3-2-1 Backup

Among I.T. enthusiasts and experts there is a saying about backups, 3 copies, 2 separate mediums, 1 offsite.  To break it down, one copy is easily lost, two copies in the same building can be lost with a localized event, and by having that one offsite then you can almost guarantee you won't lose your data.  For most home users I would bet that their photos are the most important thing on their computer, personally I have >32,000 photos.  In the past local events meant you had a loss of memories and history, this no longer has to be the case.

For the average user I recommend a couple of different things.

  1. Use an external USB hard drive that is always connected and has some software always copying your valuable data over.  Be sure you leave the original file on the computer.  Or if you are like me have many computers on a network copying files around.
  2. Use an offsite storage system there are many free options and paid options.
    1. For Photos only
      1. Google Photos has an automated backup software for PC.  It is unlimited storage but limited in the size of the photo.  If it is to big it will resize it, the resized photo is still good enough for almost any use case.  But it is not original. 1080P videos can also be saved this way as well
      2. For Amazon Prime Members they have unlimited photo storage as well no size limit that I know of.  NO videos though
      3. Yahoo owns Flicker which offers 1TB of photo storage, I'm not sure about video but 1TB of photos will take you a long time to fill up.
    2. For all your file needs
      1. DropBox/Google Drive/Microsoft One Drive/iCloud and similar services will usually work well but the free storage is limited and you have to pay for more storage. 
      2. Carbonite/Crash Plan and other paid services for around $60-80 a year you can get unlimited storage of just about any file size and type for a single computer.
  3. Get your data off your phone!!!! 
    1. I can't count the number of people that have lost photos because they dropped their phone some where to make it completely unusable. (toilets, sinks, rivers, lakes, tubs, and pools)

My personal method is:

  • An extra internal drive dedicated to backups of my primary storage drive
  • Google Photos, I use an android phone I love how from my phone I can see any photo I've ever taken.  Plus Google Photos does some serious image recognition indexing and makes your photos searchable without lifting a finger.  
  • Microsoft One Drive.  I used Carbonite in the past but I found for an extra $20 a year I went from having unlimited storage for one computer to having 1TB (darn close to unlimited) of storage, plus the latest version of Microsoft Office products for five computers and five devices, by subscribing to Office365.