Back Up and Keep Trying

I clearly remember why I failed my first driver’s test: I backed up the car and tapped the bumper on the car behind me and it was all over. Fortunately, I passed on the next try and later became an expert at backing up my car. But I still have a trouble when it comes to backing up computer hard drives filled with digital photos and documents.

And it’s getting worse with age. (No, I’m not getting senile...what were we talking about?) It’s just that every year the number of pictures I take keep growing in number and size, and I have less time to dedicate to archiving. (Now I’m also in charge of backing up photos from my wife and kids.)

It wasn’t always that way. During the 1990’s, when I was one of the few people I knew either shooting with early model (low res) digital cameras or scanning their 35mm film, I backed up all my precious image files onto removable 40 and 80MB SyQuest hard drives. Then I switched to 100MB Iomega ZIP drives, and finally to 1GB and 2GB Iomega Jazz Drives. In 1999 I started copying everything from those drives to 640MB gold-colored Kodak CD-ROMs (surprisingly, I only need 10 to archive my huge pile of SyQuest and Iomega drives—which I tossed in the trash after wiping clean.) For the next few years I used CDs as my primary choice for backup and archiving my images, including a portfolio of thumbnail images to help quickly identify the high res images on the discs.

When the first affordable DVD writers started showing up in 2003 I decided to wait a bit to see if the -R or +R format would win out. After all, who wants to backup 4GB of data to a disk that can’t be read in the future? To hold me over, I bought an external 20 GB hard drive and copied all my important (and as yet un-archived) files to it. I found that process much easier and less time consuming than writing a DVD (especially since I put off making thumbnail catalogs), an my regular routine of writing files to CD’s or DVD’s fell off. Then in 2005 I added an 80GB Mirra Personal Server to my home network and automatically backed up key image and document folders. But recently I got a "Low Memory" warning and realized it was time to back that system up and offload a few files. A 500GB Western Digital NetCenter (around $250) did the trick, and the pictures and music files on it can now be accessed from any computer in the house (and even my WiFi PDA!)

Now that most of the cameras I’ve been testing or shooting with have 8-16MP sensors, and I’ve been religiously shooting RAW+JPEG, my storage requirements have gone up tremendously. I didn’t realize how much until I did a backup of the tower and laptop Mac computers I had been using for the last year at Pop Photo. Between the two, I found over 200GB’s of digital photos, test shots, flatbed and film scans! To put that in perspective—200 GB is about the size of my entire digital backup library from 1987-2005! Fortunately, technology is keeping up, and now it only costs around $460 for a TeraByte drive such as the Maxtor One Touch III 1 TB or equivalent. That much memory should hold me over for at least a year or two at my current GB gobble rate. Now, if I only had the time to organize all those images (make thumbnails, add tags, or even edit down) so I could find them easier in the future–before I really get senile.

Comments

[Charles]

Please be sure to consider storing a second copy of your photos off-site in another location (such as at a trusted friend's home or in a safe deposit box). One guy I know lost 8 years of photos in a house fire. Don't let that happen to you!

[Dave Goldenberg]

I have been a regular subscriber to Popular Photography & imaging and now recieve (and save!)the weekly email newsletter from popphoto.com. Is there a way to find or catalog or search for articles of interest? My shelves are overflowing with magazines, and my PC files are loaded with gigabytes of info. How can I best use them?
Thanks, Dave G