My husband & I are looking to increase our storage space for our images.  We've spoken to a couple IT people & have gotten differing opinions on how to go about this.  One seems to prefer buying external hard drives, while the other recommends going with a company to back up our stuff on a separate server somewhere in the "cloud."

I'd like to ask other photographers what you do for storing your pics (both RAW & finished).  Do you have multiple hard drives stashed somewhere?  Do you back them up on some server out in space?

Your comments are much appreciated.

Thanks.

Alyx

http://www.masartwork.com/

https://masartwork.wordpress.com/

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  • At a minimum I would recommend the "3-2-1" approach; 3 backups in at least 2 formats and 1 copy offsite.

    My personal example; I use Crashplan online backup. They allow both a cloud-based backup and a copy onto a local drive. That takes care of 2 backups in  2 different formats and 1 copy offsite. I also make a second direct copy from my working drive onto another external hard drive which is stored at work (another off-site copy just to be sure).

    PS. Crashplan will optionally provide a 1 TB external hard drive to make your initial backup and send back to them. It's faster and doesn't eat up bandwidth.

    PPS. I have no sponsorship or vested interest in Crashplan. I only use it (at full price). There are other services available, but I have no experience with them.

  • The key is you have to have redundant off-site backup no matter how you do it. If you are going to use a 2T drive, you need a second one to store at another location. I have a second house, so every time I'm there I back everything up again. If you don't have a second house, keep a second drive at a relative or friend's house or business. I also use cloud storage for my best images, both in RAW and processed format, so if all hell breaks loose, I'll have my best 500 or so images and it won't take forever to download.

    • Thanks, Loren.  That sounds like the best thing to do.

  • Thanks to you both for your responses, I really appreciate it!

  • I'm with Larry on this one. I use Western Digital Passport drives and have never had a failure. They are great little slim pocket size storage drives.

  • I use small (1T and now 2T western digital passports and 128 gig usb flash drives backed up at reasonable periods of time and stored on a shelf and in the bank safety deposit box.

    Storage on the Cloud may be cheap but the amount of bandwidth necessary to upload and restore the computer may take weeks.

    Larry Berman

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