Backing up

In a comment on a recent post someone mentioned backing up files. He is right, backing up your files, whether photos or other documents is a good safety measure. I have had an occasional hard drive fail, and I have had a couple of laptops stolen. Luckily in both cases I was able to recover almost everything from backups. The traditional backup strategy is often described as a 3-2-1. Three copies of every file, Two different media types, and one kept off site. This is very good advice made by people much smarter than me. However I am lazy and opinionated, so I have my own method… 😉 I do actually have at least two copies of all files. As described here, I have various workflow copies of each image. I also copy my whole pictures directory chain to my NAS with RAID*. I also copy my directory to an external hard drive. Where I differ is in my opinion of CD/DVD/Blueray backups. I really don’t think they are worth it. Optical media are too fragile, too small in capacity, too hard to store, too hard to catalogue, too expensive per gigabyte….. In other words, I see no advantage over a USB drive. *There are a number of retail Network Access Servers available, but I made my own with an old discarded computer and a bunch of drives by installing Ubuntu Server. Follow the links to learn more…. lots more….