Safety first...lern a lesson...

[scroller]

Two month ago I bought an external hard disc drive. I downloded aprox 7000 photos into it. Two weeks later I had a major computer crash. This time I was on the right side of the rim... Thank God...
Don´t wait until its to late. Be happy and secure your photos. Not everybody have the same luck.
/S

[AdrianW]

A timely reminder and good advice Stefan!

Remember that hard disks are (in my experience) the least reliable part of a computer.

Also remember that if you use recordable removable media, like CD-R, DVD-R or BD-ROM-R; it's vitally important that you use good quality (preferably write once) media and store it *properly*, i.e in their boxes, vertically, in a dark, cool place, with low humidity and that you DO NOT write on the discs.

My first unbranded CD-Rs became unreadable in less than five years after they were written; so remember to *test* your backups as well!

[ersoyyilmaz]

i'm using an external HD because;

you have always read/write failure with CD and DVD's, no matter what brand and type you use,

external HD's getting cheaper and cheaper (say, affordable :-) ). For almost one year I have one 1 TB and at least one 350 GB external HD and since they all have USB/firewire or ethernet connections, so just take it with you to any computer and plug it!

[jinju]

I think the most crucial thing in all this is: repetition. I have 3 externals. I also burn each picture on 3 different CDs which I keep in a dark, cool place in their plastic cases, in a ziploc bag to keep out the moisture. Finally I take my external to work from time to time and transfer photos from it onto my computer at work. I once had a CD go empty without any reason. One day it had files on it the next day it was empty. From that time I have been paranoid about backing up. And you know what? I still dont feel completely safe, so much so that I will end up burning the contents of my harddrives onto several DVDs once I upgrade my computer (I can read DVDs but not write).

[thor68]

unfortunately this does not prevent the major catastrophe - my computer works perfectly,
but my external photo-back-up-harddrive crashed with the work of the last 3 years on it
about 25000 pics...just when i was backing that up on 2 other externals.
i was lucky to have most of the pics on 7 other HDs, so i could save a lot and when i have
the time the HD goes to the pros that can fix it again and save my data.
good luck, thor.

[ersoyyilmaz]

mine, too, but our nex lesson, we can't/shouldn't use the cheapest HD drives :)
And for example with some HD's of 1 TB
(which i use http://peripherals.about.com/od/removablestorage/fr/laciebigdisk.htm)
you are in better shape for the future :)

Take care, best regards