Fraser Redmond said...

I think its best to have more than one backup location, but one of them should definitely be Mozy.com.

2gb free storage, or $5 for unlimited. Set the folders you want backed up and whenever you’re not using the computer it sends the changes to your files to their servers over an encrypted connection. It keeps a version history, so you can get a version of a file from a month ago. Restoring files is super-easy too (no point having a backup if its difficult to restore from.)

Three weeks after our son was born my computer died and the last weeks worth of photos hadn’t been backed up anywhere except for Mozy.

Great, quick support, whenever I’ve needed it.

I’ve been using their free service for over a year, and despite being generally picky I haven’t found anything to complain about.

August 19, 2007 2:31 am #

Rick Fielding said...

I went through that when I was 19. My parents house in Washington state had a devastating fire. The house was totally destroyed, but because my parents had stored the pictures packed tightly together in boxes, many pictures survived, with just burnt edges or some water damage to show for it. Those have now been all scanned.

My computer runs a nightly backup and at least once a month I burn everything to DVDs for backup. I will usually take a copy of the DVD backup to work or mail it to a family member. As you said, many of the people I know don’t back up their data regularly and those that do, often store their backups with all their other media right next to the computer. The burden of being the technical ones in the family, it often falls to us to make sure our parents and grandparents and Great Aunts have some automated backup method.

August 19, 2007 6:41 am #

Garry Scoville said...

I back up weekly to an external hard drive. I know that is not sufficient in frequency or offsite backup, but I have about 70GB of files that I backup. I’m not sure what the answer is for large storage. I could backup to DVDs but that requires discipline and organization and it’s easy to slip.

I just saw a ad for a HP desktop that has 2 160GB hard drives and uses RAID 1 to mirror the data. That would take out some of the hassle, but what if the home or building burns down, or if some files are accidentally deleted.

I used Mozy sometime ago, but I ran into some technical difficulties and at the time they didn’t have an unlimited option. I may look at that again. However, I wonder how long it will take to backup 70GB online….

It seems that the future is online storage in one way or another. I’m moving more to online documents through Google docs and photo storage like Flickr and other methods for music. Then I don’t have to worry about backups.

Anyway, this is a good topic.

August 19, 2007 8:15 am #

Brenden McEwan said...

We have recently taken up the task to archive all of our family photos. A large task indeed as it includes slides and negatives. The good is that we found a great scanner that has a dpi of 4800 x 9600, which means the older, smaller photos can be blown up without pixelation. The bad is that even at 600-900dpi, the size of the file can get up to 150MB!

I added a 750GB drive to my system to accommodate the local storage, but backup is going to be a challenge. Right now, I don’t have a terrible amount to backup, so it will fit to a dual layer DVD just fine. My initial plan is to do this monthly then store in a safe deposit box. Long term though might be a bit more daunting. Maybe by the time I actually get around to scanning all of the photos, blue ray burners will be reasonable :-), Believe it or not, my wife tried to talk me into some kind of tape backup solution, but I had a hard time justifying $1k and up to do this.

I have also considered mirroring the drive. Although a great solution if the drive goes bad, doesn’t address if there is a disaster of some kind.

Still looking for the perfect solution!

August 19, 2007 3:37 pm #

Gene Black said...

Digital memories are often ones you want to share, and spreading them around can be the easiest way to protect them.

We utilize a digital camera and a digital video recorder. Any storage in the house containing something important is on a RAID1 array (drives are cheap these days and many systems come with built in RAID, RAID1 is easy to set up, or recover, and often the easiest to migrate to a new system if needed), content is periodically burnt to DVDs for distribution to parents, relatives, friends, etc. and an extra copy is made which is stored in a firesafe designed for media.

Though we produce quite a few pictures and video, the dropping cost of storage has allowed us to keep everything “on drive” as well for quick and easy access should we want to pull it up.

We also encourage family members to share their own photos/video with us that we often add to our system - this way even though we may not be able to live close enough to them to help with their “backup”, we’ve got copies should they lose everything - it’s also coming in quite handy with various projects preserving family memories and tying media to our genealogy work.

We currently have some family restoration efforts underway with various old media types we want to digitize to prevent further degeneration and to ensure their continued availability for future generations. I very much regret that in most instances I do not have media of my ancestors, either because the technology didn’t exist then, or what was made wasn’t preserved and handed down. While I may not have joy of having pictures of my great, great grandparents in all instances, I intend to do all I can to insure than in 200 years my descendants will be able to look back and have media of me and my family and hopefully know something more than names and dates about who we were.

August 19, 2007 8:47 pm #

jrj said...

I have all my machines on a scheduled daily backup to an external firewire HD that is shared over my wireless router (AirPort). The most critical stuff (pictures, docs, music) gets secondarily copied to my .Mac account over webDAV.

Wait until Time Machine comes out on Mac OS X (Leopard)…simple backup for the masses…well, those on a Mac. Is there some other option? ; )

August 19, 2007 11:11 pm #

Mark Mathson said...

Boy, I couldn’t agree more with the above information. Keeping a backup of important files is something I feel strongly about, and have written about online backup solutions.

If someone doesn’t want to go the online backup solution route, at least buy a reliable external hard drive and consider backing up your important files and taking that drive to an offsite location periodically, such as a family, friends, or to work. The downside is that unless you bring it back and forth often, it may be an outdated backup.

DVDs are getting cheaper and cheaper, you could always burn your files there.

And most of all, remember to NOT rely on sites like Flickr, Picasa Web Albums, Facebook, MySpace etc to be your primary “backup” of where your pictures are stored. Not a good idea, especially if the site shuts down permanently or technical issues may cause data loss.

August 20, 2007 9:20 am #

Jonathan said...

Has anyone looked at the new Windows Home Server? That sounds like an ideal solution for “normal” people out there - automatically backs up all the machines on your network, remote access, duplicate copies on separate hard drives (without the hassle of RAID). Combine a Windows Home Server with an on-line backup and I think you’d have it made! Windows Home Server isn’t available yet, but will be soon. I’ve been using the beta for a couple months and can attest to the fact that it really is designed for “normal” users out there, there’s nothing about it that requires an IT guy - I’d be perfectly comfortable giving one to my Mother in-law, she’d do just fine.

Check it out - Windows Home Server
(and no, I’m not a M$ employee - I just think it’s a really useful product)

August 20, 2007 9:23 am #

Nathan Zaugg said...

You have to remember that CD’s and DVD’s only last 5-10 years MAX! If you are relying on those as a sole place of archival you may have a false sense of security! Currently, there is no fool-proof way to store large amounts of data for long periods of time. Ironically the best bed may be a hard disk drive! There is a lot of potential for flash medium but its cost does not make it an ideal solution.

At first I didn’t believe that media would “go bad” if kept in ideal conditions but sure enough, I put the disk I labeled “My First MP3 CD” in and tried to read it the other day and it was all gone! I wrote that CD in 1997 and it was a gold CD (apparently the best quality according to some). Many more CD’s would not read!

So in the meantime be sure to duplicate your CD/DVD media every few years. Also, be sure to date that media so you know when you need to duplicate it again!

I should start an on-line service that will merge any images stored in your “My Pictures” or your desktop and save them out to an Internet Permanent Digital Media Storage Service. In case of catastrophe you could have the service mail you DVD’s of your lost files. There would also always be a hard copy!

August 20, 2007 11:11 am #

Lee Donnahoo said...

To elaborate on what Joel said… The family he mentions above was affected by a wildfire and had literally 2 minutes warning to get out of their house in the early hours of the morning. You never know when such a disaster might strike. Modern technologies make it so much easier for us to make archival copies of rare/priceless/unreplacable family keepsakes. It’s a shame more people don’t use them.

The fire prompted me to start archiving our data using three methods (yes, I’m paranoid, but that’s my job):
1. Back up my data using an online backup service. This helps in the immediate restrore or system crash scenario. I like to use Carbonite.com but there are plenty of other services that range in pricing from free to expensive.
2. Online photo site: I have been a big fan of the online photo site flickr.com for quite some time. For a flat fee you get unlimited storage of photos and no size restrcitions (big plus on larger mega-pixel cameras).
3. Relativity: Every time we meet up with a relative from out of town I give them a “gift” of a DVD with all the photos I can fit on it plus an encrypted file with our financial, PAF, and other vital digital information. They get a DVD or all our recent photos and videos and I get a somewhat trusted source in the event of a major disaster. I use WinZip to compress and encrypt the sensitive files on the DVD.

August 20, 2007 1:27 pm #

marcus said...

This has been a big concern of mine for years. Not just from a personal perspective, but from a history/family history perspective. With so much of our correspondence coming via email. Our posterity isn’t going to have anything to rely on to get to know us unless we take active steps to make hard copies of our digital correspondence.

I want to reiterate what Nathan said about relying on CDs or DVDs as your sole means of archiving. There was a Computer World Article about this very thing in January of 2006. If you’re relying on CDs at the very least make sure you have multiple copies of them stored in separate locations, and make new copies while you can still read them. I wouldn’t rely on burned DVDs as a long term storage medium, because they don’t last as long as CDs. Also, for CDs use QuickPar or some other application to create parity files and put them on the CD so you can potentially recover data if part of the CD is unreadable.

For photo backups I use KodakGallery.com. They allow you to store unlimited photos, indefinitely, as long as you make one purchase from them every 12 months. It really works well, because I can upload the photos, order some prints , so I have hard copies, and have the peace of mind knowing they are backed up in yet another location.

There are also several web site hosting companies out there offering ridiculous amounts of storage (300GB) for around $5/month. I certainly wouldn’t use such a company as my sole means of archiving, but as part of a backup system, I think it’s an economical choice.

August 21, 2007 8:17 am #

James W. Anderson said...

For those who have concerns about how long a CD or DVD will last that you burn on your system, there is a big difference in archival media as far as how long it will last as well.

I’m using Mam-A (Mitsui) CDs and DVDs for music and even recording off-air some of the Church broadcasts or mp3 files, Mam-A/Mitsuit claims the discs will last 75 years. That’s because they use real gold and special dyes in the discs. Given the quality, they are more expensive (for reference, CDs about $1-1.50 each, DVDs about $2-3.50 apiece depending on where you get them) than regular discs (CDs very cheap, DVDs 50-cents-$1.25 each) but could be well worth the extra cost given they could last much longer.

Kodak made similar quality gold discs (there are imitators of both of these products, beware of those who just use the standard aluminum reflective backer made to look gold) but Kodak quit producing theirs several years back.

August 21, 2007 9:59 pm #

Mike Heath said...

This is a more difficult problem than a lot of people realize. Many of the suggestions I’m often given are to back up my digital media on an on-line site or backup to writable CD’s or DVD’s. The problem is, what happens if/when the on-line backup company goes out of business? What guarantee do we have the mozy.com will be around in 10, 15 or 50 years? It’s also important to remember that CDR’s don’t last forever: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD-R#Optimal_storage_conditions_and_expected_lifespan

In 30 years when my kids come across my old RAID array or other digital storage, are they going to know what to do with it? Will they even realize that it contains countless pictures and hours of movie footage? I don’t think we yet have a viable long term storage mechanism for digital media.

August 22, 2007 10:20 am #

Gary said...

I’m using a few different backup methods — external hard drives, DVDs, mozy.com, copies on multiple compters — but I need something better. In particular, of all the methods I use, only mozy is automated, and I’m not as good about running manual backups as I should be. Mozy, unfortunately, does have the 2 GB limit on free accounts and doesn’t have a client (yet?) for FreeBSD, so it only gets a few sets of files from my Powerbook.

While I was reading this post, though, it occurred to me that I have a couple of family members in different parts of the country who also use FreeBSD, or in a couple of cases Linux, and have reasonably decent internet connections. Maybe we should get together and set up rsync mirroring between our systems

August 25, 2007 6:41 am #

James Finnigan said...

Doing backups is a huge pain - so it is often delayed. Nobody wants to end up without those important memories. In addition, as formats change you need to make sure that you move those files forward.

As I consider my family’s digital memories, I’ve decided that periodic backups are still necessary to protect against accidental deletion, but that there is no archival solution for digital content. The only real solution is to keep your files available on *current* storage in multiple locations (and not all at one site - think about a fire) and continue to move and update them to new formats. That .wmv or .mov file that uses a very old codec probably won’t even play on your grandkids computer (nobody would use those codecs anymore and code maintenance has a real cost - they will be removed from support).

For now, I’ve switched to using foldershare to sync my important files to two off-site computers. Sometimes I have reencoded video files to make them more compatible. It’s the best thing I’ve found so far and it’s peer to peer so I’m not worried about the service disappearing or having some inactivity policy that leads to the deletion of my files. If foldershare does get cancelled or become too expensive or some other concern that makes it undesirable, it’s not a problem - I’m the one storing those files in the various locations. Because foldershare keeps my storage locations in sync, I also make bi-annual backups of my photos/videos/financials to protect against deletion, etc.

I’m also planning to reencode a fair number of my videos as mp4 as I think that is going to be a good long-haul format for a while. I’m also keeping originals of the video to protect against gradual degradation by changing formats over time.

(Full disclosure: I work for Microsoft. However, that’s not why I use foldershare - it’s simply the best solution that I’m aware of. Of course, since I’m an engineer there are loads of improvements I would love to see. )

If there was a business that offered to do this for you, would you trust them enough to let them be your main store for those memories? I’m much more interested in software/a service that helps me do a better job of doing it myself.

August 26, 2007 2:32 am #

Randy R. said...

I was once told a story that was supposed to have been true. The folks at JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) were driving the Voyager spacecraft past the outer planets, and wanted to document this onetime event completely. They recorded the incoming data stream every way they could. They used a line printer, 9 track tape, disk platters, 8 inch floppies, paper tape, using all recording media they could. Scientists could now study the information in multiple ways. But since time marches on, now the only way to reference the data is from the line-printer output. Nobody has 9 track tape player, disk platters, or an 8 inch diskette drive anymore. Sometimes just the good old printout or photograph - carefully stored - can still be a good bet. The permanent record of the Nephites was done by engraving. Does anybody think we’ve invented all the ways to digitally store things yet? I’ll bet we’ll have lots of new ways to loose our data in the future - if we’re not careful.

August 30, 2007 5:26 pm #

Michelle said...

I actually would take it one step further from what someone said above and not only do copies of CDs and DVDs every few years, but also have hard copies (on paper) of at least the most important pictures. Servers can fail, hard drives can, too. Technology changes, and the burned CDs and DVDs degrade due to light, air, temperature, and humidity. The only really reliable medium that we know will outlive any of us is still good old fashioned paper! (Oh, now I see that someone just said this…so call this another vote for paper!)

September 14, 2007 11:21 pm #

Ann Marie Curling said...

This sounds simplistic, but the way that I backup my photos (and it keeps them nice and organized too) is I keep all of them both my my MySpace and Facebook accounts. Facebook even has a photo printing service so if you want to have them printed for people out of state you can have them done (in various sizes too) and shipped wherever you want to. Also, many of my friends on these services have also copied them to their accounts. But, I’ve also done the external hard drive thing, now I just need to get it stored away from here in case of the fire scenario.

September 15, 2007 1:13 pm #

Cousin Kirsten said...

I just read the perfect article in my “Professional Photographer” magazine that discussed many ways to prevent things like this from happening, I will scan the article and send it to you, it was something I had been looking for answers to as well, especially since I am a photographer and the need to protect photos is even more crucial. It listed and discussed a handful of products out there that stores and archives on and off location. I think you will enjoy the article.

October 6, 2007 3:38 pm #