I know you’re all religiously backing up your photos and important data, right? I mean, it’s such an incredibly simple and inexpensive way to insure you never lose those cherished memories or a client’s shoot or your invoices and contracts. You’d have to be insane not to keep at least one copy of all your important data. Completely and totally insane, right? Well, if you haven’t backed up your data go do it right this instant and I’ll wait until you’re done. Go ahead; I’ll be right here when you get back. Go… NOW!
Ask any photographer or IT person who has lost a hard drive and subsequent data this question and you’ll get a lecture on the importance of data backup like you wouldn’t believe. Worse yet, talk to one that had to pay a recovery service to get that data back – if even possible – and you’ll hear some sad tales of woe or worse, of lost employment or clients.
When I was an investigator I lost a hard drive with over two years worth of reports, invoices and client data. There was no warning, no noises, no glitches, nothing. One morning I went into my office and fired up my PC and got the hard drive failure error. I still remember staring at the screen in disbelief. That was over 15 years ago and I still shudder at the thought of it! Fortunately I had everything in hard copies in my file cabinet but it took over six months of almost daily work to restore the digital files. And keep in mind this was before document scanning and OCR! It was a painful, crippling lesson and it’s never happened since. Even more sad was they fact that I had just purchased a tape drive as backup but had not yet installed it!
As of today I have over 12 terabytes of drive space on my network and at least half of it is redundant storage. I run Memo Pro backup software that manages all my data backup plans quite efficiently. I keep at least three versions of my files with two locally and one off site – actually, in another town. The problem is I’m quickly outgrowing my current storage capabilities, especially after moving to the Canon 7D and its larger RAW and video files so I’ll be upgrading my Network Attached Storage (NAS) boxes by the end of the year.
The good news is hard drive space has dropped a great deal over the years and is getting cheaper all the time. When I lost my investigative hard drive – a measly 260 megabyte (yes, I said megabytes) – I replaced it with a 300 megabyte drive that cost almost $300. That’s about 90¢ cents a megabyte! Hard drive space is just pennies a megabyte and taking advantage of it makes good sense. As of this writing you can buy a one-terabyte USB hard drive for under $65. (I highly recommend Seagate, a brand I’ve used for years and they’ve served me reliably.) A drive this size should easily handle most file, music and video backup for the average user and snap shooter. If you shoot a lot of photos, video or shoot RAW exclusively as I do then you will need more room. Whatever the amount, get data backup ASAP!
Another thing that always amazes me is that I carry around a 16 gigabyte USB thumb drive that cost me $25. That’s the equivalent of having approximately 55 of the old 300 megabyte drives in my shirt pocket! (I think that’s the correct number but I took it from a website so it might be off a bit.) At $300 a pop that’s $16500 worth of the old drives and those were huge so I’d take a wild guess and say it would probably weigh well into the hundreds of pounds. My thumb drive weighs less than an ounce!
Data Backup Choices
There are basically two methods of storing data: locally (at your home or office) or to an online service – often called “Cloud Backup” as it’s accessed through the Internet. Many applications such as data storage or applications like Google email and Google Documents are hosted on the Cloud only and not your local PC. Both options have their advantages and disadvantages so let’s take a close look at each option.
Local Storage (Hard Drive and/or Optical Disks)
Backing up locally means you use your own media to store your data. This is the most convenient and affordable way to backup large amounts of data. The advantages include:
- 100% control over the data (Especially important for sensitive data)
- Complete security of all your data (when stored properly)
- Affordable, especially for large amounts of data (Cloud-based can be expensive)
- No internet connection is required
The disadvantageous include:
- Not always easy or convenient to find room to store your external media (An offsite location is best for at least one copy)
- External media (hard drives, optical disks, etc.) can fail (But are becoming more reliable every day)
- Possible theft or intentional destruction (Disgruntled employees or ex-girl/boyfriends)
- No off-site data access without physically carrying the media with you
Cloud Storage
Using a cloud-based, remotely accessed backup service like Carbonite, Barracuda Network Solutions, or the currently free Dropbox solution also has its pros and cons including:
- Available anywhere through the Internet by any PC you use
- Third-party solutions manage the hardware – no worries storing external media in a safe place
- Third-party solutions have redundant backup on their servers so you always have a copy in the event of disaster.
Unfortunately there are some pretty important cons to consider with Cloud-based backup including:
- Your data is out of your hands and if you can get to it on the web so can others such as hackers, third-party employees or other nefarious characters. No matter what any solution promises they cannot keep your data completely secure. Check out this story from Computer World on Four Essential Cloud Security Tips for more info on securing yourself if you use cloud-based applications.
- An Internet connection is required for data backup and access
- Broadband connection speed is almost essential for any moderate amount of data transfer/backup. (It can take hours even for incremental backups or data retrieval)
- You have no control over a third-party solution provider. Technically they can do whatever they want with your files. Be sure to read their terms and privacy policies!
- Third-party providers can randomly shut down due to financial hardships or other unforeseen circumstances. (This recently happened when Digital Railroad suddenly went out of business. The popular site, where professional photographers archived and sold their photos went belly up. Around 5 p.m. on a Monday, the site alerted existing customers they had just 24 hours to download their photo archive but some 10 hours after the alert, the site was completely shut down. Some users didn’t learn about the notice until days after it was sent.)
- Like your primary hard drive, the hardware third-parties use can fail at any time though they should have redundant backups just as you should.
- Cloud-based storage solutions can be more expensive if you have a lot of data (and most serious photographers do!) The free services you might see advertised only offer a few gigabytes at most.
For my money and piece of mind I always choose a local backup option. I feel more at ease knowing my files are safely behind two firewalls and backed up where I have complete and total control over them. With a copy off site in another physical location even if a disaster like a fire or tornado occurred I know I would still have a copy of my precious photo files and important data available for the rebuild.
Many people you don’t need to go to the same measures as some of us do to protect our data. As a professional photographer I depend on keeping my images safe and secure as they are my livelihood. For your purposes, simply having an additional copy on an external hard drive might suffice. If you don’t have a lot of data you could burn the most important to DVDs and send them to a relative to keep off site. Even keeping a version in your desk at work is better than nothing at all. Remember, a hard drive is a mechanical device and no matter how good it is it will one day fail. Just like you car or your TV, it has a lifespan and will invariably die and probably just when you need it the most. Any back up is better than none at all. Just think of it like this; what would you do if tomorrow you could no longer access any of the photographs or other important documents you have on your computer ever again? Not a pretty picture, is it?
