This week I'm reshooting class photos for the kids school. Why? Because I didn't properly back up my photos. Well, honestly, I had 3 back ups which should have been plenty. What happened is I took a group to work on, then overwrote the class photos. Then I propagated the "erased" ones to the backups.
So, how is the best way to back up data, or rather those precious precious photos?
First off, nothing is permanent. NOTHING will last forever. One thing to know is that CDs or DVDs that are "normal" will only last a few years. If you write on them with sharpie, it will last much less than that (about half that time). If you put the stickers on it? It will deteriorate faster as well. If you purchase the gold something or others, I think those will last about 10 years.
What about hard drives? External drives you store in a lock box? well, if you don't spin them up at least once every 6 months, they will possibly "freeze" up.
What about flash drives? You know, I just don't know.
The "best" that I've heard of is online data storage, but it's very expensive, especially if you have a ton of photos.
What do I have set up?
Personal photos from years ago are on CD/DVD (must check the oldest). Yes, I wrote on them with sharpie and used stickers. One day I'll sit down and make sure the images are all still there.
Business photos and personal from the last year are stored on one drive, then backed up to 2 separate drives. I have over 1 terabyte of hard drive storage space. It's not enough. Organization is the key. For personal this is what I have:
Year
--Month
----Day or Event
------RAW
------PSD
------ORDER
------WEB
OR
Year
--ORDER
--Month
---Day or Event
-----RAW
-----PSD
-----WEB
Clients are this way
PHOTOGRAPHY
--Business Files
--Photos
----Clients
------Name
--------RAW
--------PSD
--------PROOF
--------ORDER
--------WEB
--------FILES (this is for their information files when I get them digitized)
I highly recommend having a folder just for the raw files, then when you edit save the psd files off to another folder. It just makes it easier to find them.
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3 comments:
Yeah I wrote on them with pens too. I use thumb drives and CDs. That is it. However, I do have my digital pages printed yearly (this year in a book) and I also save my digital pages separately. What else can you do??? SO MANY people don't even back up.
Well I left something for you over at my blog. :)
I am obsessive about backing up my pictures... I have all of them on an external hard-drive, but I also put them on two different sites online. I have them ALL at www.winkflash.com, which gives you unlimited space for FREE. I also upload them all (at full resolution) to my Flickr... I post them at Flickr and Winkflash right away, as soon as they are off the camera and the files renamed (Yes, I rename each and every file with the year, month, day, and event/name)
Am definitely going to take your advice and at least make CDs of my photos! Makes me nervous to think that I have no backup at all! Yikes!
Hope you have a great week!
Janet
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