How do you store your photos/videos?

[Discus-n00b]

In the age of technology, the home movies and photos are now moving more and more online, to facebook albums, and on digital media rather than photo albums and shoeboxes of stuff. How do you store your media? Do you have backups of the backups?

I store mine a variety of ways. First and foremost is my recent stuff is directly on my main working computer. I keep a few months worth of stuff there and slowly retire it to an external Hard drive as it ages. This isn't counting all of the stuff I've uploaded to a variety of web servers/websites across the internet. I actually just purchased 2 more external HDDs of 4TB each that will be my double backups. It will backup my primary 1TB external HDD and my computer and basically be duplicates of each other. I will then store each in a separate place. I just find the external drives to be easiest for me and they are getting cheaper and cheaper. I know the mods/admins have briefly discussed this but I wanted to see if everyone else did something. What do you do with all of your kid's/grandkid's/whatever else photos or movies? Do you feel safe with them just online and on the computer? Weigh in!

[sdrexler078]

I just always worry about putting some personal pictures on cloud services. I'm just wondering if Google employies can see the picture of my wife lol. I sure hope not but mostly I back up on my computer or only cloud service I use is dropbox

[MKD]

I'm young-old guy, even i was in tech field. I don't trust those online sites. I still beleive personal should be at home. If i loose it, it's meant to be but i know for sure it's personal and private.

[brewmaster15]

I use back up hard drives and burn to Dvds. The Dvds are stored in Archival cases...the Hds are stored in ziplock bags with silica gel.

And for film (gasp..I still use it once in a while)...those are stored in archival sleeves and in archival cases.Provided I can keep them dry and protect from light and humidity theres a very good likelyhood they will outlast my digital media! But just incase...I have all the film scanned and stored on Dvd as well.
al

[SMB2]

I back up the backups to a back up.
EHD storage has gotten pretty cheap so there is no reason really not to back up your images. My old slides are still in binders so finding a specific image can be a challenge.

Digitally life is much easier when it comes to archiving and protecting images. I process my images through Lightroom (previously Aperture) and keep a fairly well organized library by year. No images are stored on my computer. My primary storage is on a Drobo 5. It has five bays each with 2TB EHDs. There is a built in back up in this system such that if any one EHD fails no information is lost, the drive can be replaced and no harm done. Also any one of the drives (or all) can be swapped out at any time for a larger drive as one runs short of space. The down side of the "proprietary raid" system is that if Drobo goes out of business there is likely a long process to switch to another system. Drobo has been a pretty stable company over the years so hopefully that won't be an issue.
But wait there's more! Each year of images has a second back up to its own EHD that I keep at one of my kids homes. (The nuclear option.) The present year is usually the only one I have to update with any frequency. These date back to 2007 so I have compressed many of the years on to single drives to save space.

Sounds obsessive I know, but there are a lot of images that I would hate to loose from places I am likely never to get back to.

[SteveCA]

I backup to multiple hard drives and recently uploaded everything to Amazon Cloud. Amazon cloud has unlimited photo (not video) storage for prime members. I have uploaded over 100K of photos to their cloud. I would not upload anything sensitive, such as nude photos of your wife or anything like that. While I think the risk is remote, why risk it.

For videos, I back up on multiple hard drives and send one copy offsite (in case of fire).

For film, yes film, I have scanned all my film and back those up the same as my other photos, namely Multiple hard drives and amazon cloud.

[SMB2]

Steve, I have been looking at personal cloud devices mostly from WD. You can keep an EHD offsite and send your images to it from anywhere you have internet.
Speed of transfer would be the main issue.

[SteveCA]

Steve, I have been looking at personal cloud devices mostly from WD. You can keep an EHD offsite and send your images to it from anywhere you have internet.
Speed of transfer would be the main issue.

Stan,

Does WD charge for their service? I like the Amazon Prime Cloud service mainly because it is free (with Prime membership) and it is Unlimited. I was shocked that they made it unlimited which is great for guys like me who have terra bytes of photos. I tested it out recently by uploading over 100,000 photos to the site. Yes it took some time, but I have really fast cable internet with 10-15 Mbps upload speeds. I just upload overnight and in background.

[SMB2]

No charge Steve, you just buy the EHD. I have to look at it some more, but it can be accessed from anywhere on the Internet for those who have the access information and password.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/wd-my-cl...129&ksdevice=c

[Tankster]

Amazon Cloud. With my Amazon Prime I get free unlimited storage of photos.

[SMB2]

This was just posted by WD. A tad bit more pricey though.


http://store.westerndigital.com/stor...y_Cloud_EX2100

[brewmaster15]

Stan,
I like your storage methods alot. Very well thought out. You only get one shot,so to speak,of catching a moment in time. If the image is lost, you can't go back.

I Don't personally trust cloud storage of data..anything on a network can be hacked and compromised. I feel safer when I control the storage aspects..

Whatever storage means people use...redundancy is best.

Al

[SMB2]

So here is a problem that I am not savvy enough to get around.
I have 2+TBs of images on the Drobo after transferring RAW images from Aperture (dating back to 2007) to LR5 which I have been using for the past 6 months.
The only way I know to back up the Drobo to the second EHD is to trash the old collection on the EHD2 and reimport all the new updated work.

Is there a program that will facilitate this transfer by looking at EHD2 and only add/delete what has occurred to the collection on the Drobo since the last back up?
Hope that makes sense.

[rickztahone]

So here is a problem that I am not savvy enough to get around.
I have 2+TBs of images on the Drobo after transferring RAW images from Aperture (dating back to 2007) to LR5 which I have been using for the past 6 months.
The only way I know to back up the Drobo to the second EHD is to trash the old collection on the EHD2 and reimport all the new updated work.

Is there a program that will facilitate this transfer by looking at EHD2 and only add/delete what has occurred to the collection on the Drobo since the last back up?
Hope that makes sense.

I'm not too familiar with this scenario Stan, but I will bump it for you

[dagray]

I keep them on my hard drive and also on an external hard drive. I do use Photobucket, but not as a storage site as they compress the images slightly.