How do you manage/backup your photos?

[fourstringfletch]

I'm on a mission to streamline my photo/video library. I've organized my photos in sub-folders by year for over a decade now, and it'd like to improve my access to this library.

Setting up my new business laptop got me doing some research, but there are so many options that I'd thought I'd share my findings and tap the talented minds here.

My goals:

- access my photo/video library from laptop and desktop, with viewing ability on a smartphone as a less important bonus
- no need for a built in editor. something that syncs with a local folder like dropbox or drive would be ideal since I'll be editing and viewing within lightroom or lightzone.
- I'm not a big conspiracy theorist, but I hesitate to give every photo I've ever taken to google and the like. smugmug is appealing for this reason as a solution for/by professionals.
- I do have a 100GB dropbox account, but need several times that much storage.
- full access is key in the event of a backup crisis - full resolution downloads are often limited or worse: paid by the CD (shutterfly).

Here's a good summary, though Everpix is now defunct.



Finally, some thoughts on how I might make dropbox work here.

Anyone else care about this stuff?

 

[sickchilly]

I use Lightroom on my MacBook Pro. The library (and entire Mac) is backed up automatically via Time Machine and an AirPort Extreme when I'm on the home wireless network. I manually backup my library a couple times a month to an external 3 TB drive. I've been fairly selective about which files I keep, so my library of the last 9 years is only about 70 GB now. That's just the RAW files, doesn't count comps, HDRs, posted or published TIFs and JPGs, etc. I keep my "portfolio" in iPhoto as full-res JPGs. I do this because iPhoto makes it so easy to share with various services, sync to my iPhone and iPad, as well as make books, burn discs, make movies, etc. for family and friends.

For quasi-mobile access of your Lightroom library, check out:
http://www.mosaicarchive.com

Or wait for Adobe to come out with Lightroom Mobile. They should be releasing it sometime this year.

 

[raysuf]

My organization is hap hazard in iPhoto. I have been using Smugmug since 2005 for access to my photo's on the web, Carbonite, for the last 4 years, for online back up for all my files on my laptop and Time Machine in my airport extreme for onsite backup.

 

[pugslyyy]

I use BitTorrent sync to mirror between my computers/mobile devices for redundancy / ease of access (my desktop, laptop, phone, ipad, etc always run the same dataset) and back up everything to the cloud with backblaze.

Backblaze will let you download whatever you want, and in the event of a castastrophic recovery environment that would make downloading an inefficient solution (say a Terabyte or more) will even send/sell you a hard drive with all your files on it

 

[grogie]

I use Aperture on my MacBook, and I also use Time Machine to back it up (which is to an external hard drive). I also have a secondary hard drive that I make a second copy of on a yearly basis. This hard drive is usually kept away from home incase there was a fire or theft.

As far as online, I have a Smugmug account for family and friends. It's a great service and worth paying for, plus they have an iPhone app.

For posting photos on forums, I was using Mejuba, which today I received an email that their shutting down end of this month. I also have a ImageShack account, but now they've gone to a $20 a year subscription.

 

[86tuning]

No mention of hardware? I'm setting up a NAS for the home office, and will burn physical backups to disc and store offsite. Not interested in net access to my pics. I may select some for an album on my phone or tablet, but not for the bulk of the images.

 

[sickchilly]

If you use a Mac, you can't beat the simplicity and reliability of an Airport Extreme with USB hard drives hanging off it. It just works and it works well.

If you're multi-platform, or have some other advanced needs like RAID, hot swapping, redundancy, etc. then I'd look at the Synology NAS systems.