It’s The End Of Summer – Back Up!

It’s almost the end of summer, and you probably have a great collection of images from the last few months. So now it’s probably a good time to drag you down into the mud and talk about backing up your images!

I can’t stress enough the importance of backing up, and I am sure you have either heard it or thought it several times yourself. So much of our lives is recorded digitally now, and with the great power of digital images/videos comes the great responsibility of protecting it for future generations. All it takes is one incident where you lose images and you’ll be ‘converted’!

Today, some people would simply back up to CD or DVD and be done with it. However, I recommend a different approach. Hard drives are priced incredibly low, so in addition to your CD/DVD backups, I recommend picking up one of those external drives and backing up there as well. Get a new external drive every year, and store just that year’s pictures on it. Use it only as a backup drive.

Why the multiple backups? Because every media eventually fails. This includes CDs, DVDs and hard drives. By having multiple backups, you provide additional protection for yourself.

Here’s how my folders are set up on the computer (using 2008 as an example):

2007

2008

• Events
• - Spring Break Trip 2008
• - Trevor’s First Birthday 2008
• Pets
• Kids
• Eric
• Wife
• Nature

With this system I can find all of the events for a given year, as well as other shots I’ve taken. I try to separate out events from random pictures (which would be in the Kids folder).

Use the system that works for you, but make sure you use something! Otherwise, you’ll have a big folder with a ton of images that are unorganized, and difficult to backup (because you have so many in one place). 

I also recommend using automated backup software. Since I am on a Mac, I use Super Duper, which is great. Every night it makes complete backups to an external drive.

There’s no end to the rabbit hole of backups! Since I have a background in wedding and portrait photography, I have multiple backups of everything. For every shoot, I have a working copy on my computer, a backup in the desk drawer on DVD, and another DVD along with a copy on portable hard drive in a storage unit a couple of miles away.

Now, you don’t have to get that crazy, but I would suggest keeping backups outside of your house (perhaps with a relative or a safety deposit box) of your most important images. The one time you need that backup, you’ll be happy you took the time!

So, are you a regular backer-upper? Have you come across any tips to preserve your images?

Eric Doggett is a photographer in Austin, Texas. He has a site specifically forbaby photography tips at ShootTheBaby.com, as well as BoxOfficeBaby.com, a site where you can order custom birth/party announcement cards and posters – including some unique tech birth announcements. You can reach him at babydaddy -at- ShootTheBaby.com.