A Simple image backup strategy for photographers

Posted by Pramod Viswanath

Published on Friday, October 15th, 2010 | 9 Comments

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9 Responses to “A Simple image backup strategy for photographers”

  1. Santosh Saligram Says:
    October 15th, 2010 at 3:29 PM

    Very useful post, Pramod, and a very insightful suggestion of the backup model.

    As you very rightly said, procrastination is the biggest bugbear of photographers, and I too have learned the importance of taking backing up very seriously of late. I have two copies of my pictures now, one on smaller, 160/250GB drives and another on a 1TB WD, which is not connected to the computer all the time, to prevent it from voltage fluctuations and wear due to use. Whenever I need access to the images, I use the smaller hard disks which are always connected. In addition to this, I plan to burn the select best images from each trip/shoot on DVDs as a tertiary backup as you suggested. I also do not delete the images of one shoot from the camera storage until the next, just in case there have been some unseen errors in the copying process.

    I strongly urge everyone who reads this to take Pramod’s suggestions seriously and not leave this important task until it’s too late.

    Santosh

  2. Santosh Saligram Says:
    October 15th, 2010 at 3:39 PM

    In the event of a hard-disk crash where you don’t have a backup, recovery is indeed an arduous and expensive task, like you rightly mentioned. When my 160GB hard disk crashed earlier this year, I didn’t have any backup of the precious pictures in it (I hadn’t bought the 1TB yet) and a couple of vendors I approached quoted exorbitant charges (as high as Rs. 3500!) Luckily, I decided to give Sandisk’s Rescue Pro recovery software a shot before coughing up the money. I wasn’t even sure that it would work on large storage disks but amazingly, it worked! Of course it was a long and slow process, with the recovery of the complete data taking as many as around 6 hours, but nevertheless, I managed to recover almost 100% of the files. Therefore I strongly recommend the software, but one obviously wouldn’t want to let this happen in the first place, by ensuring that adequate redundancy measures are taken beforehand.

  3. Pramod Viswanath Says:
    October 15th, 2010 at 3:41 PM

    Santosh, it’s nice to see similar strategies being adopted by you as well. Many times we learn from our past mistakes but it would be too late by then :) . BTW, 3500 INR is just the minimum cost, I have heard that it goes upto 35,000 INR.

    Thanks for your thoughts.

  4. Uday Says:
    October 18th, 2010 at 10:48 AM

    Hey Pramod,

    Nice one

    Just a query which just came across my mind. It might sound funny!

    You have mentioned about tertiary storage for disaster recovery. Is there any locker facility to keep such storage in a safe area?

  5. Pramod Viswanath Says:
    October 18th, 2010 at 11:03 AM

    Uday,

    That’s a good question. “Secret Location” can refer to many things. One of the place could be a bank locker – you are right.
    I guess, such a facility should be available with many banks :)

  6. Nitesh Jain Says:
    November 23rd, 2010 at 6:07 PM

    Thanks, Pramod .

    Very informative article. From now on I will be using above backup strategy.

    I just recovered my lost pics (which were not backed-up anywhere else) and i realized how important pics is to me and how unreliable technology is.I have already purchase a additional 500gb hdd for backup and planning buy one more on thanks giving day.

  7. Karan Kauchhur Says:
    December 10th, 2010 at 7:55 AM

    this is a good idea.
    I need to make a back up of my work too.. i’ll give this a shot

  8. sunith Says:
    March 10th, 2011 at 4:02 PM

    I prefer DVDs to external harddrives for my backups. I just consider the amount of moving parts in a storage medium while selecting it. The lifespan of a harddrive nowadays is around 4 years. Dvds last much long as a secondary backup.

  9. Pramod Viswanath Says:
    March 10th, 2011 at 4:20 PM

    Thanks Sunith letting me know your thoughts. I have had bad experiences with DVD as well. Relatively CDs are much better!

    Of late solid state storage are making inroads in terms of long term reliable storage. More information on Dam here > http://forums.landscape-wizards.com/digital-dark-room/digital-asset-management-ideas-approaches

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