Need help backing up photos

eyelovemascara

I hope this is the right board to post on. I have almost 2000 photos on my computer (Macbook Pro) and they are all on iPhoto. I have this feeling like my computer is getting really old and that I should have all my photos backed up in the case that my computer crashes. I don't want to lose everything for the past 5 years.

Can someone tell me what is the best way to backup my 2000 photos? The least expensive way and something that won't take a week to finish. Cheap and (relatively) fast? Thanks for the help!

MerRhosyn

I backup all my data in two ways:

1) Online backup service to remote server - Mozy 

2) External hard drive - Toshiba 1TB w/ software

Mozy is about $100 per year.  Hard drive cost varies by storage size. 

Once you decide on an option, completion time isn't really something you can optimize.  An initial backup to Mozy takes quite some time.  Subsequent daily backups take a few minutes.  I'm sure I have way more than 2000 photos on my computer...that probably wouldn't take more than an hour to copy to an external hard drive. 

amaretto*sour

Yes to an external HD. I would maybe look into thumb drives. The nice thing about that is that you can organize the photos by drive and many of the "print your own photos" places can get the pics off them. They are also easy to store.

MrsJetSet

I recently made the jump to backup on both an external drive and online.  External drive will be relatively cheap and quick.  I just bought a years' worth of backup from crashplan.com for around 55 bucks.  External drives can fail just as easily as internal drives and I sure would be devastated if I lost my photos.