Hi all. I've been trying to get into a routine of backing up my computer data on a consistent basis, and I'm wondering what methods my fellow creative-types use.
I know there are services like Carbonite that automatically back up a computer over the internet, but it doesn't really work for folks like me who routinely create multi-gigabyte Photoshop art or video editing files that are too massive for an online backup service to handle.
For now, I've been alternating between a couple external harddrives and burning to DVD for smaller projects. I'm tempted to buy a Blu-Ray recorder just for backup purposes, but I'm still not convinced how long a home-burned disc will last for archiving purposes.
But enough about me. What backup strategies do the rest of you use?
Replies
Keeping more than one backup so one of them can be off-site away from the others is actually a great idea. (There was a news story a few years back of how Francis Ford Coppola kept extensive backups of all his creative work on multiple external hard drives... all of which were stored in his home office, and all of which were stolen along with his computer when his home was burglarized. Ouch.)
For offsite backup, there's free online storage from sites like Microsoft's Skydrive (25 GB free storage) or Amazon.com's cloud drive (5GB free storage, with limited time offer of an additional 20GB free with music purchase). Online word processing suites like Google Docs or Zoho.com also offer a couple gigs of free storage/editing of document files. All of which is helpful for those of us who are writers and just need to backup our scriptwriting projects... but they aren't so helpful when we're also trying to back up massive Photoshop files and other graphics for our comic book self-publishing projects. For that stuff, it seems like I'm stuck with external hard drives as the most practical option.
Ijust back up to an external hard drive using time machine on my Mac. I should probably do better than that. I've been thinking about buying another hard drive to back up to weekly or something, and keep it at one of my relatives places in case my house ever burns down or something, ha ha.
I dunno, I'd be interested to hear some of the other artists answers too.
I save everything on disk and flash drive. If you have a website you can save it on the ftp site too, though if something happens to the hoster then you're dead. My computer saves stuff automatically with NOrton. BUt I had a computer burn out because of a storm and I had a virus take my computer out. It's best just to have you're own stuff to pull out later. I even still have stuff on zip disk. lol.
I don't know a disk life, but I would think as long as it doesn't get scratched up it's fine. I wonder what the life of a flash drive is.