Digital photograph backup

My first DC was a 2M pixel model and each photograph has size around 800k, and the next one is a 5M pixel model which will generate photograph of around 1.5M, and it also generates 640x480x30 fps movie clips and they can easily go beyond 100M. My latest camera is a 12M pixel DSLR, and if I shoot in raw, each photograph will take up over 10M of disk space.

Originally, I use CD-R as my backup, however, they're simply not big enough after I bought my second camera, so I upgraded to use DVD-R. And soon I found that they're still not big enough for I use 2G memory card so that a DVD-R is not much bigger indeed.

I always keep my photographs in the hard disk for easy access, and of course, backup is a must so where else should I place my backup?

1. Facebook: Yes, they allow unlimited photograph upload, but of course, the resolution is just too low as real backup. However, it's always nice to have some more backup copies. When you lost your real backup, it's better than nothing at least.

There's a Picasa plugin for easy upload to facebook.

2. DVD-R: This is not the best way, but what's good about it is that, you can backup your shots, and then store it somewhere else, like your parents' home, etc. It's always nice to keep some off site backup. DVD-R is not a very long life media, so I suggest you to re-do the backup after like 2-3 years. But then after 2-3 years, we probably have some more even better (cheaper and bigger) options, like what we did in the CD-R age.

3. Hard disk: I found this is by far the best media for backup, store the real copy in the hard disk inside your computer is good, but it's just not enough. Today you can buy 250G hard disk at relatively low price, so it's always a very nice idea to buy a few hard disk and put them inside an external USB/Firewire enclosure. The good thing is that, they're fast and easily accessible. Another good thing is that, you won't access it everyday and you can keep it inside a safe place, and that can really extend their life time! And better yet, in case of fire, you can easily take them with you!

4. NAS: it's just another form of (3), small NAS is very affordable these days. Some even support RAID for added security about your data. So it's not bad to keep one at home, both for storing your digital photograph, but also some other important data.

5. Hard copy: don't get me wrong, it's always nice to hold hard copies on hand, it's both easy to look at, and they won't go away as easily as zero and one in any digital media.

Personally, I did nearly all of the above options. Redundancy is always a good thing for your important data. Digital photographs are far easier to keep than film, but then they're also far easier to lost, I mean to lost everything all at once simply after a hard disk crash. So, we really need to have some real safety measure to keep them. I hope the above tips would be useful to you and welcome to share your thought, too.