Shutter Sisters

sunday school: backup plan

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I recently had a bit of a mishap in which I almost lost all my files from a wedding I had just shot.  I won’t go into details, but suffice it to say that (after I recovered from nearly fainting) I finally began thinking seriously about developing a backup plan for my files.  Yeah, you’d think I’d have one of those after the tens of thousands of photos I’ve taken over the years.

I realize that this is not a sexy or inspirational topic, but it’s one we must talk about, Sisters, to save you from potential future heartache.  Please: LEARN from my mistakes.  You just NEVER know when you’ll need that backup plan.

Here are a few options when it comes to backing up your data:

  • Once a week, burn a DVD or CDs of all the new files for that week.  Make sure you label the disc after you’ve burned it.  If you take more than 5 GBs of photos every week (not hard to do with the mega-megapixel cameras these days), this may be a bit time-consuming.  Plus, discs can get scratched and damaged over time.  Kind of defeats the whole backup purpose.
  • Use a remote online backup service such as Mozy or Carbonite.  Both of those companies offer unlimited online backup for $4-$5/month.  Not a bad deal if you have lightning fast upload speeds, which I don’t with my DSL service.
  • Buy a fairly large external hard drive (pictured in the photo above is the 500GB My Passport Essential).  [And by large, I don’t mean the actual physical size; I’m talking about the hard drive capacity.  That 500GB hard drive pictured above really is the size of a passport and could fit in my back pocket with ease.] Do a full backup initially, and then do a weekly backup of changes and new files.  There are a variety of software options to automatatically schedule backups so that you don’t have to depend on your own memory.  Many external hard drives come with such a software, but do your research first to make sure it’s one that will work for you.
  • Buy TWO fairly large external hard drives, and create TWO identical backups.  Hard drives crash–it’s a fact of life–and external hard drives get dropped in bath tubs  (oops, did I just admit to that?), so having two backups is not as far fetched an idea as you may think.  This especially applies if you are using an external hard drive to free up space on your main internal hard drive.
  • Do a combination of any of the above if you REALLY want to be on the safe side.

Also, for those of you using Lightroom, when you get that message every once in awhile asking if you want to backup your catalog?  Don’t ignore it.  And make sure that you’re backing up that catalog to a drive other than your internal hard drive, just in case it crashes. 

I know that performing a backup of your files seems so boring compared to actually shooting photos and playing around with them in Lightroom or Photoshop, but with all the beautiful photos I’m seeing you all shoot, it would be a shame for any one of those to get lost.

And while we’re on the subject of taking care of photo type business, we’ve got 2 lucky (and super-talented) winners to announce today.  Congrats to Sunmamma (be still my heart) and Anah Na Uhr (beauty through tears) for winning both a Diana camera and a copy of Katherine Center’s book Everyone is Beautiful.  Our OWP Flickr group for “beautiful” is…welll…BEEEEEEAUTIFUL!  Keep up the gorgeous clicks, Sisters!

Oh, and please feel free to share with us your own backup plans and/or a link to an image you definitely DON’T want to lose.

Comments

  1. Thank you for the reminder (and confessions– phew, I’m not the only person to drop valuables in water. How many of my cell phones have been in a toilet? I’m not admitting!). I recently switched to backing up on an external hard drive. As a palm pilot user, I set as a recurring event in my calendar a reminder to BACKUP files. Once every other week I copy photos and other files over to the external HD. So far, it’s not taken much time, and I’ve felt peace of mind.

    I lost two computer HDs to crashes, with files not recoverable, and felt the heartache of lost pictures and files. I decided every other week was "good enough" for my life.

  2. yay! I’m glad that I’m not the only one who worries about these things. So much of my life is documented in my photographs that I backup my photos and videos to an external drive that we keep in a waterproof/fireproof safe and update every week AND dvd’s that I keep near my desk. I might be a little obsessive about it, but my pictures are so important to me!

  3. This is very, very good advice. I lost my computer (and all photos of my girls babyhood) for several weeks until my computer friend rigged a fix that allowed me to dump the pics to an external drive. EHDs are coming down in price and I have several from Costco. My habit is to never put photos on my desktop or laptop, but only ever to the EHD. I just need to get better about moving copies to the EHD.

    I would have fainted at almost losing a series of wedding pics!

  4. Great posting! YES… I have a external hard drive that I load EVERYTHING on to each DAY. However I am still old school and believe in a ‘paper trial’ so a burn a DVD / CD of each weeks work or big projects get there own C.D. as it happens.

    This was a great blog entry …. love shutter sisters!
    ((HUGS))

  5. We have two external hard drives, and I back up to both of them, although I haven’t done it in quite a while. Something I really need to do pronto. Thanks for the reminder.

  6. It’s awful that lots of us need that one BIG loss to kick our (my) butt. I backup now with two external hard drives. One updates automatically everyday and one I do on my own.
    Also had to say that I accidentally lost images from a Sandisk compact flash. OK, I hit delete when I wasn’t supposed to. I freaked and then remembered that it came with a recovery disk. I was able to recover all the deleted images. And you can too as long as you haven’t formatted the disk after you hit delete. BACKUP.

  7. I just bought TIme Capsule an, " 802.1n Wi-Fi Hard Drive" for the express purpose of backing up my photographs. I have yet to install it and to be honest I do not totally understand it! Glad you didn’t loose your photos, that would have been ulcer producing!
    Cheers,
    Tracey

  8. And please do store a backup somewhere not in your home…should there be a fire, flood….it’s all gone if it’s all in one place

  9. i’ve just started to take backing up my photos seriously! right now, when i upload pictures from my camera i upload the raw files directly to both my computer and my external hard drive and then save the jpgs i create to a cd! i definitely like the suggestion of a second hard drive as if i lost all that is on my present one i’d be super sad!

    great post!

  10. I’ve got a few external hard drives.. I also have been using smugmug.com to upload photos and they can send you the digital copy of your galleries in the raw format you uploaded them in. I recently moved across the country and have one of my drives in storage, that had photos from a wedding I had done. The client wanted a digital copy of her photos, and I was able through smugmug to just order a CD and have it sent directly to her- it was a lifesaver.

  11. Another piece of advice is to make sure you keep an off site backup in case of fire/flood/et.. I am just getting going with an online service for backups (http://www.backblaze.com), but right now, I do the 2 hard drive backup, with one being rotated off site every couple of weeks. Most fire proof safes are not going to be protective enough to keep a hard drive or DVDs from melting and becoming unusable.

    For wedding photos, I back up the RAW files to DVD and put them in a safe deposit box at the bank. Weddings are too important NOT to back up. The finished files get backed up and rotated off site with all my other photos.

    I should also add that DVDs and CDs have a limited shelf life. I recently tried to go back and pull some RAW files from a DVD made in 2005 and was unable to get most of the files off of it.

  12. I have two external hard drives. I bought the first one after my laptop started giving me signs that it might fail. I just got the second one the other day and haven’t installed it yet. I like having the reassurance of that second drive, which I will install today, because you never know what is going to fail when.

    A couple of recent shots that I wouldn’t want to lose:

    http://dailyvignette.com/2009/03/11/daybreak/
    http://dailyvignette.com/2009/03/14/sunrise-reflection/

  13. LOL – I started reading this post and nearly died laughing! What PERFECT timing for me! I almost lost two weddings (and nearly fainted over it) just last weekend, and my hero husband went out and bought another 1TB external drive to back up my 500G external drive! Great ideas! Thanks for putting this out here!

    Also, WOW WOW WOW!!! Thank you so much for choosing my photo to win the OWP this month! I’m so stoked – I totally squealed when I saw!!!

    And you asked for a shot I don’t want to lose… http://www.flickr.com/photos/8702729@N02/3273405294/

  14. Wow!! First let me say thank you so much for choosing my picture it means so much to me, you have no idea!! Second I am terrible for backing up so thank you for bringing this up. It is so important.

  15. Another precaution I take is to not erase/re-format my camera’s memory card until I’ve backed up images to an external drive. I feel very shaky whenever my photos live in only one location.

    If you are a Mac user with Leopard, in the very least set up Time Machine.

    (You know after all this high-horsing I’ll be the first to lose photos!)

    🙂

  16. i copied all of my photos to an external hard drive and then deleted them off my own computer … only to discover that for whatever reason, i can’t open any of the files on my hard drive. any advice?

  18. Ditto to all you’ve said…from a woman whose dinosaur hard drive crashed recently…everything, gone. Only two days before had I decided it was time to backup those thousands of photos….whew. Never again will I ignore that "backup" prompt.

    Waiting on my new Mac…yay…so that I can get back into processing and sharing images.

  19. OMG. My heart just skipped a beat when I read this. It’s every working photographer’s nightmare.
    I back up to external hard drives AND put two copies on DVD. I then store one of the DVD copies off-site. Just in case. My main computer is backed up once a week in the off season, twice a week during wedding season. (Roughly April-November in my neck of the woods.) I know this probably sounds like overkill, but I never want to have to tell a client that I’ve lost her wedding photos. *Shudder*

  20. Wise words.. It’s never fun when you have to start over… and I’ve had causes of doing that over the last few years… I’ve gotten better but not flawless.

    dave

  21. I am stopping my messing around on Flickr right Now and rebacking up my vacation photo’s. I have an external HD and keep all my photos (RAW) on it. I will look into getting another one. I also thought about burning..but if they don’t last indef. then is it worth it? I also am looking into one of those services you mentioned…storing online.

    I would just lose a part of myself if my photo’s disapeared. I just got some photo’s of my children for the X and am backing them up on my pc after scanning them. They are older and I see deterioration starting…

  24. I won’t admit that I’ve dropped a hard drive in the bathtub, but I will admit that I had another catastrophe, and an external hard drive saved the day. In November, my family’s home was destroyed by fire. My computer, where I kept my photos and did 99% of my editing, had a literal meltdown. The data on the internal hard drive was unrecoverable. However, I had three or four years worth of digital photos on an external hard drive, which was kept on the desk beside the computer. The hard drive is just a mite on the smoky side yet, but the data is intact! I have the pictures. I have transferred them to another hard drive for safe keeping.

    Now, I have to get back in the habit of backing up my photos regularly. Thank you for the reminder.

  25. Thank you for the reminder. Even tho I have a one tetrabyte external hard drive for my photos I just now – based on your article – signed up for Mozy. Very quick and not at all expensive. Well worth the peace of mind. Thanks again.

  26. You want an EASY way to back up?!

    Sign up with backblaze.com They automatically back up things on your computer once they are added. For $5 a month you receive UNLIMITED SPACE!! It took well over a week for them to back up everything……I had way too many photos! They will even send you discs of your backups for an additional fee.

    Not having to worry about my own backup is well worth $5 a month!

    -WW
    http://www.wayfaringwanderer.com

  29. I think the online backing up thing is a good idea if you have fast internet upload speeds. It does not, however, address the issue of what to do when your 160GB hard drive on your laptop maxes out in 6 months, which has been my woe for the past year. I’ve had to get much more critical of my photos and delete them mercilessly, but still…One event will set me back 10 – 15GB easily. This is why I’ve chosen the external hard drive route, so that I’ll have my files on hand easily if I ever need to access them again. When I find my 1TB external drive (it’s in the apartment somewhere), I will be doing the backing-up-the-backup mode of backing up.

    I’m glad to hear so many of you are way ahead of me and have backup plans in place!

  30. I am a strong advocate of multiple backups. External hard drives are fantastic but they crash too so it is soo important to have more than one EHD. I had one tip over on to the floor around Christmas and although it was less than a foot off the ground it completely fried and EVERYTHING was lost. I had mutliple hard drives and while most things were in both places not everything was. I lost 2 clients entire sessions. There were a lot of tears (on my end) and I definitely learned my lesson though. Thanks soo much for this post! It reminds me that I wanted to look into off site backup. I have a horrible fear that I will have multiple harddrives and plenty of backups in my house but that I could lose everything heaven forbid to a fire or flood. I have to move my backups off site for real security. Thanks for motivating me to do this.

    A bath tub.. really? I’m dying to know the story behind that.

  31. I’ve gotten into the habit of backing up my files when I download them and also backing up the processed JPGs and PSDs every now and then. One time, this has only happened once, I took a photo of my sister’s daughter and I processed the file and everything went out great, I didn’t back up the photo and erased it from my SD card and all of a sudden the original RAW file was damaged, it has a pink stain on the right side of the photo ruining the RAW file completely and I don’t know how that happened and it was the only photo damaged…talk about weird.

    So I have my backup strategy for when I get the photos from the camera onto my laptop and then I’ll copy them once again to another HD and every now and then I’ll go over to my parent’s house and copy the contents of the HD to the File Server I have there. I tried doing that over the Internet but it was impossible to finish since it would take days upon days to copy the files over to the file server.

  32. Stevie,

    Do you still have that hard drive that failed? There are services that will recover anything off that hard drive and depending on the damaged done to the hard drive it can be easily recovered without the use of those services.