Back up your files!!!

[Clay Coleman]

I know it hasn't made the news because New Orleans didn't flood, but Gustav was the worst hurricane to hit Louisiana in the past 50 years (yes, worse than Katrina from a wind and rain point of view--the flooding from Katrina was due to faulty levees more than to a killer storm). At the height of the storm, a tree fell onto my house right over my office, and the water started coming in. I was able to grab my external drives and save my photos, but stuff really does happen!! Back up those files and keep your backups in separate, safe places. It's easy to get too complacent about this. Our power was restored after 8 days, but still no internet connection (I'm at a coffee shop down the street). I'll be back when I'm able! -Clay

[Jonathan Bird]

Oh crap Clay that sucks! I'm sorry to hear it! I've been away so much that I hadn't been following the storms that much. I heard that the T&C got hammered and Gustov was hard on Louisiana. Insurance going to cover the house? Thank God you rescued the pictures! 8 days without power!! DAMN! What hell did you do for 8 days?

I keep my pictures in three places: two different hard drives in the office plus on DVD+R (archival grade) which I store at my parents house. Always good to have a set "off site" for just such an event as this!

Jonathan

[Jonathan Bird]

P.S. Need any supplies shipped in from the north?

[Daniel]

I know it hasn't made the news because New Orleans didn't flood, but Gustav was the worst hurricane to hit Louisiana in the past 50 years (yes, worse than Katrina from a wind and rain point of view--the flooding from Katrina was due to faulty levees more than to a killer storm). At the height of the storm, a tree fell onto my house right over my office, and the water started coming in. I was able to grab my external drives and save my photos, but stuff really does happen!! Back up those files and keep your backups in separate, safe places. It's easy to get too complacent about this. Our power was restored after 8 days, but still no internet connection (I'm at a coffee shop down the street). I'll be back when I'm able! -Clay

Sorry to hear of your situation. I hope that you and your family are able to get back to some sense of normalcy soon.

Daniel

[tarczy]

Clay-

So sorry to hear about your disaster. We hope that you and all your loved ones are alright.

Don't be shy about asking for assistance from the board. We're here to help.

In the meantime, check in every once in awhile and let us know how you're doing.

Mark

[Jonathan Bird]

Don't be shy about asking for assistance from the board. We're here to help.

Seriously...whatever you need man...we'll send it!

[Clay Coleman]

Thanks, everybody! We're all fine, and the cable came back this afternoon. I've been re-backing up files. It looks like we'll not suffer much from Ike, but the folks in the Houston area are in for it. Even so, I'm packing backup drives into a Pelican case. Bottom line: it's hurricanes here, earthquakes and fires in CA, blizzards in NE--it's always something somewhere. Jonathan's idea of backing up on archival DVD's and storing them off premises is an excellent one. Where do you buy archival DVD's? It sure is a lot easier to back up to a big Seagate or other portable hard drive. How stable are they?

Re: 8 days with no power--can you smell me? Can you smell me now? When the power came back on, it blew out our air conditioner. That's fixed now as well, thank goodness. 10 days with a chainsaw is not good for that fresh, clean feeling! -Clay

[Jonathan Bird]

Hey Clay, we're up wind, so I can't smell ya!! ;) THANK GOD!

I'm glad the power is back and you guys are all OK. Say hi to Sharon for me.

About the archival DVD's...I read a story on the internet about archival optical media and apparently archival CDs are the best. DVDs with their higher density, develop errors more than CDs. Verbatim makes the gold standard in archival CDs which they rate for 100 years. I wouldn't believe that claim, but I'm thinking that if they say it will last for 100 years, we can assume it will definitely last 20 or so.

Unfortunately. I gave up on archival CD because it just took too many of them to back up one dive trip.

The article about archival DVD said that DVD+R has a much better error-correcting scheme than DVD-R, so DVD+R is the best archival media. And apparently Taiyo Yuden (http://www.supermediastore.com/taiyo-yuden-16x-dvd-plus-r-media-white-inkjet-hub-printable-100-pack.html?utm_source=googleBase&utm_medium=pcsite&utm_term=DV-002-2444-datafeed01&utm_content=datafeed01&utm_campaign=googleBase%20-%20DV) makes the best DVD+R. They are the OEM manufacturer that makes them for several other brands. I buy them from super media store. I can't find the original article I read anymore, but this one (http://adterrasperaspera.com/blog/2006/10/30/how-to-choose-cddvd-archival-media) is pretty good too.

The reason I don't just use another hard drive off site is because I feel like I don't want to put all my trust in hard drives which ALL eventually fail. Furthermore, for offsite storage, all I need to do is keep a pile of DVDs of the new stuff that needs to go offsite, and whenever I take the kids up to visit my parents, I take the disks with me. If I did it with a hard drive, I would have to carry it back and forth, and it would actually spend half the time at my house (I rarely see my parents more than a couple times a month) so that would defeat the purpose of an off-site drive.

Jonathan

[Warren_L]

The reason I don't just use another hard drive off site is because I feel like I don't want to put all my trust in hard drives which ALL eventually fail. Furthermore, for offsite storage, all I need to do is keep a pile of DVDs of the new stuff that needs to go offsite, and whenever I take the kids up to visit my parents, I take the disks with me. If I did it with a hard drive, I would have to carry it back and forth, and it would actually spend half the time at my house (I rarely see my parents more than a couple times a month) so that would defeat the purpose of an off-site drive.

Jonathan

One solution to that is to get a 2nd backup hard drive. Keep one at your house, update that and bring it to the folk's place. Swap and bring back the other one. Next time, up date that one, and swap again.

[tarczy]

The reason I don't just use another hard drive off site is because I feel like I don't want to put all my trust in hard drives which ALL eventually fail.

Jonathan

Wow!

That's a pretty severe statement. (unless you're referring to the measurement mean-time-between-failure which "assumes" that all hard drives fail . . .eventually)

I've had over 50 hard drives in my lifetime and only one of them has failed. Granted, it failed beyond all attempts to retrieve data. :mad: But, I never had any problems with any of my other hard drives before I upgraded them due to technology advancements.

Nevertheless, archival DVD seems like a good third backup solution.

[Clay Coleman]

For those of us who travel with a laptop, we generally come home with DVDs of at least all RAW files from every trip. The trouble is keeping up with all those discs. -Clay

[Jonathan Bird]

One solution to that is to get a 2nd backup hard drive. Keep one at your house, update that and bring it to the folk's place. Swap and bring back the other one. Next time, up date that one, and swap again.

Considered that, but I have two hard drives duplicating the footage at home and DVD seemed better for offsite and as a non-hard drive option.

[Jonathan Bird]

I've had over 50 hard drives in my lifetime and only one of them has failed. Granted, it failed beyond all attempts to retrieve data. :mad: But, I never had any problems with any of my other hard drives before I upgraded them due to technology advancements.

I've actually NEVER had a hard drive fail, ironically. Not yet anyway. But the fact of the matter is that they all will. So you need to keep moving the pictures to newer drives now and then. And hopefully they get bigger and bigger at a reasonable cost along with the size of your image collection. But trust me, if you "archive" 10,000 of your best pics on a big hard drive and put it in the closet, chances are, if you dig it out in 10 years, it probably won't work. (Assuming you can even find a computer to interface to a 10 year old hard drive). 20 years? Forget it. I have 20 year old slides in my files. My dad has 40 year old slides. Archiving is a huge issue that people don't think about. Nevermind pictures of fish. How many people do not have a serious archiving plan for their treasured family pictures. We have pictures of our family going back to the late 1800's which have survived on photographic paper. We're talking a hundred years. Will there be any pictures of my children in a hundred years for my future relatives to see? Maybe....but for most people the answer is no. One of my best friends just lost every picture he has ever taken for the past 7 years when his computer crashed. He had no backup plan at all. He was devastated. A lot of people are in that boat.

Then there is the issue of reading a Nikon D200 Raw file in 40 years. That should be fun.

Jonathan

[Daniel]

Excellent topic!

http://www.fbi.gov/hq/lab/fsc/backissu/april2008/standards/2008_04_standards03.htm

Multifaceted approach and replacing/copying digital assets to new storage media and updated to current file formats every 3-5 years is an approach adopted by many.

Each camera manufacturer has taken the RAW format concept and developed proprietary versions for its own specific camera models. As a result, the digital imaging industry has no universally accepted RAW format.

I suspect this will change out of necessity at some point.