Photo Backup ?

[Clip]

I have a ton of photos! Well over 100,000. I have been trying to organize them into folders specific to family or family group for birds plus one each for Mammals, Landscapes, Insects...Thus I'm increasing the number of photos...I'm terrible about deleting bad photos. Any way my computer is really old and I want to be able to backup my photos regualrly. I do not want a cloud account. I recently purchased a 2 terabyte backup thingy. It says it is full already and it doesn't include much of the recent organizing I have done. So I'm wondering what others do that also have a ton of photos? As you can tell from my use of the technical term "thingy" I am not very tech savvy so it needs to be user friendly. I also don't want to spend a lot. Suggestions please and thank you!

[meghann]

I had one of those two terabyte "thingies", and it went bad.

How many Terabytes is your computer? Without going cloud, your best best may be just to either get a ton of thingies or just get a new computer, and either just use the new one for pic storage, or use it as your computer and use the old one for storage, updating and checking on it regularly.

 

Photo hoarding is a photographer's dilemma, and birding makes it worse!

[lonestranger]

I'm not one to take advise from since I seem to be in the same boat but I'll share my thoughts. I don't know if I have hit the 100,000 mark yet, but I know that I had over 50,000 photos from just one of the four cameras I have used in the past 15ish years since I first picked up a camera. I have filled a 2TB external hard drive, that back up thingy, with photos and am in need of another storage device. I could go through old photos and delete those that aren't worth keeping and probably end up with 1.75TB of new storage space but I am a packrat with my photos and hang on to the old garbage for some stupid reason. Since I haven't gotten around to buying a new storage device yet, I have resorted to deleting some of the recent photos on my computer so I can make room to process(look at) the newer photos that keep accumulating on the cameras' memory cards. I keep wondering about my method because I seldom review old photos on the external storage drive because I usually keep a copy of the real keepers stored on the computer and online, so I wonder why I bother to keep the old ones if I don't even look through them anymore. There's only been two occasions that I can recall where I went back to the original photo on the backup drive and reworked the photo in post processing. Those two occasions don't seem like reason enough to keep thousands and thousands of photos, but I'm keeping them anyway. I think at this point in the game, sorting through my photos and organizing them isn't really an option, and I have already regretted deleting recent photos when I had mistakenly resized a group of images to save disk space and deleted the originals before I had cropped the images, so I think I will just lay out the money and get another external 2TB storage device and keep ALL my photos, the good, the bad, and the ugly. ?

 I just looked to see the current prices and the 4TB version of my 2TB external hard drive is only $115cdn with 1TB Solid State Drives running around $200cdn. 

 

Edited September 23, 2021 by lonestranger
Operator error

[Clip]

56 minutes ago, lonestranger said:

I'm not one to take advise from since I seem to be in the same boat but I'll share my thoughts. I don't know if I have hit the 100,000 mark yet, but I know that I had over 50,000 photos from just one of the four cameras I have used in the past 15ish years since I first picked up a camera. I have filled a 2TB external hard drive, that back up thingy, with photos and am in need of another storage device. I could go through old photos and delete those that aren't worth keeping and probably end up with 1.75TB of new storage space but I am a packrat with my photos and hang on to the old garbage for some stupid reason. Since I haven't gotten around to buying a new storage device yet, I have resorted to deleting some of the recent photos on my computer so I can make room to process(look at) the newer photos that keep accumulating on the cameras' memory cards. I keep wondering about my method because I seldom review old photos on the external storage drive because I usually keep a copy of the real keepers stored on the computer and online, so I wonder why I bother to keep the old ones if I don't even look through them anymore. There's only been two occasions that I can recall where I went back to the original photo on the backup drive and reworked the photo in post processing. Those two occasions don't seem like reason enough to keep thousands and thousands of photos, but I'm keeping them anyway. I think at this point in the game, sorting through my photos and organizing them isn't really an option, and I have already regretted deleting recent photos when I had mistakenly resized a group of images to save disk space and deleted the originals before I had cropped the images, so I think I will just lay out the money and get another external 2TB storage device and keep ALL my photos, the good, the bad, and the ugly. ?

 I just looked to see the current prices and the 4TB version of my 2TB external hard drive is only $115cdn with 1TB Solid State Drives running around $200cdn. 

 

I have gone through some of my oldest photos and deleted some of the bad ones. I have had occasion to revisit old photos so I do like to keep them even if I have gone through them and picked out better ones to put into files. I like the "other photos" the ones not good enough to move because they often give me location information I may not remember without the photographic clues. I like your is "only" $115cdn. Gosh that seems like a lot to me. Maybe because I'm old.

Like you I do hoard photos. I still have all my memory cards. I do erase bad photos from them so I can more out of them though. So there is no real fear of losing my photos just of losing the work getting them into specific file folders.  

[lonestranger]

7 minutes ago, Clip said:

I like your is "only" $115cdn. Gosh that seems like a lot to me. Maybe because I'm old.

I used the word "only" because my 2TB external hard drive cost me $120 when I bought it. If price is an issue, USB flash drives are considerably cheaper and even come in 2TB sizes for under $40. Not sure about the quality but they're definitely a cheaper alternative.

[The Bird Nuts]

External hard drives ("thingies" ?) are very quickly getting cheaper with more storage.  Mine is a 4TB with an external power source so it doesn't depend on my computer for power.  On Windows 7, 8, and 10, you can set it up so that it backs up everything automatically.  That's what I did until my computer started acting up...

I delete a lot more photos than I used to.  Newer cameras take larger photos.

[Clip]

16 hours ago, The Bird Nuts said:

External hard drives ("thingies" ?) are very quickly getting cheaper with more storage.  Mine is a 4TB with an external power source so it doesn't depend on my computer for power.  On Windows 7, 8, and 10, you can set it up so that it backs up everything automatically.  That's what I did until my computer started acting up...

I delete a lot more photos than I used to.  Newer cameras take larger photos.

My external hard drive that is full could be scheduled also and I had it scheduled but then it filled up after just a couple of days. As I said I have the memory cards for all my photos so I'm good there. I want to backup work done organizing them. But this Thingy didn't give you the option to do just those folders you had to do all the Pictures. Which is why it filled up so fast.

[Clip]

19 hours ago, meghann said:

How many Terabytes is your computer?

I have no idea.

[The Bird Nuts]

1 hour ago, Clip said:

My external hard drive that is full could be scheduled also and I had it scheduled but then it filled up after just a couple of days. As I said I have the memory cards for all my photos so I'm good there. I want to backup work done organizing them. But this Thingy didn't give you the option to do just those folders you had to do all the Pictures. Which is why it filled up so fast.

Are you using Windows?  I can choose which folders it automatically backs up in Backup Settings.

[Clip]

1 hour ago, The Bird Nuts said:

Are you using Windows?  I can choose which folders it automatically backs up in Backup Settings.

I do have Windows 7. I know I know I should be in 10 and I tried years ago but it screwed up my whole computer. I tried 3 times with the same result. It was horrible. Any way I just ordered a 2 TB Flash Drive. I have been able to choose files on those before. I'm hoping this is my solution. 2TB I would think should be enough for just the organize file folders. At least for awhile. As for choosing on this external hard drive I even ask the Geek Squad at Best Buy about it and they said no you had to do all the photos. It only did whole categories. 

[Charlie Spencer]

As a network administrator, I advise against using flash drives and memory cards for long term storage.  They're not reliable over a few years, and they're too easy to lose.   If these photos really matter that much to you, I recommend spending the $150+ or so for an external hard drive.

But flash driver or full external hard drive, remember that all you've bought is storage.  You haven't bought any backup capability.  If something happens to your chosen storage device, you're going to lose everything on it.  The best way to protect your data in the long run is to have a second copy.  The easiest ways to do that are either to pay for a cloud storage service (you're not going to get two terabytes for free), or to buy a second external hard drive and copy the first drive to it.  If you go with duplicating your files on a second drive, you'll have to recopy the first drive periodically.  How often is up to you, based on how often you add new data to the first drive.  I also strongly recommend storing the second drive away from the first one, either at work or with a family member or friend.