Backup Hard Disc Drives Time Again

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Fall a Good Time to Backup and Cleanup Drives


For whatever reason I started a long time ago, going through a full scale backup and cleanup of all of my image files. Its a good time of year for me as the lack of warm weather allows for some indoors file management. Perhaps you too can begin this habit. 

 Accidents Do Happen

We don't want an accidental loss. once a hard drive dies, it does so in a complete and total way, in some cases. If the loss occurs because of platter or drive head damage, temperature limits, or any other type of internal failure, and you haven't taken the time to back up your data, in this case photography, you'll find yourself wishing you had kept a regular backup procedure in the works all year long. All of your data will be forever lost. I have a habit of doing a synchronous backup, that is files which are new or have had any changes made by a photo editor such as Photoshop or Lightroom, each time I download image files to my computer. This way you are not having to do a full backup every time and the process takes much less time.  You can find software or use an Apple or Windows synchronous setting for this. Do the research and find out which companies you prefer and what their particular products offer for the money. This article is not an exhaustive read, but done only to encourage you to follow through in doing backups so you don't lose any of your photos. 

Internal, External, CD/DVD, Flash, RAID or Cloud

I don't care what type of storage you use, make sure you have at least one more copy on some alternative type of media. Even using a network appliance application, such as RAID-1, you will need another backup. Even using the Cloud for storage, you will need another backup. No one can foretell what might happen to a cloud storage backup because of fire or theft, or an inside employee develops a bad attitude. This is true of all types of storage. Make sure you have an onsite copy, an off-site copy as well as a CD/DVD copy. And if your photography has monetary value, as when you are a company with image files for sale, even a cloud copy is worth the time and fee. Just do your research for the costs. I haven't added those options in this writing as so much changes so fast that you'll want to read up on reviews and costs in real time.   

Whenever you download from a flash card, a memory card, make sure you have it on your internal hard disc and an external hard disc, then follow up later with a CD/DVD copy, as a normal part of downloading. We all have to get away from the momentary need to see what we captured, because stuff gets in the way of following through with a procedure to do all the proper backing up and saving. And when your photos are valuable, consider a RAID setup. I will be using the RAID-1 configuration soon, and in addition I will have another backup hard disc.

I used to keep a copy of my photos at work, but when I discovered that hard disc had been stolen, I no longer used that strategy. This is why all of the options are mentioned. It only takes the loss of a single photo, or all of them, to make you wish you had started such a program.

The Cleanup Portion A Must Do

I have mentioned this on numerous occasions and I'll continue to mention this. It may seem incidental and unimportant at first glance, but I promise you it will make your photo editing time much more efficient in the future. And I'll freely admit I am not perfect at this. I will take an hour or two every so often with files I have previously downloaded just for this purpose. I am speaking of post-download, deleting, starring and creating separate folders for saved photos, and naming them so that when searching for a specific type of image I can more easily and quickly locate them. Go through your files and toss the ones which you feel have no future significance, and do this for more than one reason. First it will ease the space those files take up on storage media, but even more important it will reduce the time it takes you in searching through your files for specific image use. You may be looking for an image for a holiday greeting card or for a gift, or for a client need. This all take time and any way I can reduce the time it takes, makes a real difference for my workflow.

And One More Thing

Also consider doing a complete image backup (in this case I am referring to the settings and software of your entire system, applications and preferences of the particular system you are using). One company I have just found online which offers a free use of image backups for non-commercial use, is Macrium. Take a look and if you have any suggestions help our readers out by placing in a comment box.  Here's a good read on how to do an image backup using OSX (v10.5 and 6) you can locate latest versions by searching support.apple.com and here's one for Windows backup

Getting this done at this time of year is a good time since you'll find as the weather offers fewer and fewer sunny days makes it easier to do for most of us. Any questions, please add them below. A very good site for discussing storage related issues, by the way, is StorageReview online. I recently asked and received an answer from a helpful staff member Brian, who's been a member since 2009 and very knowledgeable.

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