Back up your photos - a suggested method

[Bharat Varma]

So this is what I NOW use - used to use a bunch of external disks + DVDs + Cloud. Now:

1. First thing is to copy the SD card into 2 places - in my case, 2 computers (Comp A and Comp B)
2. I then sort through them (on Comp A) and delete the ones that are obviously bad.
3. Then I copy the data from Comp A onto a NAS drive set up for mirroring - well it's set to do an incremental backup at a press of a button.
4. Then burn a blu-ray disk (just as I feel that they're more stable than DVDs and heck, they store a LOT more)
5. Then delete data from Comp B (my data is now on my comp HDD, mirrored on 2 disks on the NAS and is on Blu Ray
6. I continue to work off Comp A and cull a lot more (which then gets replicated on the NAS)
7. My final "keepers" get pushed onto the cloud

Never thought of blu-ray disks for long term storage. Sounds great.

How reliable have you found the blu-ray disks?
Ever checked the integrity of the data immediately after the write?
The oldest blu-ray disk that you've recorded and it's integrity?
Which one's are you using - 25GB or more?

Recommendations for a good blu-ray writer and good, reliable media please.

[MayaV]

So this is what I NOW use - used to use a bunch of external disks + DVDs + Cloud. Now:

1. First thing is to copy the SD card into 2 places - in my case, 2 computers (Comp A and Comp B)
2. I then sort through them (on Comp A) and delete the ones that are obviously bad.
3. Then I copy the data from Comp A onto a NAS drive set up for mirroring - well it's set to do an incremental backup at a press of a button.
4. Then burn a blu-ray disk (just as I feel that they're more stable than DVDs and heck, they store a LOT more)
5. Then delete data from Comp B (my data is now on my comp HDD, mirrored on 2 disks on the NAS and is on Blu Ray
6. I continue to work off Comp A and cull a lot more (which then gets replicated on the NAS)
7. My final "keepers" get pushed onto the cloud

Now that quite a heck of a backup plan.

Vikram, could you share some economical cloud plans, if you have searched them.

Thanks

Vivek

[Hyperdrive]

This is what I do for my data:

a) 1st level of back up is to a separate backup internal hard disk that uses Windows file history to backup every hour.
b) 2nd level to an external RAID enclosure via a continuous data backup (CDB) software AND a data synching software. One such enclosure is marked as an offsite backup.
c) 3rd level to another PC on my home network.
d) 4th level to a NAS enclosure on the network, set up for manual data synch.

I don't use optical media as they are slow. My Blu ray & DVD writers are mostly used for read only functions and once in a while to create audio CDs

I may be interested in cloud. Interestingly MS has been giving out unlimited space on their OneDrive cloud storage to some Office 2013/365 users. Just got a notification today.

My choice of cloud for non critical data is Dropbox though I have been a wary of putting up personal data on the internet.