Giveaway Closed
Winner: Taing Cheng
Winning entry here
Quite some time ago I embarked on the mammoth task of organising my digital files, spurred on by the Crash Test Community who were having issues with the huge numbers of photos on their computers.
I’ve now covered the first 3 steps in my 5 step challenge to organising your digital photo files:
Step 1: Managing your memory cards
In this post I’m going to talk about where and how to store all of your images and how to make sure they are secure ie backing up.
I guess a good place to start is the different types of storage you can use.
Step 4: Storage
Internal hard drive
This is most likely your computer – a desktop or laptop. It’s where you probably download your photos to most of the time, unless you upload them straight to social media sites.
The main issue here is security. What if your house is damaged by fire or flood, your laptop is stolen, your PC hit by a virus?
CDs, DVDs and Blu-rays
Once photos are downloaded they can be burned to discs. It’s not something I’ve done a lot of lately. The storage capacity ranges from 700MB on a CD to 50GB on a dual-layer Blu-ray which means they are better suited to store smaller events rather than your whole photo library.
External hard drives
These drives connect to your computer and you can transfer much bigger quantities of data. You can buy external hard drives with capacities measuring in the terra-bytes (TB) – that’s 1,000GB or 1,000,000MB!
In the Cloud
This in online storage, using services like Dropbox or Flickr. Some services will provide unlimited storage, but sometimes at a cost.
So what’s the best option? Well, probably a combination. You should always make sure your photos should exist in at least two locations, three is better. For example, on your computer, on a hard drive and in the cloud.
Step 5: Backup
Backup is all about process. It’s making sure your primary storage is then backed up to one or more of the other storage options. It’s usually a pretty manual process, but I want to tell you about how I’m doing it, thanks to Seagate.
Read on and you’ll have a chance to win not one but two 1TB Seagate drives so you can set up your own simple backup process.
The Seagate Backup Plus portable drive comes with software that provides you with dashboard to manage the protection, sharing and saving of your files.
Protect: You can set up automatic backups or do it manually. If you’re a Mac user it synchs up with Time Machine for automatic backups of your entire system.
Share: You can share photos stored on your Seagate drive directly to your social media sites. My suggestion would be to regularly share you photos to a Flickr pro account for unlimited online storage – a great backup to your external drive and computer.
Save: This is the neatest feature and is related to this question . . .
How often do you back up photos/videos that you upload directly to social media sites like Facebook, Flickr and YouTube?
Well, apparently 77% of Aussies do not regularly back up content they have on their tablets or mobile phones and 93% do not regularly back up content they have placed on social media sites! (recent survey conducted by Seagate with Galaxy Research on Australian Backup Behaviour).
The Seagate drive is the first external drive that will automatically backup photos on your social media accounts. Set and forget people, set and forget!
Actually don’t forget altogether – there is one more manual process that will ensure your precious photos are even safer.
Backup to two separate drives and send one of them to another location. What I’m going to do is give one Seagate drive to CrashHubby to keep at work and get him to bring it back once a month to update.
Are you interested? Here’s a great intro video that tells you all about how it works and I’ll be writing up a full review on Crash Test Mummies community review site in the coming weeks. You can also find more details about the full range on Seagate’s website.
Giveaway
As I said I have two 1TB Seagate Backup Plus drives to giveaway to one lucky reader, total value of $378. You’ll receive two different colours so you know which one to keep at home and which one to keep offsite. They would make a great Fathers’ Day present (albeit a slightly late one!). As parents we capture special memories every day – usually on our phones! With Seagate Backup Plus your digital memories and social life are always safe and protected. Even if you can’t control so many other unexpected things and disasters that can happen every day (the CrashKids certainly keep me on my feet), at least your photos will be safe!
To enter:
Fill in the form below and upload your favourite photo of the Dad in your life and tell me why you want to keep it safe (in less than 50 words). I’ll share your photos and entries to an album on my FB page and will select the winner based on the strength of your answer. As a winner I would love if you’d add your review to mine on the Crash Test Mummies community review site.
This giveaway is now closed :)
Terms and conditions:
The giveaway is open to residents of Australia only.
Entries are open to subscribers of Crash Test Mummy only. To subscribe ‘Join the Ride’ in the sidebar.
You can enter once only by filling out the form above.
Entries close 5pm AEST on Friday 31st of August 2012.
The winner will be selected on the strength of their answer.
My decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into.
The combined value of the prizes is $378 AUD.
Prize is not refundable.
The winner will be contacted via email within 24hrs of giveaway closing. If the winner does not respond within 7 days the giveaway may be re-allocated.
Your answers may be published on Crash Test Mummy in future posts.
Disclaimer: I received 2 x 1TB Seagate Backup Plus drives for review purposes. My opinions are my own and can’t be bought.
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Ahhhh the computer back up. I am one of the “fortunate ones” who had a complete computer melt down in January this year. A lovely little malware bug came to visit my blog and spread itself all through my computer. I have already been using Dropbox – to an extent – but NOW my phone automatically uploads to the cloud with every photo I take. Didn’t help with the pics that were on the computer. Or the files. Or the emails. They are all gone :( Live and learn.
Alli @ Ducks on the Dam’s last post..Today is your day
Most of my photos are on an external drive, except the ones that aren’t. I learnt the lesson the hard way when I lost some photos saved to the PC when my hard drive went kaput. Definitely need another hard drive to back up my new PC to.
Dorothy @ Singular Insanity’s last post..Things I Know – The Thirty Things Challenge
I lost two years worth of photos last year :( And still didn’t back up until last weekend (slow learner, obviously!) I now have them backed up on an external drive AND CrashPlan (the cloud). Also, I’ve just discovered IFTTT which you can use to automatically back up things like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to Evernote or Dropbox. Is there anything the internet can’t do?
Tam’s last post..When I became a mum
Oh, I want one of these! Two would be even better. I’m off to browse through my photos and I’ll be back!
Tat’s last post..What is beautiful?
Dad’s always the one that needs to be protected in my heart yet backed up so always in my eyes
its scary, the very thought of loosing your precious pics. I cant trust one source to backup my pics so I always backup to 3 places atleast. I use picbackman to do the hard work for me easily.