[Pixalo]

One-third of digital camera users in the UK do not back up their photographs, a survey reveals.

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[Dave]

...that includes me

[stepheno]

Naughty, naughty!

[Toonie]

I don't know how you sleep at night Dave, I'm a belt & braces back up junkie.About every four months I copy everything to dvd's, It takes about two hours & costs about £4, Money very well spent don't you think ? Acdsee lets you copy all images in a folder & sub folders ie My Pictures & I just keep feeding the thing dvd's until it's finished (18 the last time) Good quality Infiniti disc's cost about £6.50 for 25 & burn at 16 speed. I should hate to loose ANY of my images just because Mr Gates' software decides to throw a wobbly.

[Dave]

OK OK , you've convinced me....just backed up all photos to seperate hard disk

[RichB]

Knowing Dave's work background, he really should be embarrassed, .....just too bad his ID pic is already red! Or is this why it's red?

Seriously though, digital imaging does introduce new problems in data integrity; film users have both prints and negatives, and I've probably got a few thousand of the latter, so can always go back to the negatives to create another print.

Digital camera users take a picture, transfer it to the PC, store it, sometimes print out the best ones; and you immediately have the problem of taking backups for protection in the event of the hardware problems; but also need to consider theft of the hardware, fire, and flooding (Dave can vouch for this one!). These backups are not just to separate media, but storing it somewhere completely separate to the source.

[Dabhand16]

You should be able to get decent, branded DVD's for about 20p each. Costco price for spindle of 50 Maxell is £10, This is also the going rate on the web. If you want jewel boxes to keep them in, you can get them in bulk (50) cheaply, but I use plastic sleeves that only cost pennies.

Beware that home burnt DVD's can deteriorate after around 5 years, moreso if not kept away from sunlight, so regular copying/checking is adviseable.

[VikingPhotography]

With HDD storeage capacity being at its lowest cost per GB for years, there's really no reason not to set up a mirrored RAID array in your computers.

On the offchance that there are less tech savvy people here:

A detailed guide to RAID technology

I use two RAID arrays in my PC; a RAID 0 array for things like games and software that I want to run quickly - for this I use a pair of 200GB S-ATA drives, acting effectively as one fast 400GB drive.

For my photo archive, I use a pair of 750GB S-ATA drives in RAID 1 array... anything written to archive drive is mirrored to an identical HDD.

My last line of defence (which is actually my first) is that all my shots are backed up in duplcate to DVD-R media. Whenever I get back from a critical shoot, the contents of my CF cards are copied to two different DVD discs. One stays in my house as on-site backup, the other goes to my brother-in-laws place as an off-site backup.

Oh, and at least once every two years you should refresh your optical back-ups to prevent data loss through media decay... transfer everything in duplicate to new media, then shred the old stuff once you've verified it's all okay.

[Angela]

I do back up to DVD-RW every few months but given that I've just bought a new camera and have taken a lot more photos recently, I really ought to back up more often.

[Angus]

This what I tend to do.
Make a slide show of about 60-80 pics with music on a DVD, and on a separate CD copy all the photo's I didn't use plus the executable file that launches the show, pack them all in a DVD case that takes 2 discs, and woila a self contained memory.
Cut & paste folder with all relevant pictures etc, onto one of my spare desktop hardrives, must admit I don't store a copy at friends/parents/grandmothers/bank, so failing really, but I think I back up enough.

ps. I do believe this is not my first posting. Hello to everybody, I'm a complete camera nut

[stepheno]

Hi Angus, good to see you back. Your input is much appreciated.

[Dave]

Hi Angus, come on then share what camera stuff you have

[Angus]

Started in the 60's bought my first TTL SLR Pentax Spotmatic II (still have it), ahhhhhhhhhh and remember prime lenses, anyway over the years Minolta's, Ricoh & Yashica (compacts) Canon Z115 Zoom, My first Autofocus EOS 600 + Minolta Dynax 7000i, then the EOS 600 RT, EOS 10, Minolta 700si, and now I have EOS 10D, Fuji F10, Panasonic DMC-LC50, and arrived this morning the Canon Powershot A540, and believe or not I still have all of them, I know they wouldn't fetch much, but they are part of me and my misspent youth, I am now 58 yrs old, and I have took to Digital photography like a duck to water, because even in the early days when I used to develop my own photo's with my cheap Patterson equipment, and smelling the house out with chemicals, now I just live on the computer, trying to master photoshop, but I don't think I'll ever master photography. The reason for the 3 digital compacts is the Panny is only 3.2 Mb, The F10 lovely camera with ISO going to 1600 ( a bit noisy) but no Viewfinder and I thought I could adapt, but alas will only use it for indoors.
Sorry if anybody feels this thread is being hijacked, I'm just showing off.

[Dave]

OK, the statement "I'm a camera nut" has been justified Sometimes I wish I never sold my Olympus OM-1.....but then again some of this stuff can fetch reasonable money on EBAY