The Backup Thread

[Bharat Varma]

As the title says, let's compile data backup strategies, systems, hardware and software etc. here.

[g2]

All my data is saved on my HDD and I do 2 backups. 1 to another external HDD, 2 to Google Drive (have a Google One subscription)

All data is synced via Free Filesync (mirrored (one way sync) to 1 & 2) manually, once a week.

g2

[Thad E Ginathom]

All my data on hdd/ssd. Backed up to two external drives, which I alternate, about once a week. I would like one to be off-site, but that hasn't happened for a while.

No cloud backup as such.

Most of my photography is carnatic classical concerts. I distribute the results to artists/organisers via pCloud. That's a form of backup too, although all the content is only 1920*1280. Worst case scenario: that's a heap better than nothing. And I don't think history will miss high-pixel originals!

(without making any photographic claims, it is a historical record, and I will take steps to try to ensure that it survives me, even if my personal digital life evaporates with me)

[Krish Chandran]

After a catastrophic loss I initially began backing up to HDD / ext drives. Soon they were too large to handle, and incremental back-ups became both effort & time-consuming.
Then, I discovered Backblaze and haven't looked back, since. No more external disks. Everything is on the cloud / online. I can retrieve individual files or folders as needed, particularly if I need a version earlier than the one currently on my HDD.

[ashutosh1979]

Hi!
I also use 2 hdds stratergy, so backup cum workflow is as follows:
1. My lightroom catalog stays in ms SSD and Originals stay on a seperate HDD.

2. I regularly clone this HDD to another one same with size using freefilesync. After 1st sync it takes much less time.

3. Backup of my Catalogs get copied to 1st HDD and autmaticaly cloned to 2nd HDD all using freefielsync

4. Also investd in 2 2.5 inch laptop hdds which I use as external backups, which are synced after an interval of 15 days. This is to to have a roll back option even if my primary data gets messed up and also synced to backup also, damaging both copies

5. I do this because simple syncing does not help in case of human error or data corruption

6. Also for cloud backup I use google photos. To circumvent the storage limit I export my 4-5 star pics only (after post processing) to a reduced, like 1-2 mb, resolution and then upload to google photos. So quality is not the best but still usable and god forbid if it came to using those, I will be stil better off having a 1mb version then loosing it completly. Also sharing small size is much much easier.

7. BTW most of my pics are personal like family portraits, vacaiton etc so my considerations might be different than others

ALso would appreciate any suggetions to improve this further. 1 drawback of my system is that every thing is manual so many times I miss backups also to be honest.

Reason for above system is that, there are not many recurring costs that add up, except Lightroom. My photpgraphy is non commercial so its hard to justify recurring costs, at the same time my pics being personal have value much much beyond monetary considerations, hence the elaborate setup.

[Kartik - JJMPF Admin]

This is from my personal experience , the best backup strategy is the one which has the best index and the easiest one which I find is Google Photos (currently using 200GB but will soon need to upgrade to 2TB) and Irfanview ( I use it to bulk reduce the size of images if req.)

[Thad E Ginathom]

I think I must be missing something?

At least from my phone, Google photos backs up everything like chucking it in a pit. There is no recognition or replication of folder/directory structure. How is this useful?

[Thad E Ginathom]

Then, I discovered Backblaze and haven't looked back, since. No more external disks. Everything is on the cloud / online.

I would love to have an online backup. I haven't so far, as the initial entire-system upload is more than daunting!

I would strongly advise against keeping cloud backup as one's only backup. Do please keep at least one local copy. No company is so big that it cannot suffer disaster! And, even though we are now used (at least in cities) to fast, reliable fibre broadband, no internet connection has zero outages.

[ashutosh1979]

I think I must be missing something?

At least from my phone, Google photos backs up everything like chucking it in a pit. There is no recognition or replication of folder/directory structure. How is this useful?

It is not the best way to organize but it works best if you don't organize. Specialy for personal (family) pics. Facial recognition works spot on, you can search for date, individuals, group of people, location, and other criterion like color and other descriptives. Ofcourse I've also given up any hope of even loosly resembling any hierarchical structure.
It is focused on searching rather than organizing.

[Thad E Ginathom]

I think I must be missing something?

At least from my phone, Google photos backs up everything like chucking it in a pit. There is no recognition or replication of folder/directory structure. How is this useful?

It is not the best way to organize but it works best if you don't organize. Specialy for personal (family) pics. Facial recognition works spot on, you can search for date, individuals, group of people, location, and other criterion like color and other descriptives. Ofcourse I've also given up any hope of even loosly resembling any hierarchical structure.
It is focused on searching rather than organizing.

I'm glad I wasn't missing something. I am the messiest, most inefficient person! But my photographs have a structure at least by year/month/date/event. To loose that structure would be catastrophic! I can't think why Google would imagine such a system.

For my phone, it is ok-ish. If there important pics on the phone, they would be uploaded to the PC anyway. The rest might as well be a heap!

I'd love to be able to do facial recognition on my home collection. We may never have google's facilities, but it is actually available. DigiCam does it. It is a powerful processing and organisation package offering lots of facilites. It's worth taking a look at it.

I did try it. But, with tens of thousands of person images to catch up, it is a formidable task and I abandoned it. 

Then, I discovered Backblaze

Looks like they have their own client software and it is only available for Windows and Mac :/