Backing up your photos
As photographers, we spend a lot of time thinking about how to take the most beautiful photos ever.
How often do you back them up, though…? If you have to think for more than a fraction of a second to answer that question, the real answer is ‘not often enough’
Here’s a couple of tips to poke you in the right direction.
There are a few important steps to creating a backup strategy.
Choose what to back up
This is the easiest bit. Think about this: What do you want to back up? The answer, here, is probably either ‘my photos’, or ‘my photos and lots of other stuff’.
I do both – but I go out of my way to take better, more frequent, and more redundant backups of my photos, because they’re more valuable and important to me.
Choose how to back it up
Automatic back-up at home – Personally, I’m using an Apple Time Capsule (usually available a smidge cheaper on Amazon.com / .co.uk) which has a huge benefit: It takes automatic back-ups every hour. Which means that every time I come within WiFi range of my house (which happens frequently, unsurprisingly), the computer automatically starts backing up my important files (i.e. all my photographs). I love this solution because it’s a no-brain approach to back-up: I don’t have to do or remember anything, it just does it for me.
Along the same trait is Automatic back-up over the internet – In addition to my Time Capsule, I use a service called Mozy, which is an online backup service (for more about why, see ’store the backup’ below). It’s pretty clever, actually, for about $5 per month you get unlimited storage, and it takes backups in the background, all over the internet. By having your back-ups off-site, your stuff is still safe even if someone steals everything in your house, there is a fire, or similar horribleness. I signed up for a 2-year subscription, set it up, and haven’t looked at it since (apart from checking if it’s still backing up every now and then. It is. I’m impressed.)
Fully redundant backups… – Finally (can you tell I’m slightly paranoid?) I have a hard disk RAID solution, also at home. This is a little box I can plug into my computer. The box contains two harddrives, which are ‘mirrored’. This means that both disks have the same content in them: If one of them fails, in theory all you have to do is to replace the broken disk. The other disk will copy all the information back onto the new disk, and you’re safe again. This is a pretty hard-core solution, but it works very well to ensure data integrity.
That's 50,000 photographs just waiting to be destroyed because someone opened the hard drive enclosure to take a photo...
… Over a network: RAID solutions can work in many different ways – you can do them over a network (Check out ‘Network Attached Storage’ on Amazon (.co.uk or .com)).
… Hooked up directly to your PC or Mac: As far as stand-alone RAID goes, you can buy ready-built solutions (Like the G-Tech G-Raid 3TB FireWire 800 / Hi-Speed USB solution available from Amazon.com, or the WD MyBook 2GB solution from Amazon.co.uk) – but there are loads of other options available, too.
If you’re feeling thrifty and a bit DIY-tastic, you can build your own RAID solution by getting two big harddisks. I’m rather fond of Western Digital Caviar Green drives; they are reliable, quiet, and cheap-tastic: Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com. In addition, you’ll need an enclosure. Look for Firewire 800 if your computer supports it – if not, USB2 or FireWire should do the trick.
Check your backup integrity
I was kicking myself when I thought I might have lost this photo - turns out that I did have a backup of it, despite deleting the folder by accident. Phew! Click for bigger version on Flickr
Remember that you have to be sure that what you are backing up is actually working: There’s no good in taking a backup of a corrupted file. Obviously, you can’t check every file for integrity every time, but what you can do is to ensure that you keep older backups, too.
Only recently, I discovered that I had deleted a folder of pictures by accident several months ago. If I had only kept a recent snapshot of my pictures folder (as it were, pun fully intended), I’d have been buggered. Luckily (or rather: due to having a sane backup strategy), I was able to dig out an older backup of my photos folder, which still contained the deleted folder, and I was able to restore my photos. Phew!
For important shoots, I immediately burn them to DVD – that way, I know I have a backup somewhere which isn’t being touched.
Think about where you store your backups
Okay, so perhaps this bank vault is a bit over-kill, but if your photos are valuable to you (say, if you're a commercial photographer, or if you can't stand the thought of losing them), you might want to consider renting a deposit box, and keep a backup of your photos on an external harddrive there. You only need a tiny bank box, so it shouldn't cost the world.
It’s important to think about how you are storing your backups. Remember that you’re backing up for all sorts of reasons: If your computer breaks, and external harddrive is handy. But what if someone breaks into your house? It’s no good having a full set of backups on external harddrives if the thieves can just take them with them, too. House fires, floods, etc – there are lots of reasons why keeping your backups in your house is a good idea (they’re easily available), but there are risks, too.
Personally, I keep my Time Capsule hidden away in the attic. That way, a casual thief is unlikely to run off with it, so even if my computer is stolen, I don’t lose my photos.
In addition, I keep a backup on an external drive which I leave at my parent’s house – it’s low-tech, and the backups are generally about 2 months old every time I swap the drive over, but it’s better than not having it handy.
In addition, I have the Mozy backups – although they would be a pain int he arse to restore: I’d have to download hundreds of GB of data. There’s an alternative way, too: ordering DVDs or an external harddrive with your data, but that, too, is a pain… In short, Mozy is my absolute last resort.
And finally… Try recovering the backup
The best thing that might happen to you is that you go your entire life without ever having to restore a back-up. Nonetheless, it is an extremely good idea to try it anyway.
If you’re unable to restore your backups (perhaps there’s a problem with the backups? Maybe the restore feature of your favourite backup package isn’t working?), you may as well not bother with the hassle of backups at all: they’re only useful if you can use them if the worst happens.
Couple of notes
The links to Mozy and Amazon in this article are affiliate links (more about those on the ‘Advertising on Photocritic‘ page, if you’re curious). That means that if you buy something, I get a small kick-back from the seller for sending you there. I am using all the equipment that I’m suggesting in this post, however, and would never recommend something purely because I could make a few pennies off it. Amazon is not always the cheapest retailer, so do shop around, you might be able to find the things you need cheaper elsewhere.
The bank vault and harddrive photos are from iStockPhoto.
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Insights, suggestions and comments
Great article, my backup strategy is very similar to yours, although it does differ slightly.
I do all my editing on my mac, which hold the latest 40Gb or so of my photos, this is backed up to my Time Capsule.
I have a PC in my house which has several TBs of storage which is a direct mirror of the Time Capsule (this is done with free software called SyncBack from 2brightsparks.com), I also keep backups of my photo store to several USB external drives that are kept in different physical locations (work & parents house). For automated offiste backups i use Carbonite, they are very similar to Mozy, can’t remember why i chose them over Mozy, but the reason at the time doesn’t apply any more.
Finally, for uber paranoia photos that are very special to me for one reason or another are stored in another online solution – Amazon’s S3 cloud storage system. S3 is aimed at developers, although they are an increasing amount of tools that make uploading/downloading files easier.
Oh my golly!
This was like a warning from the future. I was going to start some serious computer admin (defraggin & backing up etc) last night after work but I turned my computer on and just got a flashing cursor, nothing else! Immediately I just thought about all the photos that I would have lost – I think I last did a back up about 18 months ago – and I got the shivers.
This morning I turned my computer back on, got the evil cursor again, did the old turn it off and on again routine and amazingly, it worked! I have spent the last few hours backing up like a beast! I have managed to save all my photos, next comes my videos, then music. I’m too scared to turn my computer off in case it doesn’t turn back on.
Anyone reading this article, heed the warnings!
This is a must for any profession that requires computer use. Hard drives are dirt cheap these days so no one has any excuse not to back up. Heck record on DVD blanks if you have to.
I was just thinking about purchasing a NAS with 2 RAID mirrored hard drives. And as you mention it IS a security if the drive fails, however, is it possible that the NAS fails, thus wiping both drives ? Im all new in backup, so this RAID setups are a new for me.
I like Backblaze myself and have backed something stupid like 300gb of data with them. Client for Windows and OSX.
/Mads
I have two drives which happen to be the same size. I regularly backup to one of these drives via an external USB drive enclosure and when I make the occasional trip to my bank safety deposit box, I swap the other drive. This way, I have periodic off-site backups.
I also have a cheap NAS (Dlink DNS-323) running in raid-0 that I use locally as a file server.
forgot to mention that these are encrypted using truecrypt. This ensures there’s no problem if they get misplaced or stolen.
Very simple.
1. Prime photo images location(RAW, JPEG, PS, HDR, et all): external hard-drive.
2. Backup #1 of all of the above (and then some): external hard-drive disconnected from USB AND power strip (Mother Natures’ power surges can be rough).
3. Backup #2 all of the above: external hard-drive (backed up 2-3x per year) 1000 miles away.
Being a computer professional I know how serious having good backups are. My backups are simple, ye easy to recover in the event I should need to. This is my solution, which was cost effective, but almost impossible to lose information.
When I do a shoot, here’s what I do immediately when I’m done:
1. Get the pictures off the camera and onto my computer.
2. Burn the pictures I have just taken to DVD, making sure I fill the DVD completely with older images — redundancy counts!
3. Copy all my pictures to my external drive, which is only used for backups and only plugged in when I am backing things up.
4. Bring the burned DVD(s) to Grandma’s house when I visit her each week, and store them in a CD binder.
With those steps I have 3 copies of every picture: one on my computer, one on my backup drive, and multiples on DVD at Grandma’s.
DVDs also only hold data for so long (about 5 years), so every year on New Year’s I re-burn ALL of my pictures to DVD, and also keep the old backups.
If something happens to my house/computer, no problem. Just means I’ll be visiting Grandma :)
Yep! Share a little story with you about a couple of years ago I lost an external disk with a fair few images on but because they were from my early days as a photographer. Nothing I couldn’t afford losing so after being quoted £800 to have the data restored I gave it a miss. Then the other day I powered up a small external that I use for a lot of the work I do out in the field. It had been working perfectly fine the night before however when I powered it up it failed, I tried every bit of data recovery software on the market to no avail… So lost some important images but not worth the £800 I was quoted again… anyhow! lesson learnt well and truly now I back up. Just because it has never happened doesn’t mean that it won’t. BACK Your Data up.
I kept thinking that I’d back up someday… I have the same exact story as the previous writer. All of my photos were on an external drive. Worked fine last Saturday, Sunday morning it was as if nothing had ever been on the drive. I lost everything. So, now I use Carbonite and CD’s. Lesson learned, the (very) hard way.
I read today that Apple have admitted that some of their Time Capsules have been faulty. What it reminds me is that for the most important data you need to backup the backup also as nothing is immune to failure/theft/flood/fire.
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