What’s a practical backup strategy for RAW photos on a laptop with limited storage?
Asked 1/2/2011
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2 answers
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I shoot RAW and keep my photo library on a laptop, so local disk space is limited. I currently have around 40GB of photos and want a backup approach that is reliable but low-effort. Burning DVDs feels cumbersome, and I’ve had an external hard drive fail before, so I’m hesitant to rely on a single drive. Online backup is another option, but I’m concerned about cost and setup. Ideally, the solution should work well on Linux and be easy to keep in sync. What backup strategy would you recommend, and should I combine local and offsite backups?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
15y ago
2 Answers
9
You have to have an onsite solution (easy, quick and cheap) and also an offsite storage (if something happens to your house (flooding, fire, robbery), you lose everything).
The onsite solution is easy. As said, external drives are the best, you will then have tons of applications to help you synchronise this. Avoid manual backups as you'll end up forgetting this and realize it when you'll need to recover the files.
For the offsite solution, I went to Amazon S3. It's extremely reliable and quite cheap. Check their pricing. at the end, this small fee is nothing to keep your most important files secure. From their monthly fee calculator, storing 40GB will be around 5$ a month. You'll also have to pay an even smaller fee for transfers (uploading a GB is 0.10$).
It will be the equivalent of a sandwich per month to keep your files secure and always available in case of issues with your laptop and onsite storage.
Originally by user2807. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user2807
15y ago
0
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A good approach is to use both onsite and offsite backups.
For onsite backup, external hard drives are the most practical and economical choice. One drive failure doesn’t mean the idea is bad—it means you shouldn’t rely on only one copy. Using two drives is a strong option: keep one as your local backup and another offsite in case of theft, fire, or flood. Automating syncing is important so you don’t forget.
For offsite backup, online storage is the main alternative. Services like Amazon S3 were suggested as relatively affordable for around 40GB, though they may require you to handle syncing yourself. Dropbox-style services can be simpler because they do incremental syncing automatically, but may cost more.
Under Linux, two hard disks plus simple scripting can work very well and stay low-maintenance. A practical setup is:
- keep your working copy on the laptop
- back up automatically to an external drive
- keep a second backup copy offsite, either on another drive rotated periodically or in cloud storage
In short: don’t choose between external drive and offsite backup—use both.
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