Comments on: You’re only as good as your last Backup – Backup Tips and the Chance to Win a Hard Drive

By: External Hard Drive Reviews

External Hard Drive Reviews — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 07:25:34 +0000

Using such a hdd will definitely save my data in safety

By: Jack Fussell

Jack Fussell — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 22:26:08 +0000

I edit on my laptop….then backup to desktop external(1)…then weekly to desktop external(2). And this week I start backing up to my own server space. I wasn’t too worried about this until we were robbed recently and I realized how close I was to losing all of this year’s photos. Not again….time to back up!
Jack

By: play4smee

play4smee — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 07:59:07 +0000

I have 3 back ups…an external hard drive, our server and DVD/CD. The CDs and DVDs I keep off site. I’d recommend having at least 2 backups…and keep at least one off site. If the house burns down at least you’ll still have your photos!

By: Roger123

Roger123 — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 00:34:28 +0000

I just lost nearly 1,000 images that were NOT backed up. It seems like I’m procrastinating, but it’s really a matter of “I just don’t know how” to choose or install or use a backup, be it internal or external.

Help!

By: AltJ

AltJ — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 18:06:41 +0000

rhermans, that’s one reason I really like Mozy. You can download any files from your backup sets through a web browser. I may have to edit my blog post to add that one.

By: Slava33

Slava33 — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 17:50:26 +0000

rhermans, good point! I also believe the tools that let you copy files with no compression, combining, etc. are much easier to use when you need to recover data. Plus, you can easily pluck files out of a backup that you accidently delete on the main drive. I like JungleDisk S3 service for the cloud backup (straight copy), and am planning to start using SyncToy for local backup to an external drive.

Another point I’d like to mention is that some people prefer image backups (backing up the whole drive bit-by-bit). I don’t think it’s a good solution since it is often unreliable in my experience and also, if my harddrive gets corrupted, I don’t really want to get it back to the “almost corrupted” state. I just want to recover my data.

By: Brian

Brian — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 17:28:28 +0000

Huge importance to backing up your data and unfortunately those who don’t only learn the hard way. Think of it, pictures of your newborn, gone for ever. Ugh!

Another solution to your overall backup strategy is to backup your entire hard drive using Ghost or better yet, Acronis True Image. Should your drive fail, you can restore your entire hard drive image from an external (or 2nd internal drive) to another drive. Reboot and you’re back in business. It will take extra space but hard drive space is cheap.

By: dave

dave — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 17:15:19 +0000

search for “davebd1″ to see some of my work, cool tips!

By: rhermans

rhermans — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 15:51:52 +0000

I’m missing something here, a backup is a great thing to have, but you have to be able to RESTORE THE BACKUP.

Sounds strange, maybe but I’ve had enough experience with people/firms who make a backups every day and … never ever checked what was in that backup, or if they could even Restore the data.

This is especially true for backup systems that use a way of storing the data that can’t be restored without their special restore software.

If you can use something that makes a backup in the style of a copy use that.
(Personally I use Synckback SE on Windows. This works with a clean copy, has incremental functionality [only copies the changed or new files] and even keeps a number of versions.[if a file has changed it will be moved to a sub folder, and renamed with a time stamp])

Another thing you have to take in account is that the easier you can make a backup the more you are going to do it. The better your backup is going to be up to date.

Now how does my backup work flow looks like.
- got my images on an usb drive
- daily make a backup copy to a network drive.
only have to start the program and let it do it’s job.
- once a month I do an extra backup towards an other usb drive (not incremental) – why once a month (guess I’m lazy)

Before shooting Raw I used a flickr pro account as an extra backup, still have the account but don’t use it for that reason anymore.

By: John Jimenez

John Jimenez — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 12:43:49 +0000

I actually used XXCopy and rolled my own drive sync to a portable hard drive. XXCopy allowed for me make “backups” of any images deleted from the source in the event of an accidental *unnoticed* delete.

And because XXCopy is a cmdline tool, once I debugged the process and the results, it is nice and easy to set it up in a windows scheduled task.

Automated backups with a deleted file fail safe, all for free.