How strongly do you identify with the photos you take?
My O/H has just sorted herself out a new PC. She's got a new operating system on it; and when I looked over, commented on the windows wallpaper.
"That one of the standard Back-Grounds?" I asked
"No. Do you like it?" She said.
"You should. Its one of yours!"
Photo I took twenty odd years ago, she found amongst my scans.
I obviously don't 'identify' that much with so many of them!
A lot of my photo's I instantly recognise as my own; others I cant tell if it was ACTUALLY me behind the camera when the shutter was depressed.
Some mean a lot to me... others dont mean much to any-one. Least of all me.
So what REALLY is the question? And are we taling photo's individually, or as a collection?
How much do my photo's mean to me? - Depends on the photo.
How much do I value my photos? - Again, depends on the photo
How much does my entire archive mean to me? Well its fairly important; it represents, a 'life time work' that's still being built, that records lots and lots of moments in my life. Some might not be that good, or even that memorable; but in its entirety; its has an interest, and any-one reviewing would probably find it revealing of 'me' in what and who I have chosen to take photos of over the years
But.... the stages of man and all that.... I look at a lot of pictures from when I was a kid, a youth, a younger man? I struggle at times to 'identify' myself at times with MYSELF... let alone my photos!
How do you guys back up your photos?
Well... after little debate on the topic in buff's original recovery thread, and something of a heated debate with pookey over RAID drives....
If you are doing nothing, really.... then first port of call is to burn to CD or DVD.
Cheap... cake of discs is probably a fiver; and you like as not already have Multi-Disk writer in your computer, and software to do it.
And personally, I burn as straight 'Data-DVD' of original off-camera files; rather than use one of the 'make restore disc' wizards that can 'compress' data to disc. That way they are readable from almost any PC or drive. Also, make sure you check the 'close session after burning' box, when you burn; DON'T try using multi-session to keep adding more files to a disk. They are cheap enough; just burn whatever you got, & close it. Tend to be more reliable.
Pookey's reletively valid argument against DVD is that the discs dont last forever; and in his experience some even properly stored in sleeves and never handled have degraded beyond reading within five years. Personaly I have not experienced that. I HAVE had large-file burned Moovie DVD's go corrupt, but not small file data-discs.
Hard Drives? They all fail eventually. And these days they seem to be getting cuter on the product life vs warranty! Like chinese washing machines, its almost like they have an inbuilt self distruct, set for the third aniversary of them first being powered up!
External expansion drives, are also more likely to go titzup on you. There is more to go wrong; are less robust and tend to have less heat protection. Convenient though, and per giga-byte ultimately can be as cheap as discs; but chunk of upfront money. Main concern with external discs is that as disc is multi-writeable; you have potential for data loss or corruption every time you plug one in. And mass storage; IF you get a failure... you are as likely to loose the lot, not just one parcel, like you would on a 4.5Gb DVD out of 20 or so.
Then you have Pookey's suggested professional RAID solutions; essentially its perhaps three hard-drives, a bit of interface electronics, and then some software, that makes it look like a single hard-drive to your computer; and then makes multiple copies of the same file when you save it to each disc, so if one copy gets corrupted, or one hard drive fails, there's two back ups on the other two drives. Convenient, but expensive.
You also have remote storage; net servers, or off-site hard drives or duplicate DVD's.... all well and good having back-ups of your photo's, but if in the same computer? That puter gets a virus, as likely to take out both masters and back-ups. External drive? If kept in your bag with the Lap-Top? Lap top gets nicked, you loose both masters and back-ups....
So, you can use hosting sites or cloud storage as secondary remote back-up, or have a hard drive or DVD's you leave at your mums, or some other remote location,
But, you have to remember the media degredation question and refresh or replace back-ups at intervals as precaution against them degrading before you need to use them.
So its more a discipline thats required, than a technology; and you can mix and match technologies.
As said; I tend to burn straight Data-DVD's as primary back-up.
Master/Working copies, are on internal 'slave' Hard-Drive of main PC.. not the same hard drive as the operating system, and it is a seperate pysical drive, not a partition. Its not much extra protection, but a little, to keeping everything in windows 'My Pictures' folder.
Web-Resolution versions of everything I am likely to ever want to look at, or any one is likely to want to look at, go to Facebook & Photo-Bucket.
If ll else is lost, at least I can get the 1000px versions back; and for the most part that is all any-one would look at anyway. Both accounts though have to be 'maintained', to avoid them being deleted through lack of use or anything.
Periodically... aprox once a year or so; I refresh my DVD back-ups. Means I capture anything I might have missed, and I will have possibly three useable discs with the same files on, in case one does get scratched, or go mouldy or just fade away.
End of the day, you cant really protect against any and every risk; and you have to balance the risks against costs and convenience. And doing 'something' is better than having nothing.
As said, CD's & DVD's have worked well enough for me over the last decade or more.
But what is worth some tine and attension, is basic house-keeping; File-Name consistency and the such like.
I try to keep the file names running consecutively out of the camera; so every picture has its own unique file-name. Then when I make a derivative, or re-size one, or something, suffix that file name to distinguish it, from original.
Very easy, to get muddled up and get either lots of files containing the same photo, all with different names; especially if you use a portal kike Easy-View or ViewNX that renames them when you upload from camera, and 'old' photo's from your last session get named in with the new lot.
Or you end up with versions of the same photo, all with the same file name, in different directories; where you can enbd up over writing your high res masters with web-res copies or similar.
Or, you have different photo's from different sets, with the same file name, as you cleared the card or used a fresh one, and the camera started naming from image001 all over....
You are far more likely to loose a file from such user 'blunder' as any external calamity like a computer virus, or device failure, or house fire or similar.
So that is where protection should start; in your housekeeping and file management.
After that? As much or as little technology as you want or can afford.
But as said; if you aren't doing much if anything right now? Get a £5 cake of CD's or DVD's at the petrol station or super-market on your way home from work! Its a pretty good start; and don't cost much time or effort.
