Comments on: What if Your House Burned Down?

By: Chuck Kimmerle

Chuck Kimmerle — Sat, 16 Jun 2012 20:47:50 +0000

Instead of the HD backed up one a month, it would be better to use a progressive backup, which saves each new version of a file. That way, you can go back a week, a month, a year to retrieve a file, or version of a file, that was accidentally or incorrectly deleted/changed. I use Retrospect.

By: Gary Larsen

Gary Larsen — Sat, 16 Jun 2012 15:23:46 +0000

Hi Cole,

I had been wondering how you were doing with the fires in the area. Other friends from the Ft. Collins area have described some pretty nerve racking times and discomfort from all the smoke! I’ve seen some pictures from the LaPorte and Horsetooth Reservoir area, and they are unbelieveable. I’m glad that your home, family and photo work are all safe! Good luck!

Gary

By: Jeff Gaydash

Jeff Gaydash — Sat, 16 Jun 2012 03:33:41 +0000

Great post Cole, this is an important topic that is very often overlooked. I have been using multiple drives and swapping around for a long time but found it very difficult to keep track of what was on what drive and such. Not quite sure how you manage to keep track of all those drives, but knowing you I am sure you have it all figured out.

I ended up investing in a Synology NAS (Network Attached Storage) RAID backup with hot swappable drive bays. Sounds similar to your cool looking drive bays except that the RAID provides redundancy. If one of the drives fails you can swap out the failed drive for a new one and it will automatically resync. I use this as an archive, but it also runs scheduled incremental backups as well as a million other things beyond the scope of this discussion. It’s a web, FTP, media and music server and I can access my files from anywhere. I can even stream my music collection to my car via the iPhone app. If it senses a fire, it has legs and will run out of your house to a safe location! Well, it’s not quite that advanced yet, but still is one of the coolest pieces of technology I have ever owned, I highly recommend them.

As far as offsite storage, I currently take my most precious files and store them on an external HD and regularly copy them over to one of my work computers. Will have to look into something like Carbonite to complete my backup routine.

Best Regards,
Jeff

By: Cole Thompson

Cole Thompson — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 21:43:34 +0000

I’ve added a “P.P.S.” with some additional info to answer some of the questions asked.

Cole

By: Roland

Roland — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 18:54:37 +0000

I see again and again that people spend lots of $ on lenses and bodies and other gear and in the same time feel like a few hard drives to redundantly backup the pictures is expensive. After all, what use is a good lens, if the shot pictures vanish later on…?

By: Scott

Scott — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 18:35:42 +0000

I have my images all backed up to a 12 TB drobo and individual aperture libraries backed to individual 2TB hard drives. I feel pretty well protected against failure, but I don’t have an off-site backup. But as Laird said above, it can be pretty expensive to duplicate all of this with an off-site copy. Unfortunately, that $59/yr Carbonite plan is ‘unlimited’ for the main drive on your computer only. That’s 1TB in my case, not nearly enough. I don’t keep anything there, other than the current library I’m working on.

My first drobo is full and now I face the prospect of expanding that. More $$. I wonder if anyone has used SmugMug Pro as their cloud backup. I get true unlimited uploads of jpegs under 25mb with my $159/yr pro account and have considered starting the process of uploading all of my selects up to private, locked galleries there. I shoot 90% of my images in full-frame raw files and have been saved by the ability to download a file I’d uploaded as a full-sized jpeg. This happened before my current backup strategy after the failure of a 1TB hard drive. Only problem I see with this is a long grueling, time consuming process as my upload speeds are painfully slow. Anyone out there doing this?

By: Bobbie

Bobbie — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 15:49:24 +0000

Cole – recently my iMac desktop hard drive failed with 25,000 images on it.
Only a few months earlier I began backing up the system on an external drive using Time Machine.

Now have two externals. Plan to add a third running Carbon Copy Cloner instead of Time Machine.

Storing a fourth drive off premises will complete the plan.

By: Mary Alston

Mary Alston — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 15:44:45 +0000

I am very happy to hear that the fire did not reach you, though the waiting must have been stressful. In the Fourmile Fire two years ago, there was no waiting, we just grabbed what we could and fled which is when offsite backup is the most critical. Because the fire started at 10 am some people were not at home and by the time they learned of the fire, they were not allowed to go back to their homes.

By: Paula Owens/ Mo Mapes

Paula Owens/ Mo Mapes — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 15:21:01 +0000

I was thinking about you when I heard on the news that there was a fire near you and some of my relatives. I’m so thankful you are OK. Been there- done that and it isn’t any fun- fires are scarey- you never know when they will turn. I agree with our choice of Carbonite. I have had it for a year and just paid for another. I had hard drives fail me twice- one was from brown outs and I lost a year of photos and art! I now have a huge battery backup/surge protector and use Carbonite. I was told by a computer guy that having any hard drives in house is bad because if you are robbed they take your external drives also. Never even thought about that- I don’t have a criminal mind! So Carbonite it is! You can’t beat $59/year.

By: Sam Blair

Sam Blair — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 15:04:30 +0000

Cole, I was wondering about your house and the fires. I’m relieved to learn you dodged it. As one who has been through Hurricane Iniki in Hawaii, I can relate to such vulnerability.

Great advice, and thanks for sharing your system for making files fail safe.