Digital Storage & Back-Up Plans

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I have a back up hard drive that my DH got me from Amazon. I back up my computer weekly or bi-weekly.

BUT... Here is my question, and I'm not sure if it pertains to this string.

How do you "file" your digital paper? Right now I have been hoarding digital paper, finding as many as I can and I have them in a folder labeled "Digital Paper". But there is no rhyme or reason to them in there other than the file name. It's hard to find anything unless I look at it to know what it is, i.e. color or theme. How do you file your digital paper? By color? Theme? Both? I have a lot of multi color paper also... do you put them in by primary color? or have a folder called Multi color? Like Stripes, Dots, Chevrons... or should I make a file called that? HELP!!!! I'm so green at this. Any help is appreciated.

@Linda--that is a whole 'nother issue! LOL You need a good File Management system. I use ACDSee Photo Manager to organize and "tag" my items so I can search for them by item type, color, theme, etc. You can use free programs like Picasa for that as well or if you use Adobe software, Adobe Bridge, etc. That way you don't have to keep physically moving files around when trying to stay organized.

I'm new here but I am guessing there is a thread on file organization and management on here somewhere! smiley

Edited to add: Ah, see! A huge sticky post right here: https://www.digitalscrapbook.com/forum/general-discussion/keep-it-organized

Thanks!!!

Linda, I have a PAPERS folder that I keep all of my papers under. I categorize them by color or type (such as Antique, Canvas, Cardboard, Curled Corners, Dots, Grunge, Cardboard, Christmas, etc.). I further categorize under these headings according to color, etc. I create a separate folder for each paper or set of papers and include the designer's TOU and preview in the folder. When I create the folder name, I put the color or type at the beginning of the name, followed by an underscore, then the name of the kit it came from (if it came from a kit), then an underscore, followed by the name or initials of the designer, and sometimes another underscore and initials of the store it came from. For example:

AutumnPapers_LateAutumn_DoreenStolz_SDK

BeautifullyGrungedPapers_PamLafors

GrungyPapers_PillowGirl

RedPapers_ValentinesDay_ScrappyPony

Hope this helps! smiley

2 sets and 2 locations are absolute minimum. 3 counting my local version and i try to have a total of 4 counting local for my commercial kits. Too useful too lose. Amazon came out with a plan that has unlimited storage for only $60 a year. Great place to store zip backups, not so great for unpacked kits because their interface lacks a lot of controls. But $60 a year for unlimited? Amazon is reputable enough that i trust them with 1 of my sets. I should have a terrabyte uploaded to them by the end of this weekend. And 500gb at google(only because educational use is unlimited and we use them for our student email and office apps. We also have box and dropbox--the big boss has the attention span of a puppy. He sees something and thinks we need it and gets it. I personally have another terr at mediafire. My 4t external Seagate started making noises this summer. It has been a race to offload 4 t to the cloud and i will never bother with local external storage again. Leave it to the experts. A couple of different experts. *grins*

And re organization, i file as i go. Sometimes i add keywords to the file or folder name if it fits multiple locations. I have tried multiple file manager apps but nothing fits or can handle my file load. And actually this has worked very well for me over the decade. With a fast search tool, it is extremely rare for me not to find anything quickly.

Just wanted to chime in, even though this thread hasn't been used in awhile...

I've lost most of my wedding photos (on my in-laws computer, that was wiped clean), I've since learned that you can retrieve these photos before that process and make lots of secondary precautions, as well.

I now use an external hard drive, that I unplug after uploads. I have an old desktop, that I plan to factory reset and store all the photos/layouts/supplies there (disabling internet access), so I'm not overloading my laptop. But besides the external hard drive, I upload finished layouts to a blog or email them to myself. If I'm truly paranoid that day, I may upload them into a "secret" Pinterest board. I used to use a flash drive, but I tried to store everything on it (pics, documents, videos) and now I can't find it. My goal is to go back to the traditional method for layouts/photos, print them and stick them in an album (after a year) or create a book with Shutterfly.

Besides scrapbook stuff, I email myself voice recordings, of my son (he's almost two) and I upload the videos I've took, to a private YouTube account.

as i stated in my intro i am a newbie, can you burn a scrapbook onto a dvd?

Yes, Stacy, you can burn a scrapbook onto a DVD, but then you run into the limitations of DVD media--scratches and heat warping making it unreadable, or their tendency to delaminate after a while. If you're going to save on DVD as yet another backup method, you'll want to keep it in a jewel case, in a temp and humidity controlled environment, like a climate controlled storage or a safety deposit box.

Personally, I've moved to keeping things in 4 places: on a local hard drive, a SD card stored in my apartment, another annual SD card sent to my parents' place, and in the cloud. SD cards are hard to really damage to the point where they're unreadable, especially microSDs--x-rays, water, humidity, cold, reasonable amounts of heat won't harm them. Just get a good brand and be sure it's genuine--don't cheap out on them. Add an inexpensive microSD to USB keychain adapter stored with them and you're likely to be able to read them for another decade or two, at which point you can probably transfer a decade's worth of microSDs to whatever the then-current best storage technology is. And now that you can get a 256GB SD card from Lexar, Sandisk, or PNY for around $100, they've become a solid way to back up purchased fonts, music, family photos, finished layouts, kits you've designed, or even a small collection of purchased kits, and fit 8-10TB worth of files in the space of a poker-size deck of playing cards...certainly small enough to find room in the bag you should have ready to go for emergencies anyway!

Is anyone using Forever storage? I love the integration between their photo organizing software and their storage.I like the private sharing options. That Its not data mined and I own my pictures- not like other solutions. And their other solutions are desktop software not web apps and it all integrates so well. And longer term solution than EHDs.

Full disclosure- i'm an ambassador with the company. But I would still love some honest feedback compared to the other solutions.

Never heard of them Taren... but thanks for sharing info with us about them... I need to check them out. Are the free or a paid service?

Sorry, its been a while since I've bee on. They have a 1G free account so you can play around, but after that their permanent storage is a 1 time payment (or you can pay over 12 months) and then it is permanent (guaranteed for your lifetime plus 100 years), secure (no data mining, comitted to you owning your content!), mobile- there's an app for that!, shareable- it has a great sharing feature that is still private, and all kinds of other great things like integrated with its scrapbooking software which is amazing and what I use, its photo organization software, and other services too.

Sorry I didn't want for it to become a sales pitch. if you want more info feel free to PM me and we can take this off line. I just know its hard to find good storage solutions! I searched for years for something that I could actually pass down to my kiddo!!

https://www.forever.com/guaranteed_storage

wow very interesting... I just lost one of my hard drives......

I'm so glad someone commented on this again. I completely forgot about how awesome this sounded and wanted to tell my hubby about it. smiley I will tomorrow hopefully. smiley HeeHee

Good thoughts from everyone. I am currently using SugarSync because I like the automatic syncing to multiple computers and my husband and I have been using it for a shared project. It really saved the day a few years ago when my entire Photos folder unexplicably deleted itself.

But I am just starting out with collecting digital scrapbooking stuff and am concerned the day will come when I outgrow my account at SugarSync and have to either pony up more money for a larger account or choose another backup method.

I am a backup freak and use both Carbonite and local external hard drive backups. It has been a real life saver as my desktop computer has died twice in the last 6 months. Without Carbonite I would have lost my mind.

Also, I had to evacuate for a fire last year and while I did take my desktop computer with me I didn't have to worry about damaging the computer in transport, there was always Carbonite.

The downside of cloud storage is that you do have to upload all your files and I have about 500gb of pix and scrapbooking supplies so it does take about a month to actually get everything backed up, but that is with a really slow connection. After that you just have to stay on top of downloading your picture files.

To close, BACK UP BACK UP BACK UP and you will sleep better.

My desktop hard drive crashed last fall the day after I got back from vacation. I was so glad that I had most of my files backed up in the cloud with Carbonite, although it did take over a month to get everything back.

I keep current working files on my computer, which gets back up daily, and store my goodies on an EHD with 1T of space. I really need to get one with more storage space and look into cloud storage. I have never had an issue with my EHD, but I know it could happen and then I would cry! I have years of images, designs and collections stored there and really need to have a back up plan... this post is a good reminder to do this!

OK I skimmed through quickly but am I the only one who uses not only an external but also burns everything to dvds?? I keep them in a case and burn this off in an organized manner (which is the total opposite of how I keep my computer lol) I just copied over some files from over 10 years ago. I lost GIGS of files when my computer died on me. My external is 1.4 TB and is not enough. DVD's have saved me more than once.

**OK the DVDs were addressed. I still swear by them, as long as you treat them right, they will last.

Ok, y'all convinced me to get Carbonite today!

I used to use DVDs when I first started and then switched to Mozy (not even sure they still operate) then switched to just an EHD ... big mistake.
I will be buying a bunch of DVDs again as soon as I can because I’ve just lost a heap of layouts, kits as well as design files through a cloud syncing failure.
Really upset at how much of my work and photos I’ve lost over the years.
Thank god I still have flattened copies of my layouts and a majority of my family’s photos still left.

@Anita, that sounds awful! I'm sorry you are going through that. It's a good thing you have the flattened copies and the family photos.

I have everything backed up on a second HD on my PC, which is backed up onto an external HD, but reading this thread has made me paranoid enough to look into online storage. The idea of losing not only my own work, hundreds worth of design resources, as well as the last seven years of family / kids photos is horrifying!

I've got several pages saved to flash drives, an external drive, and now I'm backing up to google drive.

@April: We, too, back-up all our photos to GoogleDrive. Great "free" extra layer for photos and final flattened layouts/creations. smiley

Having just experienced a month of repeated computer crashes, repeated repairs including hard drive replacement following ultimately by getting a new computer (something wrong with the memory and motherboard of my old computer), I'm very grateful that I backed everything up. It made restoring all these items easier and I didn't lose anything at all.

I have all my photos, layouts and digital scrapbook supplies backed up on two separate portable hard drives. I have 2 drives in case one fails and backup frequently (usually weekly, need to start shortly.) I use the program Good Sync as it's easy to configure.

In the case of my late son's photos, both my husband and I have taken extra precautions. We also have these photos backed up on multiple usb keys that are also stored in a safety deposit box at the bank. In too many cases, I've heard of people losing precious irreplaceable photos of loved ones when the computer has stopped working or been stolen.

Having just experienced a month of repeated computer crashes, repeated repairs including hard drive replacement following ultimately by getting a new computer (something wrong with the memory and motherboard), I'm very grateful that I backed everything up. It made restoring all these items easier and I didn't lose anything.

@Anne It's really nice to hear a success story and someone not having to suffer through a horrible experience. I lost so much of already very limited family photos and genealogy (work I had to do twice) because of computer HD issues before we started our current back-up system.
THANKS for sharing your positive experience and letting some of us know that sharing our bad luck woes, we were able to help someone like you not lose those precious memories! PS hugs about your son and sorry for your loss, very smart of you and your hubs to have extra copies in a safety deposit box!

Thank you for the kind message @Shawna. My husband is a former computer programmer and he's always emphasized the importance of backups, I'm glad that I had them when I had these unexpected crashes.

I know this is a old thread but backup your computer and design goodies is a must .. I do double back up on different drives . in case one storage goes out it will happened

I have 4 external hard drives total ... 2 for computer stuff and music and personal photos ... and I have 2 drives specially for my design stuff after 20 years I have allot of stuff

. this summer one of my design storage drives went out completely .. and I am glad had a extra copy if not my files would be lost I just went got another external drive clone my files .. my computer guy taught me to have 2 copies in different locations in case the storage back up drive fails or computer fails

Great idea. Thanks for sharing.

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