More questions on backing up pics for tech savvy peas...

Backing up is like saving in a different place also, but still keeping it, so you have at least 2 copies in different places.

Moving them would just move the whole file and not keep it in two places. You want to create a copy not move the file.

Not totally sure what you mean by different sources, but there is generally a manual process if using an external hard drive where you would open where the files are then copy them to the hard drive. You would have to do this in different spots if you have things saved in different places.

I do use two external hard drives just in case one crashes. I also am an iphone/mac user, so have the cloud. In the past I've used cloud services like CrashPlan.com which will backup your PC and external hard drives for a subscription fee. You want to read into various privacy laws, etc.

There's also places like forever.com, similar to legacy, where they will backup photos/videos sent to them and copy them onto various storage devices. I know Forever provides some sort of cloud storage option.

Another solution is maintaining photos on printing sites, sometimes they will allow you to store things there, esp things that have been printed before. For video clips, I use YouTube and keep them private.

And if something does die/corrupt there are super techy people out there that can sometimes save things, maybe check with any type of videographer or people who have businesses copying photos/videos etc.

This is a great reminder that I prob need to do a backup! Thanks.

This is a perfect explanation. 

Here is my backup process:
iPhone photos - I upload to Amazon photos via an app and also upload to Shutterfly once a week. I also backup my phone to my iMac once a month or so and the photos also get backed up to an external hard drive (actually 2 external hard drives because in my former life I was a network administrator in charge of backing up all the servers in my company and losing data makes me twitchy).
iMac/Macbook pro - I backup both to external hard drives and every 4-6 months I backup any data stored (anything not a photo) to an online backup (Amazon, Office 365 and Dropbox). I don't have a lot of non-photo data that changes so I don't back that stuff up as frequently as photos.

I have tried Google photos and it works fine, but I'm happy with Amazon and Shutterfly for my backups and don't feel the need for another right now.

I use an external hard drive (with Acronis software to automate the backup) and iDrive to back my items up online. With iDrive, you sign up for a yearly subscription and then select the folders on your computer that you want to backup online (or the entire hard drive). You can set it to back up on a regular schedule. I do mine nightly. The Acronis software does something similar where you choose what drives/folders to back up (usually my entire hard drive) and then it does the work for you. With both of these programs, there's never any "transferring" of files, they're doing the work of copying your files and file structure for you. You definitely could drag and drop folders to an external hard drive (and hey, something is better than nothing), but I suggest using an automated program.

I appreciate that rune2484 shared the 3-2-1 rule of backing up! I often comment on these threads about backing up because when I was younger, my family's house burned down in a wildfire and although we packed many family photo albums (in the 20ish minutes we were given to evacuate), we ran out of time and also didn't think the fire would actually reach our house, so there were some precious photos lost. I'm grateful for all the photos and memories we do have, but I can't stress enough that you never know when something might happen to your home! (Sorry to all the Peas who have heard this story before.) Since then, my dad likes to say he "preaches the gospel of backing up" because it's so important. I really recommend that everyone has at least one off-site backup, whether it's in the cloud or an external hard drive kept at someone else's house (preferably someone who doesn't live in the same general area as you, in case there's a natural disaster that affects your city/town).

Okay, I'm stepping off my soapbox now.

The only back up I trust is a cloud based service. I have had 3 out of 4 external hard drives die. All of my photos, videos, digital scrapbooking kits and layouts are in the cloud. They are also saved to one or two external hard drives. All of my old digital photos from 2002 - 2010 are also backed up onto CDs or DVDs. But they can't be trusted either, because the some of the images cannot be opened now. 

I download all of my photos from my phone or camera straight to my iCloud account and one of my EHDs. 

The $14.99 I pay every month (less in USD) for 2TB of iCloud storage is well worth the peace of mind .

I use 3 external hard drives for backing up my photos and important documents. Yes, it is overkill, but I have had external hard drives die (thankfully, not often, just enough to make me paranoid).

ugh, Photos - they were so stupid to name the program "Photos" because you can't really google for specific advice... doh! 

I let Photostream transfer all my photos into Photos and then at the end of the month I look through and see if there are any obvious duds I can delete, then I export them all and save into a folder on my EHD labelled for the month. Nothing fancy - I just select all the photos in the month's folder and hit export, and choose the EHD folder to save them.

Then I copy/import them into Lightroom to actually do most of the things I do with them. After a few months I usually delete them from Photos. That way my laptop doesn't end up with many many thousands of photos clogging up the works. I've found that Photos gets very glitchy if it has 10,000+ photos in it (even though apparently other people (like Shimelle) don't have an issue). I'm always trying to figure out a better way to do it but so far this is the best compromise I've found. 

I got LR (classic) specifically because it references photos stored on EHDs even when they're not plugged in so you can see what you've got all in one place and add tags and collections and such, and it doesn't get overwhelmed by huge photo libraries. I can also batch edit my inventory photos which saves me a lot of time and trouble.

My system is VERY imperfect, but I used to do everything in Photos like adding metadata/flagging/making albums but when the library got too full and I moved past years onto archive EHDs none of that stuff moved with the files and I just couldn't keep my whole photo library on my old laptop/Photos - it was very unstable. I have a love/hate relationship with Photos (and all Mac products TBH). And yeah, the whole idea of actually finding where the files are on a Mac is a nightmare. I tried to have multiple Photos libraries (back when it was iPhoto) and that was even more of a nightmare.

Sorry for the long answer - hope I actually answered your question! 

I have lots of questions on this subject too. This thread is helpful, thanks to all.