are other similar devices which may be cheaper which other members may have experience of.

Im going to go for at least a year so i would take the 80gb version. I also plan a lie up for 2 week in the middle so i can send it home and get the contents moved onto my external hard drive and sent back to me.

Ollie

You can also buy other models that allow you to view your images on the device. This way you can discard the non keepers to save space

That is something i would whant. I have created another thread on this subject so this thread can be kept to the subject.

I have come into this thread late but I had an experince that will either relate to some of you or warn the others.

Up until recently I backed up everything to a series of CD's and kept these CD's seperately in the Bedroom. Last May (whilst we were on the Isle of Skye) we were burgled and we were virtually stripped out. They even stole my back up discs. Thankfully I had some older back up discs in the loft which contained about 85% of my photos so all was not lost. I did lose some excellent photos but I could have lost the lot.

Since then I have purchased an External Hard Drive and save everything to both Internal and External drives as I go along.

There is always someone in the house now but if ever we go out and leave the house empty the External Hard Drive goes with us.

You have a good point there that everyone should think about. I back everying up to cd that i leave at home and also onto my external hard drive which goes everywhere with me. I would have to be extremly unlucky to loose both sets and the set on my pc hard drive all at the same time.

Having had my laptop stolen in Costa Rica with about 1000 photos on it of which I had no backups, I am acutely aware of the need to take backups. Have I done anything about it? Nope. I've just been too lazy. Reading this thread has inspired me to go home and start recording thisevening.

I have a backup harddrive that I copy all of my photos over to weekly. If I go to an event like an airshow or get some really good photographs that I absolutely can't loose I back them up when I download them from my camera.

We have a backup drive with them all on plus we back them up onto dvd's aswel.The pics go straight to the back up drive-copy n paste the folder and the pics get puts to dvd about once a week.

With these portable units do they actualy copy the images? Or do they work like cutting and pasting files on a pc?