How do you back up?

[vickiz]

I burn a disc when I get home from a session. I back up off site to Mozy. I had a external drive and it failed! Now I just back up to Mozy and have a hard copy here at home . . .

[lkeeney]

I think I have probably mentioned this here before, but as soon as I finish a shoot, I use Lightroom to transfer all my files to a network connected HP MediaSmart Server. Once they are on the server, I copy them to two network connected drive system, one is a four disk Drobo, and the other is an older 4 disk system called the Yellow Machine.

I never store my original image files on my computer. I use Lightroom and Photoshop to process my images and I store them back on the HP MedisSmart Server. Once I get all the images processed, I store the processed files on the second two network connected devices too.

I back up my computers to my HP MediaSmart server about every two weeks.

[rrmueller]

I back up to an external HD and then to a DVD. I've had external HD's fail and am always thankful to have images on DVD.

[Mark Harper]

Originally Posted by InnerVisionImages

I use two pieces of software to handle my data management. The first is Downloader Pro. During the process of downloading images from cards it make two copies of the images. One copy is on an external drive which serves as my work in progress. The second copy is made on one of four 1TB internal system drives.

Each night at 11:55 pm the second piece of software, Bounce Back Pro begins the process of backing up all 4 of the 1 TB drives to a 2TB removeable drive. Yes, I know that 4 1TB drives will not fit on a 2TB drive. The one's never get that full.

Each morning, we switch the 2 TB drive with another that's stored in the fire safe. At worst, we lose one days worth of data.

This is very similar to my process, and I do make use of a fire safe for onsight storage. You may want to investigate an off site solution as well. I've seen the contents of two different fire safes after fires and they didn't fare to well. Paper was burnt beyond use and metal objects were melted as well. Seems these safes were only fire rated for 30 minutes and the fires lasted longer then that. Now I store one backup copy off site and rotate every week.