# Best way to Backup 100GB pictures/Video?



## andrewsmc (Apr 1, 2013)

So I have about 100GB of photos and video that I want to backup from an external HDD. I don't know the best way to go about this and I would like to get it done as painless as possible. I was also just thinking about getting a new external HDD, But I want a more permanent/fail safe way to go about this. If my HDD's die, I am SOL. I was thinking that i will just put it all on DL DVD-RW's. Well that will take a day and use 20 DVD's. Is there a way to compress these files? How would you guys go about this? Thanks in advance!


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## FordGT90Concept (Apr 1, 2013)

I would use Bluray or another external HDD.


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## d1nky (Apr 1, 2013)

I would copy them on an internal sata hdd and then disconnect it and store it safely


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## ChristTheGreat (Apr 1, 2013)

If you have enought Internet bandwidth:

http://www.carbonite.com/en/v2/index?cm_mmc=redirect-_-fr-_-none-_-none&/
https://www.idrive.com/index.html

Doesn'T cost too much, 60$ per year for carbonite, 50$ on iDrive..

Remember that DVD can also be damaged. External HDD is okay, but I don't know how much you DATA is important,but if it burns, you loose all. That's why clouding backup can be a nice way.

But Blueray can be a good solution aswell, you just need to make sure all blue ray are working..


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## WhiteLotus (Apr 1, 2013)

andrewsmc said:


> So I have about 100GB of photos and video that I want to backup from an external HDD. I don't know the best way to go about this and I would like to get it done as painless as possible. I was also just thinking about getting a new external HDD, But I want a more permanent/fail safe way to go about this. If my HDD's die, I am SOL. I was thinking that i will just put it all on DL DVD-RW's. Well that will take a day and use 20 DVD's. Is there a way to compress these files? How would you guys go about this? Thanks in advance!



If you do go down the route of sticking it on another HDD, for the love of all that's good in the world use TeraCopy. Windows copying is just shite compared to TeraCopy.


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## digibucc (Apr 1, 2013)

another +1 for teracopy, so simple but SOO much better. also, in order of recommendation:

1)additional platter hard disk static bag.
2)online auto-backup service
3)dvds/optical discs

nothing is completely failsafe, so your best bet is to do multiple options if they are that important. 

I have a client who just lost 4 years of her children's photos because she soaked her msata hdd based camcorder in soda. short of sending the platters themselves to a recovery service she is sol as the drive is dead.


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## Frick (Apr 1, 2013)

So why is teracopy so good? It seems it doesn't copy faster than Windows 7 does.. The main advantage seems to be the ability to choose wether you want to replace the files or keep the existing files before you start copying.


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## digibucc (Apr 1, 2013)

no for me it's that 
a) it is more reliable. windows copy of 50+gbs can get dicey. it can mess up in a number of ways, but most often for me it would simply freeze, and fail. and i'd have to start again. teracopy has never done this once.
b)it's pauseable, and queueable. so i can set hours worth of copy between multiple disks, and queue it so i can walk away and let it work without starting 10 different copy operations at once. windows cannot do this.
c)it has an ACCURATE estimation of remaining time. it is calculated in the first few seconds, and is not wrong. unlike windows, ALL THE TIME. that was huge for me.
d)there are more advantages, those are the biggies for me.


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## WhiteLotus (Apr 1, 2013)

digibucc said:


> no for me it's that
> a) it is more reliable. windows copy of 50+gbs can get dicey. it can mess up in a number of ways, but most often for me it would simply freeze, and fail. and i'd have to start again. teracopy has never done this once.
> b)it's pauseable, and queueable. so i can set hours worth of copy between multiple disks, and queue it so i can walk away and let it work without starting 10 different copy operations at once. windows cannot do this.
> c)it has an ACCURATE estimation of remaining time. it is calculated in the first few seconds, and is not wrong. unlike windows, ALL THE TIME. that was huge for me.
> d)there are more advantages, those are the biggies for me.



All of that, but it seems like it really is faster. Especially when copying over high volumes of files, not just the amount of data.


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## Mindweaver (Apr 1, 2013)

*Google* Drive is only $4.99 a month for 100GB, and you can share that with as many pc's as you would like and also family members.


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## silkstone (Apr 2, 2013)

As a secondary backup system, why not use amazon Glacier.
http://aws.amazon.com/glacier/#pricing&tag=tec06d-20

At $0.01 per gb per month, it works out as the chepest cloud storage solution. You wouldn;t want to use it as your primary storage though due to the costs associated with retrieving your data.


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## Aquinus (Apr 2, 2013)

digibucc said:


> a) it is more reliable. windows copy of 50 gbs can get dicey. it can mess up in a number of ways, but most often for me it would simply freeze, and fail. and i'd have to start again. teracopy has never done this once.



I've copied 800GB from a RAID to a 1TB drive on USB 2.0 once in Windows 7. It took many hours but worked fine. Unless you're on a *nix box or have Cygwin handy, I would recommend rsync and a scheduled/cron task, but that's just me.


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## digibucc (Apr 2, 2013)

yep it is.


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## andrewsmc (Apr 2, 2013)

Thanks for all the suggestions everyone. I have several choices now and will make my choice over the next few days.


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## RCoon (Apr 2, 2013)

Used teracopy at 1 of my previous work places. Better than windows, because if it fails to copy 1 item it carries on instead of cancelling itself over 1 thumbnail file that's "in use" etc all that windows bollocks


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## Aquinus (Apr 2, 2013)

You could always write a PowerShell script to do it. A Windows server admin might tell you that. I've never really used it but a relative of mine worked on Windows servers for a living and most of the tools he uses are ones he wrote in PowerShell. Might be work looking into if you have any experience with command languages or .NET.


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## lZKoce (Apr 2, 2013)

Thank you guys, for mentioning Teracopy, I tried it and its SO good. OP,sry for the offtopic, but I learned something new, I had to express some gratitude.


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## andrewsmc (Apr 2, 2013)

lZKoce said:


> Thank you guys, for mentioning Teracopy, I tried it and its SO good. OP,sry for the offtopic, but I learned something new, I had to express some gratitude.



No prob man, this is good info that I am sure more people on the forums might use.


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## WhiteLotus (Apr 2, 2013)

lZKoce said:


> Thank you guys, for mentioning Teracopy, I tried it and its SO good. OP,sry for the offtopic, but I learned something new, I had to express some gratitude.



You're welcome. I used it to transfer a few hundred gigs of data over to one of my drives today. I sat there thinking, man if this was windows copy I would have time to go for a run before it's even half done!


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## suraswami (Apr 2, 2013)

Good Options.

Which ever option you pick, try compressing them too, that way you might be able to fit in more content.


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## OverClocker12 (Apr 10, 2013)

I would just put it on a disk. I am in the same situation but with a little more space needed. You can pay monthly with those companies listed above, but with my budget it wouldn't work out.


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## silkstone (Apr 10, 2013)

OverClocker12 said:


> I would just put it on a disk. I am in the same situation but with a little more space needed. You can pay monthly with those companies listed above, but with my budget it wouldn't work out.



Glacier storage from amazon works out to like $10 per year for 100GB. It's something like $0.01 per GB per month.


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