Camera Club: Backing Up
Posted under Camera Club
Such a boring topic, such a boring task…such a LIFE SAVER when your ‘puter collapses one day taking with it all your photos…gone forever in the blink of the blue screen of death. Unless you’ve cleverly been systematically backing up your hard drive in which case, TA DA, with the flick of a switch, your photos and your sanity are restored.
Lovely Charlotte asked me to do a Camera Club post about backing up. I would link to her blog, or her Flickr page but [deep intake of breath] she doesn’t have either. How puzzling. How can she even be real if she doesn’t have an extensive online persona? Anyway, waves cheerily at Charlotte who is probably reading this post at work in which case she should read this post about clearing up your digital dirt…
Back to backing up. I’m sure there are ‘approved ways’ of backing up but I only know the way I do it and it goes like this:
I use Lightroom to catalogue all my photos. I used to use iPhoto but it drove me totally insane, I hated it. Lightroom is my friend and saviour now. What I love about Lightroom is that it keeps a thumbnail of all your images as part of its catalogue so, even if you have removed the photos from your working harddrive on to your backup drive, you can still SEE a thumbnail of your entire catalogue. This makes finding individual ‘old’ photos and restoring them if you suddenly need them a doddle.
Thus, the Lightroom catalogue (like an index of all the photos you have) is CRITICALLY important, not far off being as important as the actual files themselves. So I back up the catalogue every time I open Lightroom, which is a couple of times a day usually. I’m only backing it up on to my working hardrive (ie the one on my laptop) but it’s worth doing as the catalogue ‘can’ become corrupt so it’s good to have a recent backup available.
Then, I back up my entire hard drive on to an external drive once a week and immediately after I’ve imported vital photos from my camera to Lightroom (such shoots for paying clients, or irreplaceable shots like birthdays etc). I only delete such photos from my camera once I’ve imported them to Lightroom, and backed up my entire hard drive (which is creating a backup of the catalogue AND the actual files).
Every now and again, MrSpud creates a second backup on our Big Server. I don’t know much about the Big Server. I don’t think I need to. The point is, I have TWO back ups of my hard drive.
Flickr and my blog serve as an additional backup I suppose since, should I lose my laptop, my external hard drive AND the Big Server then I could recover my favourite and my best from the web. But, and here’s the rub, I don’t think we can assume that the internet will be anything like it is now in the future. Even in 10 years I bet the technology of today will be obsolete. Presumably we’d get some notice that our current files were about to become unusable but who knows. Who knows how long jpegs will remain as the ‘standard’?
Which brings me to my final point. Hard copies. Yes, Old Skool hard copies are the ultimate backup. They’ll never be overwritten, or become obsolete. And the charm of flicking through an album will surely never go out of date. I’ve been meaning to have Blurb books made for each of the boys for the past few months. Luckily I got an email today from Blurb declaring July to be ‘Digital Photo Liberation’ month with a very attractive 20% (worldwide) code. I’m not sure if I am allowed to repost the code here, but there is an option to ‘email this to a friend’. So if you’re wanting to join me in frantically making Blurb books this month, leave me a comment and I’ll forward the email with the discount to you.
And that brings the dull but necessary topic of backing up to a close. Be kind to your mental health. Get an external hard drive and back up once a week. I thank you.
xx
PS This is my external hard drive. I call it the Black Box. I don’t know what the Big Server is. It’s Big and it’s a Server. I think that’s all we need to know.
Just backed up on my black box today :-) I try to it every month and especially when I’m formatting my camera.
Most of the time I upload my photos at work as well as a ‘fire proof’ backup.
Thank you for the camera club meeting in my honour, I joined belatedly at 10:40pm. I must confess I didn’t have tea as is the norm, but a glass of wine instead (but trust that is allowed if required.) I am so lazy at backing up, but getting into a weekly routine seems like a very good idea. Looking forward to the next camera club! xxx
I’m being a good blog reader tonight, cos as I type my external hard drive is going like buggery backing up my photo’s. *Polishes halo* – I do need to do it more often though x
This is an area of my life that worries me. We all know how precious photos are and the thought of losing them really scares me. However, I too back up- I have a time capsule and two other external hardrives. You make some hugely valid points about advances in technology and actually no form of digital storage will last forever. As I’m just starting up I’m also having up all final client selections to CD. And these will be stored elsewhere. Because in case of fire, theft or other random act of God it won’t mater how many sexy black boxes we have!
Re online storage – Flickr, Facebook and online photo ordering sites eg Photobox. Yes, that’s always another back-up but don’t forget the images uploaded are usually compressed and manipulated slightly (Flickr over sharpening;fact or fiction?)
I had to post as I couldn’t see what I was typing (iPhone oddness).
Yah for camera club x
A very sage lesson there Spud. Can I add a further method of backing up? I back up to an external hard drive, but also we back up to a remote server somewhere in America. Don’t press me on any more details because my H deals with all that. We do that to protect our important files (work for him, photos for me) from theft or fire. Reasoning that if the computer is damaged or stolen, chances are the black box next to it may well be too. God forbid, and all that, but still a scenario worth protecting against.
Loving your work Spud, as ever xx
A great reminder – I must get myself a second external hard drive and set up Time Machine…
My dad has copies of all my photos of E and he backs those up too. Mr aspidistra thinks I’m mad taking our external hard drive on holiday but I can’t see why I would want to leave it here to potentially be stolen/burnt to a crisp!
(I’d love the Blurb code please!)
Ooh could I have the blurb code please? Thank you!! X
Thoroughly enjoying catching up on your blog Spud. Would you mind forwarding me the code too? Merci x
I have tried a lot of backup solutions at home and I highly recommend mozy.com for online backup. It is free for up to 2GB, $5.99 USD a month for up to 50 GB and 1 computer, or $9.99 for 125GB and up to 3 computers. Install it on your computer, select the folders that you want to backup and it will automatically do the work for you. If the worst happens and you lose all of your other backups, install Mozy on any PC and it can restore all of your files or those that you select. There is even an iPhone and Android app to allow you to access your files from anywhere