

How I Almost Lost Every Family Photo I Have - grflynn
http://rantsandrambles.net/blog/how-i-almost-lost-every-family-photo-i-have

======
PaulHoule
Catastrophies like this probably will happen to most people.

For a long time I've used Flickr as an archive for my better photos, but I may
be moving that to something else because the new Flickr interface is
intolerably slow to use.

I was working on a presentation last week and I wanted to use my own pictures,
but the time in the time I'd spend waiting for Flickr to load to put one image
in my presentation I could find and insert five images from Bing or Google
Image Search.

~~~
gaius
My offsite backup is to Amazon Glacier via Arq. Slow, but cheap, and
insha'Allah reliable.

~~~
StavrosK
I'm currently (both as in "these days" and "right now") trying to add file-
level encryption to rdiff-backup. Hopefully, this will make backups as easy as
rdiff-backup already is, while still providing strong security, and the
advantage over duplicity is that you don't need to create full backups of your
set from time to time (encryption is file-level so it should only upload the
changed files).

~~~
gcr
Have you seen obnam? Encrypted(GPG) de-duplicated backups.

[http://liw.fi/obnam/](http://liw.fi/obnam/)

~~~
StavrosK
I saw it a while back, but there was something I didn't like, I seem to
remember. Is it like Duplicity, that does a massive encrypted tarball?

~~~
gcr
No, not a massive tarball. If I recall right, each unique block of each file
is individually encrypted.

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Aardwolf
My archive of photos has always been files in directories. Nothing
"mysterious" can go wrong with those... Copy as many times as you like to
whatever medium you like, and not dependent on any particular software.

~~~
xpda
Mine too. I'm still unclear on how OP lost the photos in the first place.

~~~
prawn
iPhoto has some sort of archive/database file that can get corrupted, I think.

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mistermcgruff
Had a similar experience with iphoto. Now I dump straight to a folder, scp to
my raided synology NAS, and make another copy on a usb drive that I store at
work.

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StavrosK
I'm unclear on a point: If you have a Time Machine backup, and it used to work
at some point, why can't you restore that from Time Machine?

I saw you say that that database was empty, but if you just go back a few days
(to a point when you know it worked), then it _will_ work. Time Machine backs
the entire drive up.

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gmac
Now Flickr offer a free terabyte of storage, offsite backup for photos is
free. I wrote this script to upload my iPhoto pics:
[https://github.com/jawj/iphoto-flickr](https://github.com/jawj/iphoto-flickr)

~~~
avalaunch
This is an awesome script. I just used it to upload 3600 photos/videos. I
might suggest utilizing the async options to speed up the upload process.

Also I noticed one issue regarding photos taken by non Apple camera apps -
opening an issue on github now.

------
eksith
With all the solutions thrown about here from multiple SD drives, cloud
storage and even a "simple web server and web interface" (while I agree that
would be a fun project) to sync between them, I'm forced to wonder why old-
school ways of backup aren't considered.

How difficult and awkward would it be to have an external DVD/Blu-ray writer,
a spindle of disks and a permanent marker? It's not like you're doing the
backups in one go, after all. A disk every couple of weeks to a month for the
average Joe isn't too much. This isn't a professional photographer after all.

~~~
sameer_sundresh
From our research at Everpix, most photos taken today are on mobile phones,
and most people very rarely connect their phones to their computers. So you
really need a solution that starts on the mobile device, and cloud services
work the best for that.

~~~
eksith
I usually select and dump my photos/videos to a shared drive on my laptop over
wifi, so cloud is still an ancillary feature for me. After all, what if I'm in
an area with no reception? I can still use Bluetooth to transfer files.

Edit: Here's what I use
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.mori.andro...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.mori.androsamba)

~~~
sameer_sundresh
Thanks, I'll have to try that out. So far, I haven't had great experiences
accessing my Android devices from my Linux laptop.

That said, your workflow isn't representative of most users, if only for the
fact that most users don't really have a workflow per se, they just do
whatever's easiest at the moment. People have photos all over the place
(mobile devices, multiple computers/drives, social networks, email, etc.), and
Everpix pulls them together into one unified collection.

------
ArtDev
Having an extra drive offsite is a great idea. The terms of service for
Everpix are shady..

"By displaying or posting any Content on or through the Everpix Services, you
hereby grant to 33cube a non-exclusive, fully paid and royalty-free,
worldwide, limited license to use, modify, delete from, add to, publicly
perform, publicly display, reproduce and translate such Content in or through
the Everpix Services to you and to those other users with whom you choose to
share such Content."

~~~
nekopa
I don't think that is shady. Just means they don't have to pay him to show him
(or his friends) the pictures on the service.

~~~
ArtDev
It effectively gives them the right to use your photos however they please.

~~~
sameer_sundresh
No, that's not true. It only gives us the rights to (a) display your photos to
you and those with whom you share them, (b) auto-organize your photos for you,
and (c) delete photos stored on our serivce (when you click delete photo or
delete source or delete your account).

We can't (and don't want to) use your photos commercially, browse through your
photos, distribute them to people you haven't authorized to see them, turn
them into ads, etc. And we've never had any sort of government request to
access an account.

------
aaronbrethorst
I have probably a couple hundred gigabytes of photos on my iMac at home, which
I manage with Lightroom. A couple months ago, my iMac died unexpectedly. I
didn't panic, though, as I had an external drive constantly doing Time Machine
backups, plus Backblaze syncing everything.

It turned out the logic board was dead, so I just bought a new iMac, restored
everything, and went about my business. No fuss, no muss, and absolutely no
fretting.

------
aaron695
Boogles my mind people find this photo collecting/hoarding behaviour normal.

You only have one life, live it, don't waste it behind a camera trying to fake
it.

Even if OP's kid died the next week, as if there wouldn't have been hundred of
other photos around.

I think wasting a birthday on a triviality would be what really mattered then.

Life is about experiences not collecting things.

------
mrleinad
Just share everything on Facebook. No matter how much you want something to be
deleted, once it's up there it's never coming down.

------
kalleboo
I have a mix of Backblaze online backup, Time Machine local backup, Flickr for
a selection of non-private photos, and Dropbox for documents/financial stuff.

Before I started doing backups, I was really lucky that every time I got
burned it was by having a decently new (<2 months) old drive blow up, and I
had most of my data on the old drive.

------
zacinbusiness
You're an asshole if you think that "just losing some photos" isn't a big
deal. Minimizing or person's trouble by giving a hypothetical example is not
only mean spirited, it's also stupid. For instance, the OP could have lost his
family in a fire but at the same time someone else in the world could have
that while also being tortured. Dumbasses

Beyond that, our photographs help to serve as a link to out memories, and to
many people they are just as important as the memoirists themselves. Even more
important later in life when our memories are failing and when we have lost
those that are important to us.

So while you're bitching about first world problems, consider yourself lucky
that your biggest problem today is that someone else suffered a near
misfortune and that you are lucky enough to bitch about it from the comfort of
your air conditioned home.

You ignorant, useless fucks.

~~~
redacted
Completely agree. I think the negativity on HN stories is this site's
manifestation of karma whoring.

A family thought they lost a lifetime's worth of photos and cherished
memories? Easy to make a snarky comment about first world problems and watch
that number increase.

pg: if you read comments like that, do you ever regret not giving downvote
access earlier? I feel that having top-rated comments be so unremittingly
negative (and frankly dickish) hurts HNs image.

~~~
zacinbusiness
I do dislike the community system on HN. It rewards inflammatory posts and
trolling rather than reasonable and rational discussion. And for that matter,
it rewards sensationalistic posts.

I think the main issue is that HN is a really high profile community, and with
that you get stupid people like these "1st world haters."

------
bcl
Here's how I handle photo backups:

[http://www.brianlane.com/automatic-backup-of-files-
to-s3-and...](http://www.brianlane.com/automatic-backup-of-files-to-s3-and-
glacier.html)

------
mavhc
Is there a script/application to sync a hierarchical folder of 100,000 photos
to Flickr, now it has so much storage? One set per subfolder. I found a few
Windows apps, but they mostly baulked at that many files.

~~~
sameer_sundresh
I can't help you with Flickr, but the tools the author mentions in the article
(Dropbox for backup file storage and Everpix for auto-
organization/exploration/mobile access/selective sharing) can handle 100,000
photos, no problem. Personal bias: I pay for Dropbox and work at Everpix.

------
wslh
I use two exact equal external USB HDs to backup all my photos (twice) since
the 2.0 megapixel era. The main issue now is how to organize photos from
multiple devices I do it semimanually.

~~~
zacinbusiness
have you thought about using a simple web server and making a basic web
interface? might be a bit nerdy but would be a fun weekend project :-)

------
ams6110
A case study in first-world "problems"

~~~
VLM
As a first worlder myself, I'd say its a weird prioritization any goof could
have, not limited to 1st world:

"horrifying realization that I had failed as a parent"

Hmm I worked with a guy who's teen son died. When I was a kid, I worked with a
girl who had a couple kids as a teen and was actively pursuing a career in
welfare motherhood. I've known a couple drug addicts, alkies, burnouts. Yeah I
can see how some parents feel they failed. Some probably did, some probably
didn't but feel that way anyway, sometimes. "lost some photos" doesn't quite
make the cut, 1st world, 2nd world, or 3rd world.

The 3rd world version would be something like a dad in a shanty town is
freaking out because he lost his favorite polaroid, meanwhile, his neighbors
son was just beheaded by the local drug gang, now thats a real problem.

Priorities, priorities...

~~~
derekp7
I've never taken a formal debate class, but I think what you are arguing falls
under the Fallacy of Relative Privation. Can someone more skilled than me in
logical fallacies verify this?

~~~
VLM
That would be a correct analysis IF I used the comparison in something totally
unrelated to parenting, like my preference of JVM virtual machine memory
management options. He failed as a parent when he lost a horde of 16 bazillion
pictures, because an even worse scenario is he allocated 1 gig each to
multiple separate JVM instances on a 1 gig image (guess what I just fixed...)

You might be able to get me on some zenos paradox / continuum fallacy basis
but thats going to take some serious sophistry. Or maybe get me on a false
dilemma strategy where having a dead kid and a drug addicted kid are hardly
mutually exclusive although anecdotally they were two distinct kids. But I
don't think the relative privation strategy is going to work well.

