MUST DO: Backup & Archive Electronic Art Files

If you have ever had your computer hard drive or external drive fail, then you know the value of having all your important art files stored on at least two separate medias. That way if one drive crashes you can still recover your files from the second one. For example, each file should be on your computer hard drive plus DVDs, OR hard drive plus an external drive, OR two external drives, etc. And each of those should be located at different sites in case of a catastrophic event (fire, flood, theft, earthquake). A method that many artists use to backup their hard drives is by using an automatic remote backup service over the internet.

Five years ago, I found out the hard way when my external hard drive crashed. I had stored all my art files on ONE external 250 GB drive to make space on my computer's hard drive. A data recovery company was able to recover 90% of the files (was very lucky to recover that many) but my mistake cost me time, the lose of some valuable files, and big bucks ($2500 at $100 a GB). Don't make the same mistake that I made. Backup your files!

Difference between Backing up & Archiving
There is a subtle difference between backing up files and archiving them. Normally when you backup files you are not concerned with saving the files forever. You just want to make sure you have duplicate files in case your hard drive crashes or a catastrophic event occurs. However, to archive art files that are not often used or really important, a person usually wishes to save the files and forget about them until needed many years later.

To archive art and prints for 100 years, they are wrapped in acid free paper and stored in an atmosphere controlled room. Unfortunately there really is no way to archive electronic files for long periods because the media that they are stored on do not have a long life expediency. Read the articles listed below to find out more about the longevity of different medias (CD, DVD, disk drives).* And storing electronic media for a 100 years may be irrelevant because the technology to read those files may no longer exist at the time the art is needed. Therefore, in my opinion archiving art files that are seldom used involves periodically transferring them from old drives to newer ones in order to prevent their loss.

*Data stored on CDs and DVDs can last as little as two years due what is called CD and DVD rot. Of course, most last longer than two years but CDs and DVDs are probably not reliable for long term storage. Read more about it on"CD and DVD Longevity: How Long Will They Last?"

*Some external drive manufacturers will sell an extended warranty for three years but admit that the life expectancy degrades fairly fast beyond that. Some users say that they had their external drives over five years with no problems. I had one fail in 1-1/2 years and another after three years. Several others of mine are still fine after four years. And in case you are wondering, I use many external hard drives (eight at the present). Read more about the longevity of external hard drives on Cnet forum questions and answers "Storage: Is there a life expectancy on external hard drives?"

Automatic Remote Data Backup
The Art of Licensing forums** on linkedin.com and recently yahoo.com have discussed automatic remote data storage sites as an excellent method in backing up hard drives. Some sites are free for limited storage, several cost about $5 per month for unlimited storage, and a few cost more. From the discussions that I have read on the forums, people have varied opinions on which service works for them. Because everyone has different needs, each person needs to make their own decision on which service to use. I suggest that you evaluate each of the backup sites (listed at the bottom of this article) for the following attributes that matter to you such as:
cost,
amount of storage allowed,
stores file types you need such as jpg.  (Read Kate Harper's comments in the comment section.)
security,
ease of use,
speed of backup & recovery,
number of computers you want to backup,

backup external hard drives besides computer hard drive. (Only the CrashPlan service will backup external drives beside computer drives.) And,
ability to fine tune what data is backed up. )Some services will not allow you to choose what data you want to exclude.)

Below are a few articles that may help you make a decision on which service to choose. Even through the articles are for Mac users, I think they also pertain to PC users.

A techradar.com article "6 reliable online backup services for your Mac"

A MacWorld article "Online backup services" that compares seven backup services. Search and link to this article is courtesy of Phyllis Dobbs.

A MacWorld article "CrashPlan review." The reason I included this article is because CrashPlan allows external drive backups and the others do not.


Some Remote Backup Data Services
Amazon 3S: (0.15 per GB storage fee + upload & download fees)
Backblaze: $5 month (unlimited storage)
Carbonite: $4.57 month (unlimited storage)
CrashPlan: $4.50 month (unlimited storage)
DropBox: $9.99 month (100GB storage)
Egnyte: $9.99 month (20GB storage)
Mozy: $4.95 month (unlimited storage)
Jungle Disk: ($2 to $5 per month plus storage fees on Amazon 3S + download & upload fees)
SugarSync: $4.99 month (30GB storage)

**Read "Networking Resource - Art Licensing Forums" to find out about art licensing forums.

Read the comments to this article for more information on remote backup data services.

Comments about this article are greatly appreciated. Click on the comment section below.