How are you storing your digital images and what/ how many backup methods do you use?

It kind of depends on who much data we are talking about.
Keep in mind you will have completely update all of your data when formats change and evolve.
I still have some photos on floppy disks that even if I bought a floppy drive I would have to find a windows 98 system to run the program to view them. I also have some photos in .ufo format that was a ulead program. So you have to keep updating all of you data. It will never end.

If you dont have a ton of data puting it on a external hard drive AND then copies to DVD's is a solution. I have external drives redundant in storage so that even if the house burns I still have (most) of my photos.

I am not talking about western digital or walmart drives Those will fail not if but when.
While I was in photography school we had about 30% complete drive failures on that type of drive in three months.
I know an indi film maker that recommended CalDigit drives. They were going through terabytes of data every day with no problems. I have used mine for 5 years now as a daily working drive and have others for permeant redundant storage. (check amazon)

Lots of people are going to "cloud" storage while I see the attraction of being able to access the body of your work from about anywhere I am leery of having my work out of my control, hacks aside, I have seen photo storage site go out of business with little or no warning. Remember yahoo photos? My employer has some of its storage on flicker for public access to the photos. I have noticed in the last two years that there have been increasing issues with flicker that I think have to do with it falling out of favour with the younger users, and that means less money in and less money for upgrades and newer servers. One day it wont be profitable and it will go away.

OK, long answer there, so buy a good external drive. buy as large and as new (fast) as you can and your computer will handle. Use it for your archives. have a second day to day drive that you transfer data from it to the archive drive. Once the archive drive is full move it off site.
Start again.

When the formats and software change, convert them all again. or be sitting on photos in floppy disks.

SSD (solid state drives) seem to be the next wave, but are to expensive right now. Two years or so from now they will be the new normal.

Google docs, i.e., the cloud.

Let me add that with the advancement of drives I can usually take all of the data of the full drive I am replacing and copy all of its data in about 20-25% of the room on the new drive.
I store the old drive and still have all of that data on the new larger drive.

If a picture is really important and worth keeping I make a print of it.

I need to do this. I've printed exactly one photo that I have taken.

I had a 3tb seagate bite the dust the 3rd time I used it.....fun

I generally keep my digital files 1tb drives and then migrate them from time to time to new drives; particularly as storage gets cheaper. But for the really important pictures, I print them 5x7 or 8x10 and store them in acid-free print boxes. If I ever need a digital version for sharing, I can scan the print.

I put about 80 GB of photos onto an extHD. Should I put them on a second to guard against one taking a dump?

I need to take time to go through the files and delete pics not really worth keeping and printing the really good or important ones. Maybe next summer as I watch grass grow.

I think putting them on DVDs is about as much fun.



Reco a high quality xHD? I'm using a Maxtor now.

At 80gb I'd put them on a 128mb memory stick rather than a drive. Solid state devices tend to be more reliable than spinning disk hard drives.

How do you fit 80gb on a 128mb memory stick?
That would be one big pile of memory sticks.

Yea, like 625...

I back mine up with a very large USB/FW drive.

Ha, good catch. I meant 128gb memory sticks. They're about 30 bucks at Amazon. Only downside is the relatively slow USB 2.0 connection.

The Maxtor I'm using is SSD.
The stick idea has some merit. I thought of that but didn't know they were made at that capacity. Don't see that size locally.

I'm a hobbyist and rarely shoot RAW pics so I don't need near as much storage as a professional. That being said, I use my laptop and have two additional external Toshiba HDs (will have to check out those Cal Digit drives though ). I back up to one external daily/weekly and the 2nd on a monthly/quarterly basis (or shortly after any special event like a bday/xmas). I currently keep the 2nd external drive in my fire-proof Ft. Knox but am planning on moving to a safe deposit box at my bank soon to guard against theft, flood or a really bad fire.....

This is one of those things where two is one and one is none.

I gave a talk on this and told them that if they wanted their grandchildren to see their wedding photos they needed to have them printed by a pro shop, or be ready to change electronic formats every time there was a new standard.

I just looked at the work drive I have here,a weekly paper, and since Oct 2013 I have 57,615 photos. Mostly RAW. These are all archived on another (caldigit) drive.

SSD will be my next go to. I saw OWC had a SSD thumb drive that holds 480GB but it is $280. Too much for me to jump on now, but it shows where things are headed.

Someone said that this generation is the most photographed of all time, and when they are old they will have no photographs to show.