Back up your data (photos, videos) TONIGHT!

[Dan Robinson]

Stop what you're doing right now and back up all of your valuable files! Your digital photos, your videos, web pages, etc. A small external drive costs less than 100 bucks at Best Buy - if you don't have one, go get one now!!!! Having a backup is not a good idea - it is a necessity. Most of us don't think about doing it until it is too late. How many of you have all of your digital photos or video files on one drive? If you do, the clock is ticking, counting down to the moment you will lose it. All hard drives are fragile machines that will eventually fail. If you do not back up your files, you will eventually lose them when the drive fails. If you're lucky, you might be able to get away with nursing along a sick drive to get the data off of it, or spend thousands on data recovery.

Backups are not a luxury or a nice idea - you have to do it or you will lose everything! Are you willing to risk losing everything you've shot in your entire chasing career?

If you don't back up your stuff tonight (OK, I'll give you tomorrow since it is 11:30PM now), you're basically saying you don't care if you lose everything you've worked to capture. This is not a slam on anyone who has lost data due to a crash - it's happened to me too (thankfully a long time ago). Just don't learn the lesson the hard way!

 

[John Erwin]

Stop what you're doing right now and back up all of your valuable files!

This is good advice Dan. I had to learn the hard way a few years ago when some digital pics I had taken on a trip were lost when the hard drive died; those 100 or so pics were not backed up anywhere else and I wasn't able to recover them from the camera media either.

Since then I religiously backup all my pics, documents etc. to DVD on a regular basis.

I would say though that you should not totally rely on those external HD's or USB sticks for your backup needs; working in the business I've seen a fair share of failures on those too; they should be looked at as more of a convenience than as insurance.

 

[Cris Schroeder]

I've been paranoid about data loss ever since I fried the HDD on my last laptop. Fortunately my pics were on my desktop, but I had a heck of a time pulling my financial files off the bad drive. I've had two drives go bad over time and lost data both times.

I have most of my images mirrored on two separate portable hard drives. I also group my images by date and burn them onto Lightscribe DVD's. I use Lightscribe because some of my older, cheap DVD's are no longer readable (probably due to the Sharpie bleeding into the data layer). The backup DVD's go into a fire safe with the rest of my important papers. Someday I'll get smarter and make a second copy of my DVD's to save off-site somewhere.

 

[Rob Wadsworth]

Death of a Hard Drive...

There are four elements to hard drive failure:

The first isn't as commonly realized to most people. Electrical surges due to power spikes in the power supply is not a common failure, but has been known to take out a drive. Static electricity exposure is also considered part of this category. If you have ever purchased a hard drive in the raw, take note that it was probably packaged in a non-static bag.

One element that is erroneously attributed to hard drive failure is dust and moisture. Moisture on the board can cause a short/failure. Hard drives are sealed from them factory, and the only way that dust can cause the drive to failure is to open one up. They use special screws on hard drives so that the curious don't inadvertently ruin their own drive. If a hard drive is gone, there is little to be accomplished by trying to take it apart and trying to fix it yourself. In fact, you may end up destroying any chance of data recovery by using the 'Ive take apart the toaster before ' theory.

The second element - Heat - can destroy delicate components on the hard drive board. That is the only part of the hard drive that most people can see when examining it. Heat buildup and dirty components can bring this failure about. Usually, it is the CPU of your PC/laptop that can suddenly die from heat - moreso than your hard drive would. Adequate ventilation and maintenance with compressed air (easy does it) is what is recommended.

Vibration/Shock-Trauma is the third and fourth cause. It is difficult to separate these two elements from each other - due to the fact that vibration and trauma usually occur in the same setting. Driving fast after a twister on a dirt road with unseen potholes can suddenly jar a hard drive's pickup head against the disk itself. Sometimes this kind of death is sudden; or it may wait for an opportune moment to register its complaint. There is little that be done to keep this scenario from happening; I don't have a laptop stand in my car as one may prefer; but I believe my hard drive has a much better chance on my car seat than to be tied to the frame of the vehicle that is driving 60+ on bad dirt road. Ever drive fast down such a road - and suddenly felt your tonsils where your colon should be? That is what I'm saying...
Dropping a hard drive or external drive has the same net effect. The pickup head that tracks upon the disc is dashed upon the same - and it seldom - if ever- can recover from this kind of damage. You may take it to a shop that specializes in data recovery or use some program that may allow you to get data off of it - but it is down for the final count. Sudden jarring of the hard drive may also jam the delicate spindle and no longer spin at all. Without spin, no data can be recovered at all.

 

[Jason Boggs]

What I do is this: I put all of my valuable photos and other files on a USB drive. I also burn them to disc as well. I also have the files on my desktop and laptop computer. Of those 4 items that have my files on them, I know they are pretty safe even if 1 or 2 of them fail.

 

[Van DeWald]

What I do is this: I put all of my valuable photos and other files on a USB drive. I also burn them to disc as well. I also have the files on my desktop and laptop computer. Of those 4 items that have my files on them, I know they are pretty safe even if 1 or 2 of them fail.

What if your house burns down? Take your discs and store them at work or in a safe deposit box. Then you'll be covered for sure.

 

[Jason Boggs]

I have discs and a USB drive at my parents house with the files on them. Believe me, I thought about the house burning down scenario.

EDIT: Another thing I do is this. I upload my best photos to the internet. They may not be the quality of the originals, but at least I could still have access to them if something bad happened.

 

[Rob Wadsworth]

Blank DVD's are another way to back up your photos. Dual-layer disks also can increase the capacity - too. But I can't even imagine how many "$$" disks it would take to back up several hundred RAW's, TIFF's, etc, that add up to 60 or 70 Gb in size. It would take a lot of disks to do it that way at a high cost over a period of time.

Still, when one considers all of the alternatives it's really not that bad or impractical of a plan. No medium is - or has ever been - completely foolproof or secure. Just imagine if we still had 5" floppy disks still - to back our stuff up on!
LOL!

 

[Jason Foster]

Additional considerations.

.....A small external drive costs less than 100 bucks at Best Buy - if you don't have one, go get one now!!!!......

Regardless of cost it's a must. I think for most of us who shot video, and keep the original avi files, than a terrabyte drive is a minimum, so it'll be more than a $100. Shoting and editing your own production, a terrabyte drive will be a good idea for each project.

I have been transferring all my files since the late 90s from computer to computer, and not untill about four years ago did I start doing back-ups. I luckily didn't have a failure, or virus or anything, I just observed others having issues and then realized I needed to do it. I would die if I lost nearly 20 years (and about 3 terrabytes) of files.

I have also partitioned my drives to prevent virus issues. Something easily done with cheap or free software. I think there are some online back-up also with Norton and simular companies. Never used those myself.

 

[Shane Adams]

Stop what you're doing right now and back up all of your valuable files! Your digital photos, your videos, web pages, etc. A small external drive costs less than 100 bucks at Best Buy - if you don't have one, go get one now!!!! Having a backup is not a good idea - it is a necessity. Most of us don't think about doing it until it is too late. How many of you have all of your digital photos or video files on one drive? If you do, the clock is ticking, counting down to the moment you will lose it. All hard drives are fragile machines that will eventually fail. If you do not back up your files, you will eventually lose them when the drive fails. If you're lucky, you might be able to get away with nursing along a sick drive to get the data off of it, or spend thousands on data recovery.

Backups are not a luxury or a nice idea - you have to do it or you will lose everything! Are you willing to risk losing everything you've shot in your entire chasing career?

If you don't back up your stuff tonight (OK, I'll give you tomorrow since it is 11:30PM now), you're basically saying you don't care if you lose everything you've worked to capture. This is not a slam on anyone who has lost data due to a crash - it's happened to me too (thankfully a long time ago). Just don't learn the lesson the hard way!

Sorry, but this sounds like something you were paid for. I think everyone already knows this.

 

[Rob Wadsworth]

I don't how many of you are aware of this item, but there is a growing number of solid -state hard drives being manufactured. They are costly, and don't yet have the capacity of a cheap 300Gb/$150 dollar units that are far more available. I just thought that it was a novel idea to bring it up while on the subject. The Wikipedia article below is good reading if you haven't yet been introduced to this new aspect of storage tech.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drive

They have been on the market for a little while, and are supposed to be best used in laptops - since the price of memory has been falling at at phenomenal rate.
Enjoy.

 

[Chris C Sanner]

I do a few things to back up my video:

1)Keep the original tapes, nice and labled and such so you know what is on each. Never record over anything...ever.

2)I also use DVD storage media to back up decent quality digital versions of my video that I consider good or usable. That way I have quick access to those DVDs in case I ever need em.

3)And finally, I have a hard drive with all of the Raw files on it as well which I use as a video scratch disk. It's nice and convenient to have around, but technology can and will fail.


Doing all three does a decent job for me, the first is the most foolproof way if you store your tapes in a good location. Did I mention you should never ever record over anything ever?

 

[JR Hehnly]

Buy an external hard drive (I got a 1TB from NewEgg for $135 shipped), have a friend hook it up at their house, and back up your stuff to it over the internet.

Your data is encrypted before being send over the internet, and stored encrypted at your friends house.

Your data is safe even if your house burns down or your computer is stolen.

You can back up as much as you want, up to the size of the drive you supply.

Only changes to current files or new files get sent on subsequent backups.

http://www.crashplan.com/home.vtl (one time software charge)
http://www.buddybackup.com (all free, but you have to provide equal space on your own system for others to back up to)

 

[Dan Robinson]

LOL Shane, I wish!!! If I'm lucky I might get a fruit basket this Christmas from Maxtor or Western Digital if they see this post.

I have backup drives in multiple locations in different states. I still have all of my old slides and negatives in a safe deposit box, but with scanners so cheap now I am thinking about just digitizing all of those and back them up with everything else. And yes, backup hard drives are fail-prone too, which is why I keep multiple offsite copies.

 

[Jason Boggs]

I just got through backing up some photos that I have been neglecting for a while. Just for fun, I counted all the CD's that have photos burned on them from the last few years. I came up with 37 CD's! WOW, that's a lot of photos I think! Now I need to put all those photos on my laptop and on a USB drive. Then I'll be good to go.