photo credit: Photo Extremist

How old is your last backup?

Check our articles about the photographer’s backup.

1. Local backup options (External hard disk drive)
2. Local backup options (Optical discs (CD/DVD), RAID drives). Interim conclusion is “No local storage“
3. Online backup options (Photo web sites, Friend-to-Friend)
4. Online backup options (Specialized online backup and online sharing web sites, web storage options, software for online storage) and conclusions

This is all wrong: CD and DVD are optical devices whose shelf life has nothing to do with the century some would believe is the credible target. Even in the best storage conditions.

You don’t believe me? The French Laboratoire national de métrologie et d’essais (LNE) just presented to the French Académie des Sciences a very detailed report about this issue. They worked on the recordable optical media and their conclusion is strong:

The storage or the the short-term backup do not bring any significant question, but building decade-long or century-long archives this way is an altogether different issue, understanding that these digital media have no more than a lifetime of 5 or 10 years.

Then:

If this problem is correctly handled in some specialized public organizations, it is widely ignored by the public and most of the institutions or enterprises. A large quantity of personal, medical, scientific, technical, administrative data is thus in really endangered.

So you still doubt it? Your photos are still on a DVD?

See also: Backup solutions for the photographers.

1. Local backup options (External hard disk drive)
2. Local backup options (Optical discs (CD/DVD), RAID drives). Interim conclusion is “No local storage“
3. Online backup options (Photo web sites, Friend-to-Friend)
4. Online backup options (Specialized online backup and online sharing web sites, web storage options, software for online storage) and conclusions

So, we started to describe online solutions. Let’s see the most serious and most extensive approaches to online storage.

Specialized online backup and online sharing web sites

Many web sites are now offering services that may be exactly what you need: You send them data files they keep them for you. The most interesting ones include a backup utility which will automatically transfer files in the background.

Now, the big difference (with the previous options) is that you get a fully integrated service. Exactly what most people are looking for: Fire and forget… until you need to restore.

An important feature of nearly all of these services is that they offer a first level of service for free: A few GB of storage without a credit card. But they have a business model relying on some of the biggest users paying a rent on the disk space.

Some of them (like LiveMesh, Live Sync or Syncplicity) include the possibility to synchronize between computers (if you have more than one computer, it is a good way to ensure that the office and home computers have a copy of the same files). This could come handy to the photographer who is traveling with her laptop and is not sure of copying everything back and forth between the laptop and the desktop.

Some services may look interesting but are unusable in backup mode because this function is left to the responsibility (and the hard work) of the user: SkyDrive (despite its 25GB free storage space) and MobileMe fall in this category; They go in the right direction but stop short of it.

Let’s compare some of the best offers on the market.

Of course, these are not the only ones and the readers may offer some additional advice in the comments. You are welcome.

Special recommendations for online backup (or any other backup)

1. Always try and restore a few files to confirm that your setup is correct (it’s not enough to have the service telling you that it’s alright);
2. Check regularly that you did not stop the backup service (it happened to me recently: I wanted to do a test and I forgot to re-start my Mozy backup, for more than a week).
3. Check that the space you rent is sufficient and that you are not nearing the limit. You don’t want to hit the limit while in the middle of an important assignment. And it would be the worst to be -temporarily- unprotected.
4. Notice that the initial backup may be very long. It is not unusual to wait backup 2GB per day. So, the first backup may take days. The next ones will be depending only on what new/modified files must be sent to the server.

The web storage options

Now, there is also a pretty easy option that can be applied. All in all, what you need is a bunch of disk space available for you to store files. This is exactly what most web services provide to people willing to create a web site, except that you will have a size request much larger than most web sites. Instead of 1GB of space, you will need 1TB of disk space.

Pure online storage

Some web hosting companies actually include this possibility. There is usually a cost because they include the cost of serving that data (what you will mostly not use: Once backed up into the web store, you’ll only access to check or to restore). So, you can go and find a web hosting company. For reasonable needs like those of many amateur photographers, nearly any host service will be OK. For example, OVH (the hosting service for my web sites, currently) has a plan for a small server with storage extensible up to 1000GB (RPS_I) for 9.99€ (ex-VAT) plus 2€ per 10GB slice added. It will add up: for 500GB, you would pay 110€ per month. Or you can get a dedicated server (a bit more complicated to setup) with 4x 1500 GB of RAID drives for 89€ per month.

If you want something even bigger and with a much larger upgrade path, you still can ask Amazon. The large bookstore is also reselling part of its networked storage through the Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service). It’s priced flexibly and they have essentially no limit to what they can provide. Of course, prices are not always cheap, but it’s hard to beat them.

You can test your own options with their online calculator.

ADrive is also an option here. It offers 50GB of free storage, for individual use, but the Premium offer goes up to 1000GB. But the web interface has been improved, even if the file uploader still requires Java.
If you sign up for a paid account, ADrive is offers advanced features like FTP access (needed here, see below), a larger number of concurrent downloads (for faster restore), SSL encryption, and a desktop client for Mac, Windows, and Linux computers.

Software for online storage

In both these cases, all you need is a way to download data back in case of a crash (essentially nearly all web browsers could do this, but an FTP program will be OK too) and upload data as simply as possible. I recommend using some powerful FTP software program like FLING.

Fling is entirely free, like most of its competitors. And, as I quote from their web site: “Fling is software to help you automate uploading or transferring files. It is typically used to maintain a web site on a remote hosted server or to automate backup of folders. The software supports both file transfer protocol (FTP) and [local] network file transfer.” Exactly what we need here!

One last comment here: It has been said repetitively that Google is preparing a similar offer under the name of Google G-Drive. Nothing exists yet, but it could well be a similar offer starting with a completely free entry point. But this is only a rumor for now.

Conclusions

Which one is for you? I can’t decide if you don’t tell me what kind of photographer you are. But if you are one of the normalized photographers I described, it’s relatively easy.

• The Digital Granddad will most probably go for the External Hard drive (probably along with some Flickr or RedBubble account.
• The Expert has already decided to go the Mozy way.
• I recommend the Pro to check an online solution with FLING.

You’ll have to read the article to be sure in which category you fall, of course. But remember that digital data is flimsy. In a moment, all of your pictures may be gone. Do you really want to try your luck?

These all have the advantage of protecting your backup against one aspect of risk management: There is no longer a risk of seeing a local accident corrupting all of your backup data. No fire, no earthquake can take down both your photos and your backup files. You put the backup on the network, and it is located in some distant location (often with its own integrated company-level backup solution, too: A backup of your backup). So, it’s fairly safe.

On-line backup options

Photo web sites

Right! It may be like an obvious option, but it’s not always a bad one. If you put all your photos on Flickr, not only can you share your images with the rest of the world (or the rest of the family), but you immediately have a copy of your pictures in a server farm at the other end of the world. And, while it may not be easy, you can definitely get them back in case of a too-fast delete or disk crash on your computer.

Of course, there are many options. Those I can think immediately about are:

• MyPhotoAlbum
• Flickr
• PBase

Pick your own.

Obviously OK for small quantities of pictures. But also consider the long time it would take to collect images one by one in case of a computer crash. Tedious is a word coming to mind and it is a clear understatement.

Friend-to-Friend

There is an interesting development to the availability of fast Internet connections: P2P or Peer-to-Peer data exchange. While it is usually associated to music and video files being exchanged between young people and older pirates, there is a surprising extension being seen.

What some people call Friend-to-Friend (or F2F) allows a group of friends (or associates of some kinds) to share some data. Nobody outside your group can see what is happening, but it can be used for distant backup. Let’s suppose you don’t really have an issue with disk space. Why not let your friends backup their data on your disk while you backup your data on theirs?

This is as simple as it comes. Of course, technically, it’s a bit more complex, but it works well. Some software programs like the following, ease that approach with a fully packaged solution:

• Crashplan offers more traditional backup option (see below), but it’s most interesting option is F2F with a friend’s computer, a remote server you rent, etc. Of course, it includes some encryption to ensure that your friend’s do not know what your files are, and its interface is plain simple. CrashPlan is freeware available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
• Cucku works on Windows only. It allows to send encrypted (with 256-bit AES) backups to your friends computers. You’ll notice that it is well integrate in Skype to support part of the exchanges.
• With Zoogmo installed on your computer and your friends computers, you can search each other and send files back and forth. You set it up and it will send files around every two hours. It seems very simple and efficient. Zoogmo is a free download for Windows systems only, and requires a free sign-up.

This is very fine except that you need to use the drives of others. So, you need to get some fairly large available space on the computers of your friends or family. Usually, the reciprocating approach works well, but it means that you must have some level of confidence and a relatively similar interest in backing up each other data. That makes it OK for close friends, or photo clubs members/partners. It usually is less applicable to family links, but it is very interesting indeed: Your backup drive is bought for others while others buy their own backup drive for you…

[To be continued]

Let’s start with other local storage (we’ll keep online storage for later installments of this series).

Optical discs (CD/DVD)

photo credit: bobbigmac

Many people have been using DVDs (previously CD-Rs) to make copies of all their images.

This may look good: copying a bunch of files to a DVD-R is a simple matter and once done, it is pretty difficult to delete the files. You setup yourself for a little routine, and you keep a stack of plastic discs holding all your images in as many copies as you want.

This looks like security; This is not!

While we are repeated that CD life times are reaching a century (DVD life times are only a little shorter), this is only partially true. Let’s see some interesting details:

• Pressed CDs and DVDs have long life times, but this is not exactly the same for CD-R or DVD-R. These writable (or re-writable) discs do not try and claim such long life times.
• Official guaranteed life times can only be reached in the best storage situations: Heat and light are the enemies of optical drives. The manufacturers make their tests in conditions that are not often maintained in a house even with a good AC, like 15°C temperature and strictly no light during years.
• Manufacturing quality may have a considerable impact: From one product line to another, the actual life time may be divided by 2. No brand name is immune to these exceptions. The most expensive ones are not always the best.
• You thought that we were speaking of years? Think again. I had an (involuntary) experiment with several hundred CD-R from many brands, where I exposed them to French Summer temperatures. Within two years, 50% of the discs were no longer readable. That’s right merely two Summers were enough to kill half of all brands of CD-R in storage.
• Evaluating the status of a DVD-R is not easy: When there is one error on the disc, it is silently corrected by the optical drive. The first sign of a problem comes when you no longer can read a file (too late!) Some tools may help, but they are more useful to save the last remnants of data; I wouldn’t be ready to regularly check the status of more than a couple of plastic discs.

RAID drives

RAID stands for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks. It describes a way to associate several disc drives in a way that protects them against the failure of one of them. Suppose that a single disc drive suddenly fails, you loose the data right now. In a RAID, discs support each other and (in the right configuration) a single disc failure will be signaled by a message or a blinking light, but the RAID unit will still operate as a fully normal disc.

It is worth mentioning because it protects very efficiently against disc drive hardware failures. Several computer motherboard include the feature allowing to build such unit by merely connecting 3 to 5 normal discs and using a setup wizard. After a failure, you finish your work normally, remove the failed drive, replace it with a new one and forget about this bleep of an incident.

One important thing to remember: This is not replacing a backup because even a RAID drive unit will not protect you against the accidental deletion of a file. On the contrary, it will make sure that your accidental deletion is achieved in the safest way.

Additional recommendations

I can also invite to reading some useful complementary posts:

• Five Best Windows Backup Tools
• Five Best Free System Restore Tools (Windows/Mac/Linux, Free)

No local storage

It is now time for you to remember one important thing in terms of disaster management: Do not underestimate the seriousness of the circumstances that will lead to a loss of data. Rather common reasons to loose your data are fire and theft. If your backup hard drive is in the same room/house as your computer and a fire starts, not only will you loose your house and your computer, but your backup is gone as well. If a burglar enters your flat and leaves with computer hardware, you can be sure that he will take both the computer and the external drive sitting at its side.

Question to the Pro: Do you remember what happened to this photo colleague who lost all of his archives in an office fire a few years ago?

Any local storage is unsafe from this point of view. No hard disk, no DVD would be safe from the accidental fire. You still can ship your backup drive to your mom, but this becomes really cumbersome. In the next installment, we will look at backup solutions that include a storage located at some significant distance.

[To be continued]

Any digital photographer is quickly confronted with the bane of computer memory. At first, you notice that you need a lot of DRAM memory to edit your pictures (using Photoshop for example). The solution is easily found: Add more memory (Here come 4 GB of DRAM!) Then, you discover that all those 20 MP pictures from your SLR photo camera take up a lot of disk space. No problemo! Let’s add an external disk drive like the one here on the right. And you get as much disk space as needed.

You shouldn’t loose a picture

Now, most people would stop here and forget about the next important (Critical!) step: Be ready to backup your photo.

A disk drive is a relatively safe place to store your image files. But it is not immune to the risk of physical or electronic breakdown. Just think about it a second. Don’t wait for the next disk crash.

Even if you are not a pro photographer (and it is is even worse if you are), you probably have a few thousand images lying around. Their individual monetary value may be low (that’s also true for most pros who rely on the sheer mass of their good work to produce regular income rather than on a small number of pictures) but quite a number of these images will be impossible to replace (think about images of the birth of your children, the last picture you took of your deceased parent, the photos you brought back from your unique travel to Patagonia, inner Mongolia, or Yellowstone National Park: Are you ready to loose them forever right now?).

It happened before. I am ready to bet that you lost at least a dozen pictures. It will happen again. Now that you are sensitized to this issue, what can you do? What is the best backup option?

What photographer am I?

I offer to cover a wide span of options to give a few recommendations. But I think that it is useful to differentiate my comments and recommendations depending on the type of photographer that you are. Here are the three user profiles I intend to advise depending on their approach to photography:

1. Very occasional photographer (“Digital granddad“): You came from the old analog world. You have a 10 MP entry-level SLR camera or a good point-and-shoot. Maybe you kept the old camera too, but the pictures are piling up: 2000 files totaling 20 GB. You have no problem to store these on your computer, you want security, but not the hassles of computer tools.
2. Continuous shooting amateur (“Expert“): You shoot a lot of pictures: Your children, your friends, your travels, some artsy pictures, etc. You are concerned that nearly none of these picture files could be replaced and they are already counting up in tens of thousands and 100 to 500 GB. You don’t earn money from these, so you can’t pay a lot. But you are ready to do a little tweaking to get the right solution.
3. Professional photographer (“Pro“): You earn money from your art. You nearly stopped counting the files you have: Hundreds of thousands of images, maybe a million already and more than a 1.000 GB of storage (local storage on your computer has already become a nightmare and you use several hard drives; And this is not slowing down). You don’t have more time to spend on setting up networks, drives, programs, but you may be renting a reasonable solution. If it is 100% reliable.

If you want to know, I am one happy Expert. Last time I checked, I had 116 GB of pictures (not counting any of the bad images I already deleted, but including the finished images ready to use for posters, the web and other applications).

The local backup options

So, let’s see what is possible. I intend to surprise you with some of what you may learn here and in the next posts about these backup possibilities.

External hard disk drive

One of the first ideas coming to mind is to add another disk drive (usually an external one). This is certainly the easiest: Go to your preferred on-line computer shop and get nearly any of the zillion disk drives available. One of the most important decision to make: Choose the nicest or the biggest drive available.

Since it will be used only for backup, you don’t need a very fast one. Since it will be used only once in a while, you don’t need to have it permanently plugged in. There are not many differences between the large brands on the market, but avoid what I call the monsters (extreme drives like size champions or speed champions tends to compromise on other aspects like reliability, which is our priority here). I love the extreme reliability of Seagate drives, but that doesn’t necessarily stop me from buying other brands occasionally.

Notice that some hard drive manufacturers started offering relatively large drives targeting low-cost and high reliability by running them slow: 5400 rpm drives (compared to 7200 rpm or faster) are making a come back on the market. It may be worth considering here.

Nevertheless, it is important to buy a disk that is not too small. Reliability goes with big manufacturing volumes. Buy a disk around 100€ (bare disk), or 120-150€ (with its enclosure). This is the core of the market and the best rliability/cost ratio.

However, the main problem here is that you have to organize the backup by yourself. Some external hard drives incorporate a button on the front: You just press the button and it backs up the designated files or directories. But even if it is as simple as that, studies and experience show that the user (you and me) will forget and backups must be automated.

I suggest the following automated backup tools:

• Cobian backup (Windows, free, donation suggested): A lot of options, very apt at disk-to-disk scheduled backups. Exactly what we need here.
• Backup Maker (Windows, free but with nagging pop-ups): Does external drive backups, optical backups, FTP backups, scheduled backups.
• GFI backup (Windows, free with email registration) is definitely easy-to-use and wizard-driven. Clear and simple.
• PureSync (Windows, freeware) and SyncBack (Windows, freeware and shareware) are tools that specialize in synchronization (and backups): They allow to create and maintain perfect copies of your files, but you take the risk that they will reproduce your erroneous file deletion (you delete the original, then it deletes the copy for you). PureSync allows to create a profile to recognize your digital camera and ignore photos from your memory card already downloaded to your computer (similar to the same feature in Picasa).

[to be continued]