How often?

How often should you back up files?
Daily weekly monthly ?
Or is it dependent on how often you upload photos,or other files?

Thanks

A lot depends on how you shoot and what value you place on the files. Many backup to a second drive on import so they never lose their original RAW files. I don't do this because my keeper rate is about 10% since I don't usually peep and delete (old eyes) and that's a lot of storage for files I'll never use. When I shoot a special event I will back up everything from the cards immediately just in case.

When I import I do it by date with files in date-specific folders. Once I've gone through and deleted the stuff I don't want I will back up that day's images. Once the year is done I recatalog and back those up separately. The strategy I don't have is backing up the backups to the cloud somewhere. I should probably get that cranking since I likely have some sort of cloud storage that I'm paying for already.

I also back up my LR catalog once a week and make a copy of those offline.

Yes my eyes are getting old too. And my photos are very important to me.
I also don't have a cloud . But maybe should see about using one.

donaldjledet said:

How often should you back up files?
Daily weekly monthly ?

Click to expand...

When there are important changes/additions that you do not want to lose.

A disk image backup is simply wonderful anytime there is some problem (disk went bad, or system went bad, etc).... You can restore and be back up running in maybe 15 minutes, and be same as before.

But you will lose any changes made since the backup was done.

So my notion is there are two philosophies.

1. Backup anytime you realize significant changes have occurred. This would normally NOT include stuff like Microsoft updates, which are always available again.

2. (My plan) I use a batch file to copy later dates in a few important data directories, to another disk. I run that anytime there are significant changes to that data, which is normally at least daily (it is just one click, and only copies the newer stuff). Then I run system image backup every week or two. In the event I do restore with older data, I also have the latest changed data elsewhere.


System backup has one standard risk. If you backup by overwriting the same backup file every time, then you may backup any problem too, before you realize you have a problem. Restore simply restores the problem then.

So, you need a plan that will retain your previous backup too, so if you realize your backup was corrupted, you still have an older one to try. You manually delete the old ones them, but always keeping the last two or three. Never overwrite your only backup.


And I say a Disk Image Backup. You cannot backup the system by just copying files somewhere. That will not be bootable. To have it work at all, you would have to reinstall the operating system and all the programs, so a copied system is worthless that way. So instead, the great solution is to buy disk image backup software (very inexpensive, runs in background while doing regular things, no big deal to do).

You could just copy photos or data files, which is important, but it will not backup the system with a bootable usable version. Sooner or later, there comes the day your disk fails, and will not boot. This can be catastrophic, it is ALWAYS at the very worst time. Tomorrow morning, stop and imagine, what if it is all gone, and will not boot up today?

But if you have a recent system image backup, you just bolt in a new disk, and run restore (from its bootable CD), and you are back up and running in maybe 15 minutes.

All good ideas there.
Thanks

You might want to look at this recent thread which contained a good discussion on methods. Otherwise you might want to add your tale of woe to @jdeg's thread regarding hard drive failure.

Well in my experience with building PC's over the years, one of the best things you can do is install dual hard-drives. You install the operating system, and other applications, on the primary C: drive and keep nothing but data on the secondary "slave" drive, e.g. X: or what whatever you want to designate it. While I've seen cases of actual hard drive failure, OS failure is far, far more common and the equally common solution, of course, is to reformat the drive and reinstall the OS. By keeping your data OFF the drive that contains the operating-system the chances of catastrophic data loss is reduced by orders of magnitude. Installing an additional hard drive is also about as easy as it gets. So that's my first line of defense: I keep my data, which is irreplacable, physically separate from my operating-system, which is infinitely replaceable. I consider this to be crucial.

From the slave drive I back up to an external hard drive every month and I like to keep two or three backup sets if there's room. I'll backup more often if something big transpires that I think warrants it, but I backup every month regardless as a routine.

...

donaldjledet said:

Yes my eyes are getting old too. And my photos are very important to me.
I also don't have a cloud . But maybe should see about using one.

Click to expand...

I signed up with Carbonite so my files are backup continuously. I also use multiple computers, tablets and phones so no matter where I am I can get a copy of any of my files. I only do major editing on my Desktop so that is the computer I backup.

I'm old fogey I'm sure, but trusting my image storage to some unknown unseen place out on the internet is just not in me.
Tomorrow they can say: Oops, sorry, guess that did not work out afterall.

I do trust my money to the bank, also unseen third parties, but there are federal laws and supervision and FDIC insurance, etc.

But short of that, I want my images on a disk drive that I control. Ultimate wisdom would say repeated on a different drive, stored in a different place, which online storage possibly might satisfy for that second copy. But I need to see the first copy.

I seldom back anything up. I move them once laptop HD fills up, but give or take I still don't really care if I lose everything. Paid shots were all delivered; "best" shots are in my site portfolio, and chances are none are worthy enough to sell so losing originals doesn't matter; until I take some kind of totally epic shot, not going to worry about backing backing anything up.

WayneF said:

I'm old fogey I'm sure, but trusting my image storage to some unknown unseen place out on the internet is just not in me.
Tomorrow they can say: Oops, sorry, guess that did not work out afterall.

I do trust my money to the bank, also unseen third parties, but there are federal laws and supervision and FDIC insurance, etc.

But short of that, I want my images on a disk drive that I control. Ultimate wisdom would say repeated on a different drive, stored in a different place, which online storage possibly might satisfy for that second copy. But I need to see the first copy.

Click to expand...

I have two copies at home cloud storage is a backup to my backup