Back That Thang Up! : Hard Drive Backups

Back That Thang Up! : Hard Drive Backups

"Storing files on a computer without any backup is like putting all your eggs in one basket, and then throwing it off a very high cliff. They may be safe for a while, but eventually things will get messy." -
T.E. Ronneberg

     So first off, I'd like to apologize for such a late post. I was out of town for work and when I got back, I discovered that one of my hard drives had failed while I was gone. Thankfully, I'm a good boy and I backup my hard drives regularly! So it was only the loss of an $100 hard drive and not the loss of thousands of irreplaceable photos.
     Backing up your stuff on external drives is so easy, simple and valuable, there's really no good reason for you to not be doing it. And with the prices of hard drives consistently dropping, it doesn't hurt your wallet either.

     There's a couple different ways to backup your photos, and while some techniques are bit more advanced, they can also be more robust in features. Without going into lengthy detail on each option, here's a list of the more common ways to backup your photos and some general info about each one:

    * RAID Array Setup This is where multiple hard drives are used together as one storage device. There's different methods for configuring the drives, and each method has it's own benefits. For example, some configurations allow for better performance than one hard drive could provide, while other configurations allow for data redundancy that a single drive could not provide.      
    * Automatic Backups I know it's more of a general term, but what I'm referring to is the software that sometimes comes included with the purchase of a hard drive. Essentially, it automatically stores changes made in a specified folder onto a backup drive. Very handy if your not interested in messing around with backups all the time, as it does it all on it's own. As with anything these days, there's several different companies that make the software, and you'll have to do some research to find one that fits your personal needs.
    * Drive copying This is pretty much what it sounds like... You copy the contents of one drive onto another drive. As an exact duplicate of the original files, this is usually the safest way to backup, as there won't be any proprietary file formats to contend with in the future. However, this is also the most time consuming.
    * Cloud storage backup Putting your photos and videos out there into the great interwebs is an option with serious pros and serious cons. The good part is that it's offsite storage so that if something should happen to the physical location of your hard drives, you have another copy safely waiting thousands of miles away. This could be a real life saver in the case of theft or fire or something like that. The bad part is that those hard drives "in the cloud" could be hacked by mean people that like to steal personal data. Maybe you have nothing to "hide", but doesn't it make you feel a little uncomfortable to know that your trusting a company that's trusting employees who are trusting third parties who are trusting their employees who are trusting other employees and so on?  It's easy for Carbonite or Dropbox or whoever to say "your data is secure", but does any one person really know that that's true?
    * Burned DVDs Two words: SLOW & SAFE.
    * Thumb Drives This is a great option in my opinion, because it focuses on the photos that really matter. With this backup method, you don't copy every single photo or file on your hard drive, but instead only copy onto a thumb drive the pictures from the important shoots or the big events.This is also meant to be a temporary storage solution for short term extra backup until your other drives get settled. Then it can be erased after a week or two without worry.

     When I need to copy and backup new photos, what I do is copy directly from the camera to the primary storage drive. This is the drive I access when working in Photoshop, Lightroom, etc. I then copy again directly from the camera to a second drive that acts as a mirror to the primary drive. The reason I copy directly to both is that if there happened to be an error while copying to one drive, the error (hopefully) would not be likely to occur on the other drive during the second round of copying. Whereas if I only copy directly to one drive and an error occurs during copying, then duplicate that drive, then I have two bad files! This has happened to me several times, which is why I always copy directly to two different drives. After that's done, I convert the raw images to large JPGs and upload them to Flickr in a private folder. This way, if my two drives fail, I at least have high quality JPG versions to turn to.

     I know my method isn't as fancy as some other photographers, but it's cheap (2 WD My Passport drives for $99 each), it's completely under my control, and I have the 3 copies. Perhaps if gigantic loads of money start falling into my lap, I might upgrade the configuration a bit, but I don't think it's really necessary. Well that's it... hard drive backups. Don't be lazy or you'll be sorry! Get some drives, and start copying!

     As always, thanks for reading, and I really hope that you find some helpful information in all my rambling. If you have a comment or question, I'd love to hear it! Just below, there's comment boxes, and social media links, and even a cool survey! Have fun!