[Drkalgaonkar]

I backup my clicks on my Laptop and PC.

But that's also not reliable so I have started creating gmail accounts yearly.

Like for example mymedia22@gmail.com, mymedia21@gmail.com and so on.

It is easy, it is safe and it is free.

You can try it with Yahoo, Hotmail also.

Happy clicking.

[Thad E Ginathom]

It seems that I have 147,667 items, totalling 1.4 TB in my pictures directory. That does not mean that I have that many photos: some will be RAW files, sidecar files, jpegs and resized jpegs.

Most of this is on an HDD. I have a working subdirectory of current-year photos on an SSD for quick access. My OS (Linux Mint) and programs live on the SSD too.

I have three basic backup routines: shell scripts which find out which external disk is connected and then do their task.

1. System Backup: tar backup of root and home directories. With a bit of faffing around, I can recreate my OS installation and configuration with this, on another device or machine. does not include any personal files or data. This gets done about once a week or before any major system update or change*

2. Sync: this syncs all my personal data files to the external HDD. This gets done about once a week.

3. Limited sync: This syncs only my "current year" photos from the SSD, and has one major difference to the previous sync: it also syncs deletions. This gets done every time I upload pics to the computer or do any photo work at all, even if that is only deleting the day's duds.

I have two 5TB USB HDDs which are alternated once a week or so. One of them goes off site, the other being returned.

I have so far not used any cloud backup. Except incidentally: I have a pcloud account which I use for sharing concert photos with artists/etc, so there is a reduced copy of all my past few year's concert pics there. I would like to have a cloud backup, but I don't know if I can afford the space. I will never, ever, regard any cloud backup as primary, but as a convenience and extra string to the bow.

Important General Backup Philosophy

Any copy on the same machine is not a backup: it is another copy.

Any copy on the same physical network is not a backup, it is another copy.

(Why to both these and more: think lightening, surges, fire, flood, theft etc)

Likewise any backup on the same premises is also insecure.

Any backup hdd connected to your system is at risk: only connect it when using it.

None of the fancy NAS storages boxes, RAID systems, etc, are backup, for the same reasons. Plus, they can go wrong.

If any of this seems complex or OTT... I can assure you that if I was doing this for a business, it would be an insecure joke! I am at risk of loss of up to a week or so of data, and have only one physical backup if I was to loose my system plus one USB HDD.

Actually, I'm currently uncomfortable because I don't have an offsite copy. My wife was taking one to her friend's house, but does not consider that safe keeping now, due to untrustworthy teenager. I hate this: I am one lightening flash away from having my digital past couple of decades wiped out.



*Linix Mint has a Timeshift command. I use this for a snapshot before doing stuff like a kernel upgrade. I could also use it for a reinstallation, but it is still only a convenience copy, as I do not copy it off system.

[sukhbirST]

I prefer keeping back up on additional/duplicate hard drives apart from desktop and laptops. Usually buy during BBD or festival sales that too 4TB etc. Believe in privacy more than cloud storage. Heard lot of stories where nominees are made to run around for rights. Also speed or network issues are there in small towns.

[akkosetto]

Originally Posted by GTO

Would strongly recommend not doing this. Storage space is cheaper than coffee today. Never know when you might want to blow up a picture or view it on your high res screen / TV.

In the last few years, we framed up a lot of family images and I was so glad to have stored files in the original resolution.

Agree on not resizing part.

However, Photos straight from camera can be compressed much more effectively.

There are tools like JPEGmini, ImageOptim or Sqoosh to help with this - the reduced size makes backing up over network quite easy.

[Thad E Ginathom]

Originally Posted by sukhbirST

I prefer keeping back up on additional/duplicate hard drives apart from desktop and laptops.

It's essential!

Believe in privacy more than cloud storage. Heard lot of stories where nominees are made to run around for rights.

I'm not too concerned about the privacy aspects, although I might get so if I investigate further!

What concerns me is availability. This just cannot be guaranteed. Even the biggest companies in the world can have reliability issues, either their own or network access problems. Even the biggest companies in the world can make stupid mistakes too, eg, twenty or twenty-five or so years ago, microsoft forgot to renew its domain name.

Although the urgency is more for commercial users, when you need a backup copy you need it now.

Also speed or network issues are there in small towns.

Until the last year or so, not only the cost, but the bandwidth made it really impossible for me to consider a full system cost. I had 40Mb/second. Now I have 200, that full back-up is feasible. Despite all my reservations about cloud storage/services, I would still love to have such a backup. Just, I won't throw away my own physical copies!

[vinya_jag]

Well, I do have done the hard drive save of most, and have some CD ROMs that house photos from 2005-6 ish times. Those were my first camera days. However, We have prints of my favs from each trip. Every year, we take prints of some of the nicer snaps. Sometimes, they run into 100+ photos.
Earlier they would cost 5-6 rupees but now have gone higher. G K Vale would give albums, but have stopped now, to save on plastic. So had to resort to some old style album on our recent set.

It is sometimes nice to show all the old snaps to growing kids. Each time they see, you will see a new expression. We also hang these up on some of our self made wall photo hangers.

The amount of digital data we are creating is seriously harming the planet in its own way, so I do care about the paper wasted or the plastic in those albums. And yes, no extra data storage for me. I have disabled uploading and backing up iPhone photos and videos. They stay on the phone, and then to a hard drive.

And the last thought, these digital photos are gone with us. I don’t think we have thought about what we do with these password locked digital accounts after us.

[C300]

Originally Posted by SmartCat

.

Attachment 2381060

Any feedback on photo printers this? Realistically, how many photos can be printed with one cartridge? Is the printer ink reasonably priced or a rip-off? How is the quality of prints? Is print paper easily available?

Yes, I know one could take photos in an USB stick, go to the nearest photo studio and get prints done for Rs. 10 per photo. But this has always been in my to-do list and I've never got it done. Perhaps having this printer at home will probably get me to take prints often.

Epson is reliable photo printer. We are using L805 for the past 4 yrs as a photo and document printer. Zero issues so far. It's still running on stock ink. It's a workhorse. Make sure you use good quality photo paper. I prefer Epson paper.

Looks like printer prices have gone through the roof. L805 was 18k in 2018.

[vajoji]

Call me old fashioned, but the 3-2-1 backup strategy is what I still follow.

It means having at least three copies of your data, two local (Onsite - Typically 2 different physical storage media/devices), and at least one copy off-site (Here I use onedrive since it comes bundled with MS365)

Before I move to backup I use DuplicateFileFinder (mac) to eliminate duplicates and similar looking photos.

[Thad E Ginathom]

Prints are lovely. But they are absolutely not any form of backup.

[shipnil]

I was exactly contemplating about this for last 2 - 3 weeks and had posted couple of queries on routers thread as well as on the Cloud thread of the forum.

My current setup. I have tried to maintain one copy of the photos and pictures on a laptop and another on an external hard drive. Every few months I'd copy files from phone / camera onto these two devices. But it was manual process besides it involved pulling out the laptop and HDD, sometimes it'd get postponed many months. Also, this doesn't allow access to your files from anywhere.

Alternatives thought of. First option I tried was to setup home cloud which I could use to sync as well as access the files. I was able to do this using my current router and external HDD. But access to it was unreliable. Through some service providers' wifi, I was able to access it while through others I couldn't. Hence decided to not pursue further.

The next option was to go with the one local HDD backup and one cloud backup. So I started exploring cloud options.

With cloud, I evaluated them on following points.
1. Cost: I feel once someone goes the cloud backup subscription way, it is going to be a recurring cost as you may never go back with only physical copies, unlike other OTT subscriptions which you can discontinue
2. Upload speed: The upload speeds should be excellent. The photos maynot take a long time but all of us also have videos and they might take long time to upload if the speed is not good. Some comments on our Team-BHP cloud thread have negative feedback on Google cloud on this aspect.
3. Ease of use: I have considered this but should have focussed more on. I'd elaborate on this in Idrive review.

Google Drive:
This failed the upload speed test. It maxed out 1.5 MBps while my 40 Mbps connection theoretically allowed 5 MBps. It has 200 Gb plan which would have been sufficient for me but I'd have had to subscribe to it's 1Tb plan after that which at 6k per year I find expensive.

Onedrive:
This had best upload speed, touching 4 to 4.5 MBps, but it had 100Gb or 1 Tb plan. Nothing in between. 1 Tb at Rs. 4800 was at the middle. It's family plan is the best what with upto 6 users getting 1 Tb cloud as well as subscription to Office 365 apps. On the MS website it costs 6200 but you can buy the keys on Amazon at about 5200.

Idrive:
So I was going through various comparisons and reviews on the web and came across multiple favourable reviews for this cloud service. It's upload speed was about 3.5 to 4 MBps, using my 40 mbps connection.

It's individual plans had wide data storage sizes available like 100 Gb, 500 Gb, 1 Tb and 2 Tb. 500 Gb is for 10 USD p.a. while 1 Tb is for 20 USD so with current exchange rate, it would be 1600 per year. Also, for first year it offers 50% discount on subscription fees. And if you are subscriber of any other cloud, this discount goes 90%. Basically the 1 Tb plan costs 160 only for first year. I signed up for this one.

About features, over and above Cloud Drive, it also has device backup facility. In fact it's primary feature is backup only. You can have all your phones, tablets, computers backed up with few clicks.

Ease of use. This is where I faced some issues. May be the setup I tried to do was a bit uncommon. Usually the way people use the cloud service is to create a drive in their laptop and use the sync feature of respective cloud services like Google Drive, One Drive etc. Idrive too has it. But I did not want to bring laptop here. Rather what I wanted to do is to have external HDD (my local copy) connected to router and copy the files using to IDrives' Cloud Drive using the my phone or tablet. Unfortunately their own app for tablet / phone does not detect router connected HDDs. This is same even for Google Drive and One Drive. But where Google Drive and OneDrive come on top is when one uses File Manager apps from Google Playstore. Many file manager apps allow you to link your Google Drives /OneDrives as folders and then it is matter of copy pasting the files from HDD. I tried many file managers but none had Idrive. Some of them had support for upto 10 different cloud providers but Idrive wasn't one of them. I had to use laptop only to upload/sync.

The reason for using the external HDD connected to router method was to remove hassle of taking laptop as well as HDD out and then doing the sync. With work laptop, the usage of personal laptop has gone down so much that it is mostly lying in drawer.

[SS-Traveller]

Not sure of the pros and cons, but I often dump my pictures into a Facebook album that is visible to only me, apart from having the original on an external HDD.

[MahiDesai]

The app is free to download (5 GB storage) but I'm currently paying Rs. 5k per year (because I get to use MS Office on multiple devices + I get 1000 GB Onedrive space). Along with the photos, there is room for my entire MP3 collection too.

Hi Smartcat,

I also use the 5K+ Subscription of Microsoft Office and its not just 1Tb, but you will get upto 6Tb worth of storage space.

You can pretty much distribute your data strategically into 6 Microsoft Account. Let me explain.

1. You will have a primary Outlook.com where you can store all of your Pictures, Personal Documents, Scanned Image PDF files and you can also Configure your Android / iPhone to sync all your camera roll photos automatically.

2. You can create another account for spouse and there also you will get 1Tb where you can chose to sync/share photos from your primary account (kinda DR copy if you like)

3. You can create a generic account where you can keep Videos that can be streamed onto your home TV using the CAST applications. Typically these are like family functions, old videos from your DVD collection, marriage DVD's and so on.

4. You can have 2 accounts given out to both of your kids with 1Tb storage each for storing all the school syllabus, their project work and so on.

All in all, I find this Microsoft Office Premium very useful and complete VFM.

The OneDrive App on your mobile is intelligent enough to bring up your pictures like "1 Year, 2 Year, 5 Years ago --- on this date" and so on and it brings up those old memories to life.

Hope that helps.

Cheers
Mahi

[NerdyMillennial]

I strongly believe that multiple backups spread over various media and different cloud services is a must. Though my exact setup might be too much of an overkill for most, I recommend the combination of multiple external drives in rotation + a cloud service as a backup solution for data that you simply cannot afford to lose. Here is what my backup plan looks like.

Storage media and cloud services I use:
- Synology NAS running in RAID 5.
- Dropbox
- Google Drive
- iCloud

Photos and videos from my phone are backed up instantly to iCloud. Then once a week, I open the Synology NAS app on my phone and it automatically adds all the new photos to the backup pool on my NAS.

For photos from my camera which initially live on my computer, the photos that I am working on or which have been just downloaded are synced in real time to both iCloud and Synology NAS. After I am done working on them, I move them to a folder which only syncs with the NAS.

Most folders of my computer sync with the NAS in real time as well. So my work, documents etc is covered in this.

Once all the data is on the NAS, it is set to upload the latest changes to both Dropbox and Google drive instantly.

[anand.shankar]

Slightly off-topic, do we have any good De-Dupe s/w that will help identify all the duplicate pics irrespective of the file name ?

[NaXal]

Hello,

Originally Posted by anand.shankar

Slightly off-topic, do we have any good De-Dupe s/w that will help identify all the duplicate pics irrespective of the file name ?

Under my setup, both NextCloud and PhotoPrism has that ability. It will go via hash value so file name or meta doesn't matter. In case of NextCloud, one needs to manually enable that but PhotoPrism does that automatically with it's indexing. However, with of PhotoPrism too, in case you want to remove files, you have to manually enable that !!

Thanks.