Tell me about your photo storage/back up process

[thedeske]

I service 2 serious Photo/Travelers - 1-2-3 plan is used for both.

Lightroom externals connected via USB3 or Tbolt.
Per 1 or 2 sessions - Superduper smart update from the Main external to second local. Second local is swapped with an offsite (bank vault) copy and the 3rd is updated. 2nd and 3rd copies rotate to vault when convenient or paranoia takes over

One person adds to this with an online backup (might be overkill) which some consider a valid alternative to an off-site Hard copy.

The OS is on a completely different clone. All photo work is strictly external storage in case the Mac gets hosed. Plug into a laptop or new machine and nothing is lost.

I'll be the first to admit, most people don't need to take it this far.
They wanted redundant - this is it. 3 HD copies - 1 connected, 1 unconnected local (perhaps in a home safe) & 1 off-site (bank/family/friend)

This doesn't address tour drives and getting home with the work. That's
another PITA. If a large African animal eats your portable drive, tough Sht Dude

 

[TheGenerous]

The American Society of Media Photographers have great resources —all of them free— and they cover in depth a Backup workflow. Please visit their site here

http://dpbestflow.org/links/39

A convenient starting guide for backups;
http://dpbestflow.org/node/262

Regarding the Mac, they suggest ChronoSync and CCC.

 

[JenPoMas]

Photo Backup

The American Society of Media Photographers have great resources —all of them free— and they cover in depth a Backup workflow. Please visit their site here

http://dpbestflow.org/links/39

A convenient starting guide for backups;
http://dpbestflow.org/node/262

Regarding the Mac, they suggest ChronoSync and CCC.

I am just starting to get into photography so I recently friended some groups on Facebook and have been reading some forums as of late. ChronoSync is heavily mentioned in both. This was music to my ears since I've been using ChronoSync for some time (I use it for backing up web projects remotely -- with the addition of ChronoAgent). I've never had issue with it and love its scheduling feature and the options with it. I think it's worth a look.

 

[apphotography]

I manually back up my working boot drive to two disks - one internal and one external. The external one allows me to connect it to another Mac wherever I end up going and then booting up into my work environment. And then I have another external disk for manually backing up just my work and docs nicely organised into folders. I keep needing bigger faster disks from time to time and this arrangement continues to works well.

 

[ddublu]

Is anyone using an online backup service that allows you to actually access photos while away? Crashplan just lets you click restore...Carbonite is the only one I've seen that lets you actually see a photo thumbnail on your iPhone/iPad AND the file structure is identical to that on my PC...I haven't verified this next sentence but I THINK only PC is supported for the personal plan and not the pro plan (which makes no sense)....

Crashplan doesnt recommend it and Backblaze wont even physically allow the backup of a Time Machine hard drive (even if other data is on it)....confused on what direction to take here.

 

[diane143]

Just some background, I am a photo and video nut (more photos though). I shoot 20meg RAW files, I shoot iPhone jpegs, I shoot with random cameras etc etc. I've shot a wedding, engagement, I have thousands of photos.

I keep current work on my main computer in a mixture of Lightroom and iPhoto.
- Backed up hourly to time machine.
- Cloned daily to attached drive.
- In rotation:
- Backed up every week to time machine kept at home.
- Backed up every other week to time machine kept offsite.

I archive all old projects to a big drive at home:
- In rotation:
- Cloned every week to time machine kept at home.
- Cloned every other week to time machine kept offsite.

Once a year, I export full JPEGs of all 3 star and above photos to dropbox on top of all this. I would like a more complete cloud based backup solution, but don't have the upload bandwidth.

My livelihood does not depend on my photos. I'm just a nerd and paranoid.

P.S. When shooting to SD/CF cards, I never delete the photos until I have too. I have aa system that let's me know when a card is good to overwrite and only when I need it do I format it for re-use.

What size is your main computer hard drive? I'm due for a laptop upgrade and am worried about space

 

[bgd]

Is anyone using an online backup service that allows you to actually access photos while away? Crashplan just lets you click restore...Carbonite is the only one I've seen that lets you actually see a photo thumbnail on your iPhone/iPad AND the file structure is identical to that on my PC...I haven't verified this next sentence but I THINK only PC is supported for the personal plan and not the pro plan (which makes no sense)....

Crashplan doesnt recommend it and Backblaze wont even physically allow the backup of a Time Machine hard drive (even if other data is on it)....confused on what direction to take here.

Dropbox will allow that.

I was doing some cataloguing in LR while travelling and I stored the photos on Dropbox. The idea being that once connected to the net copies would be uploaded so should anything happen to my laptop I would be covered.

I don’t pay for Dropbox so storage limits became an issue. If it did become a regular thing I would look at buying more space.

 

[Xteec]

What size is your main computer hard drive? I'm due for a laptop upgrade and am worried about space

My boot drive is a 500GB SSD, and I also have a 1TB spinner for live storage like iTunes media and other large files. Both of these drives get backed up to the time machine in one go.

 

[bosejeep1]

I need help transferring pics from Aperture to my external hard drive......I have some from my windows computer on the hard drive. I tried it today and it is not working, I keep getting an error or it is transferred and greyed out....ughhhhh

 

[dimme]

I need help transferring pics from Aperture to my external hard drive......I have some from my windows computer on the hard drive. I tried it today and it is not working, I keep getting an error or it is transferred and greyed out....ughhhhh

Is your hard drive formatted for Windows (NTFS) ?

 

[tomnavratil]

I shoot most of the time RAW on my D610. Everything is stored on an 2TB external drive and backed-up with Time Machine to another external drive. I also have cloud (Dropbox) backup of some work.