Rainy Lake Fishing and photo backup warning

[Dbl]

I just returned from a week of Rainy Lake fishing. Great week with good fishing but rainy, windy weather most of the week. I did take around 200 shots which are backed up on a portable hard drive nightly. Very sound strategy, but because I have little room left on my laptop that is the only place I had them for the week, which is not very sound strategy.

I got home to back up everything on two other drives and guess what happened to my three week old portable drive? Yep it died as soon as I plugged it in. All pictures gone, now it was not that big of a deal because all of the other photos besides my Rainy trip are backed up on multiple drives. As more people move into digital you need to think of what you are doing with your "negatives".

So here are a few photos from my trip that unfortunately are low-res but were uploaded during the week. Not the best PP job but that is all I got

Because these are low-res I will post them at smaller sizes.

#1

I blew this shot it was much better a few minutes before but my camera was tucked away to stay out of the rain.

#2

#3

The clouds were moving in and out shading and filling the shoreline with sunlight.

#4

And yes we did catch some fish.

#5

#6

And of course who could go on a fishing trip and not take a deer picture?

Again sorry for the low quality of the shots, but sometimes you just make due with what you have. Think of how you want to save your "photo albums".

[Steve Foss]

Good warning, Dan. And good pictures. That sunset one is a winner. Which one of the fishing pics is you?

[Dbl]

Somebody had to take all the pictures

[Swimmer]

Sorry about your loss. I like the rainbow!

[jonny_redhorse]

that deer shot is my favorite!...... jonny

[floating minnow]

Nice sunset Dbl.

I guess the right idea is to keep the photos multiple spots.I also keep my favorites on the CF cards.

[MT Net]

Nice pics of your trip. Too bad about your storage issue. Something everyons should think about.

[Dbl]

My own storage solution is a bit more cautious. I back up to a desktop, a laptop, a large external hard drive and a smaller portable hard drive. In addition I am building up an old computer to act as a server that will have a large hard drive for long term storage. I also use multiple location storage for photos that are used in a part-time business. Don't rely on your flash card memory to store, they fail with some regularity, plus you need the space to shoot more photos. After the photos are moved off the cards and backed up, I re-format the card in the camera to reduce errors.

I'm not that upset about the loss of a few hundred shots, but I would be worried about the loss of a few thousand. As those shooting digital can tell you it doesn't take long to accumulate a few thousand shots, this is not the film age! As always just some food for thought, your needs my be different, but take the time to back up what you value.

[Swimmer]

Dbl: great idea about using the "old" computer as a server. I suppose you could add a currently cheap large hardrive and this would be another tier of protection.

But first, tell me how to take photos that are worth saving? (JK).

[Steve Foss]

My routine is this. After shoot, download images to folder on desktop from card/card reader. Put card back in camera but do not erase. Sort images on desktop into species or topic folders with the date and the species/topic, discarding unsuitable images. Copy finished folders onto 280Gb supplemental hard drive. Burn finished folders onto CD or DVD. Then, with the folders in three places (hard drive, supplemental drive, CD/DVD), re-format the card. Then, to save main hard drive space, kill folders from desktop. As a second backup in case of fire, a second set of CDs/DVDs are made and stored in a different physical location (not in the house). My main working drive is the 280Gb when retrieving and manipulating photos, with the CD/DVD backups in my office as, uh, backups, and the backup/backups off the property as failsafes if everything else falls apart.

I use Lexar professional CF cards, and have been using Kingston's fastest, most durable 4Gb card for the last several months as well. In three years, I've never had one of these cards fail.

I actually have more cases of corrupted images on the 280Gb, which makes me dip into the CD/DVD backups now and then.