SD-Cards as Backup

[Steve Ash]

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With falling prices of sd-cards and fed up with concerns of failing hard drives I consider to utilize sd-cards as permanent backup storage. Thus I would use one card to shoot with once only, upload the images to a hard drive for further post processing and store the card in proper condition. The advantage would be the following

a) backup stored in solid state

backup distributed over small units

c) easy filing similar to film

d) may be more thoughtful shooting like when using film

e) filing system grows with number of sd-card but does not "overflow" like hard drives

 

Disadvantage:

a) higher costs

 

Is this idea completely crazy or do I miss a vital point? E.g. is the long term durability of sd cards as good as required and considered in this concept?

 

Any comment is highly appreciated.

 

Regards

Steve

[pop]

If I read you correctly, you propose keeping the image on the card where you originally took it and storing that card.

 

That's not a backup at all. That's just the original.

 

In order to be called a backup, there has to be at least one copy. The copies should be kept such that the same cause can not affect all copies.

 

Besides, your method would finding one particular shot or a number of shots with some common theme rather hard. You'd have to look at each card in turn.

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[Steve Ash]

Yes, I mean to not erase the original like everyone is doing but to keep the original as backup like a negative.

 

Filing, tagging etc can all be done on the main hard drive which I would consider as main working file. But in case of hard drive failure you would loose all your pp effort only.

 

If you integrate the card into the file name it would be easy to find the corresponding sd card in case needed.

 

Regards

Steve

[kcg]

Saving your original on a SD card is similiar to what I do. Only I use a recordable DVD. My originals are stored on the DVD and copies are stored on external HD. Since I only shoot raw, I also make jpg copies that are stored on another hard drive within a photo data base program ( I happen to like ACDsee photomanager). Backups of the photomanager program are also stored on an external HD. Works for me. Keywords within the photo manager allow me to quickly find out where a particular photo is stored.

Photos that are lost can never be recovered if you do not have backup. This is true whether you are a professional, or just a father taking pictures of your family or vacations. You can never have too much backup.

Edited February 21, 2010 by kcg

[griffster]

I also keep all SD cards and buy new ones when they're full. CD's only last so many years and when I started shooting I didn't have sufficient HD space. Now I have an external drive for all backups.

 

Does anybody know how long data can be saved on an SD card?

[Peyton Hoge]

I also keep all SD cards and buy new ones when they're full. CD's only last so many years and when I started shooting I didn't have sufficient HD space. Now I have an external drive for all backups.

 

Does anybody know how long data can be saved on an SD card?

 

I don't think anyone knows how long data can be saved on anything. We're still in the early years of digital.

[hoppyman]

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Hi Steve. Maybe a variation on your idea might be flash drives rather than SD cards?

You might be able to research life expectancies of the different media. Both types of media are vastly more expensive than HDDs though per GB.

I think that a better method is to back up your folders into a couple of different external hard drives and store them appropriately. If stored that way and not routinely spun up you should get very long lives from them.

[wattsy]

It's an interesting back-up strategy that I hadn't thought of doing. I don't have the data to support my thinking but I'd be very surprised if flash media like an SD card isn't significantly more secure than DVDs and CDs going forward. The latter are of course susceptible to dye degradation and other inherent chemical instabilities. Multiple hard disc storage (which is my current strategy) is obviously much cheaper than SD cards but, in relying on moving parts, the hard drives are not impervious to going bad in storage. They can also get to be a bit of a logistical pain unless you standardise on one type and have a clear back-up plan that migrates to bigger and bigger drives. My preference is to use portable hard drives because, as well as being smaller, they are bus powered and you don't need to be concerned with finding the right power adaptor and a spare wall plug. The pain with portable hard drives is that there are very few drives larger than 500GB in size.

 

The downsides to the SD-card as backup strategy is cost and having to have a decent filing system in place. The latter doesn't seem too onerous - print out laser contact sheets of the card contents and file with the card - but the cost aspect needs thinking about. At current UK prices, a bog standard cheapo Sandisk SD card costs about £3 or so per GB. Faster cards (which the M9 is fussy about) are about twice the cost. The costs are different depending upon whether you are shooting M8 or M9 and (for the latter) whether you shoot uncompressed or not. Assuming M9 and compressed you get around 50 shots or so per GB. Therefore, the cost of keeping say 10,000 shots (200GB) on SD cards will cost around £600 for cheap cards, £1200 for good cards. Double this cost if you shoot M9 uncompressed. The equivalent hard drive cost would be just under £50 for a single 250GB portable hard drive. Buy two of those drives (for even greater redundancy) for under £100. I think the maths still points strongly to hard drives as the most sensible back up strategy but it is an interesting question.

[usayit]

You should reconsider Hard Drives as a form of backup. They cost effective, reliable if stored and not spun up frequently. Consider something similar to this:

 

Thermaltakeusa»Storage»Docking Station

 

or

 

Voyager by NewerTech- Hard Drive Dock for 3.5" and 2.5" SATA Devices provides high-performance and flexibility

 

there are several others....

 

 

Buy several hard drives and put them into a rotation, keeping at least one of them offsite (I use work office).

 

If one reports any sign of problems, remove it from rotation and replace it. This assures that you always have more than one copy somewhere.

[kcg]

Western Digital Studio II, I believe available in 2TB and 4TB sizes work on both Mac and Window machines and can be configured in Raid 0 and Raid 1 configurations. On a 4TB drive a Raid 1 configuration will be like having 2 1TB drives and data stored on one drive is also copied onto the second drive. If one drive goes bad simply replace it and copy the good info to the replacement drive. You always have two backups. Just in case both drives go bad have a third backup. I am sure we all have photos that we cherish, those of our children, grandchildren, vacation memories etc.. For a few dollars saved is it worth losing these photos? I think not!

[JediKubo]

Personally, I think it's safer to use more than one methods to do backup and needs to backup to more than one locations.  In case, there is any error from the particular method, you could always have the data back from another method.

 

Since taking picture as I traveled to different place, I did take a lot of pictures. So all these photos became previous to me that I did back them up in more than one location.

 

I use xcopy and cloudbacko to backup them in daily & weekly basis at night. The strategy between xcopy and cloudbacko is different. xcopy sync all files from my laptop to my portable drive once a week while cloudbacko does it in daily basis. In this case, I mostly just bring some sd cards with me while travel.  Once I am backup, I will plug them to laptop and backup directly.  This is ideal to me coz the weight of sd card is minor.

 

In this way, you don't need to buy too many sd cards as the backup.

[MarkP]

You should reconsider Hard Drives as a form of backup. They cost effective, reliable if stored and not spun up frequently. Consider something similar to this:

 

Thermaltakeusa»Storage»Docking Station

 

or

 

Voyager by NewerTech- Hard Drive Dock for 3.5" and 2.5" SATA Devices provides high-performance and flexibility

 

there are several others....

 

 

Buy several hard drives and put them into a rotation, keeping at least one of them offsite (I use work office).

 

If one reports any sign of problems, remove it from rotation and replace it. This assures that you always have more than one copy somewhere.

 

Exactly my system but I use LaCie drives

[prk60091]

SD cards may be more susceptible to loss and damage. I imagine if stored properly they should last 'forever'.  You have given me something to mull over..

[prk60091]

Spinning HDD are not really optimal. Spinning HDD's fail.  Some sooner than others -but they all fail.

[pop]

I'm afraid that digital long term storage is more of an ongoing task than a solution.

 

With paper documents, you could just select the right paper and inks, an adequate room and, of course, storage boxes and folders. Once this was done, you simply placed your documents into that storage and forgot all about them. Actually, this is a half truth as even paper archives have to be aired and the content has to be inspected and moved from time to time.

 

Not so with digital media. Here you have volatile media (even if the data dissolves but slowly). You also have media obsolescence. I don't think many members here still can read or process data on eight inch floppy disks or on their Atari drives. Hence, long time digital storage consists of at least two separate considerations. One is obviously how to prevent loss by external influence or media failure. This is done by storing on several media in different places. The other is how to keep them in a form that actually lets you access and process your stored images. This is done by timely copying to more recent kinds of media, possibly converting the contents to more recent image and data formats.

 

Both are simpler and cheaper to do with fewer and larger storage media. Checking and handling many small media is more time consuming and error prone. The media also tend to be more costly in terms of $$ per image.