Keeping Your Photos Safe and Secure

I've been thinking lately to buy just new cards every time they are full, for the price 64GB (almost 4,000 FF RAW images) goes these days. Just back-up and store for use on a few large HDD and keep the cards stored away somewhere, in a fireproof safe or something.

I'm much more cloud-based now.

The high-speed fibre connections we now have make accessing folders on the cloud easier, and with P-cloud I've got a 2TB storage.

At least it's just time and not data getting that all aligned up again! Nice setup. It is unfortunately a necessity where we have to invest in some way to not do the faster/better in our photos but just to have what we put the hard work into secure. Cloud isn't a good option for me cost wise and I don't have the cool rackstation setup - mine is a more hands on clunky approach. Duplicate 14TB drives - one constantly backing up at home and then a second which lives in a secure remote location backed up every 3-6 months.

I have the following workflow to keep my pictures as save as reasonably possible.

During my phototrips.
I cycle my memory cards very 150-300 pictures. Total capacity of the memory cards in my backpack is about 43 GB. In my backpack I have an image tank of 500 GB, on which I copy the memory card that just came off a camera. The imagetank automatically stores each memorycard in a separate directory. After each phototrip I'll make sure that my memory cards have enough free space for the next phototrip by removing the oldest pictures.

At home or hotel or camping
I connect the imagetank to any of my computers with USB interface and bulkrename the pictures into a unique naming convention (change DSC0abcd into {something unique}abcd) with a program called Bulk Rename Utility. This allows me to identify by which camerabody the pictures were taken. I then copy the contents of the imagetank onto my NAS. I use two QNAP servers with RAID-5 in different locations with different external connectivity. From home I can access both as a drive letter. The pictures are replicated over both NASses. Over the internet I rarely upload my imagetank. I'll make sure my imagetank has at least 100 GB of freespace after it has been uploaded to my NAS. If it hasn't I'll replace the harddisk with a new one.

Post processsing
At irrgular intervals I post process pictures folder by folder on one of the NASs.
After completion I replicate the postprocessing results to the other NAS.

NAS maintenance
I regularly monitor my harddisks in the NASses and replace them preventively before their MTBF expires. The replaced disks will be wiped and reconditioned using a tool and will then serve as offline backup storage. I will make two backups from my NAS data and store them in two different places. Both NAS have NAS graded harddisks of different brand: either NAS has WD or Seagate or Toshiba.
I also make cloud backups from my NAS at irregular intervals (typically 3-5 times a year).

Catalogue
I manually maintain a catalogue that is stored on boths NASs that enable me to find the directory with 150-300 pictures with any wanted picture. When I need pictures for a project I'll collect copies of the contents of my picture library into a new folder on any work computer using the catalogue as a selection tool.

Edited by overeema - 11 May 2023 at 13:40

I am aware of that. It is a feature I asked for more than a decade ago. My camera's are from before Sony fulfilled this feature request. See my signature for further details.

Edited by overeema - 11 May 2023 at 16:12