It is hard to know where to post this: Photography genius, photography mistakes? Over the past eight years of professional photography, I have seen any number of “backup systems” that others are using to keep their images safe. From DVD backups to external hard drives, photographers are putting a ton of work at risk and exposing themselves to some very upset clients.
Five things that should be AVOIDED
- Backing up to DVDs – Since DVDs only hold 4.3 GB of data, a typical wedding might take 9-12 DVDs to back up. Also, they are a physical product which can be scratched, destroyed in an office fire, experience data loss or have another failure.
- Backing up to external hard drives – External hard drives are great….until they fail. Data recovery companies love photographers who back up to external hard drives. Also, external hard drives use a power cord (unless they are powered by USB) and data transfer is slow. They are also subject to office fires, flood, damage from dropping and are generally not safe or suitable for backing up one-of-a-kind shoots like weddings.
- Backing up to two external hard drives – Still not safe. Safer than backing up to one, but not safe. Why? Because it is possible for both to fail at the same time. How? Most often a computer virus would take them out. Because they are connected to a computer through a USB or firewire, there is a direct line for viruses.
- Raid storage and Drobos – These are a bit safer, but still possibly susceptible to computer viruses.
What should you use?
My recommendation is to use Network Attached Storage combined with off-site storage. Network attached storage is much less apt to be damaged by viruses because a virus would have to figure out how to get through the network security first. Very difficult to do compared with following a link through USB. Second, NAS is much faster for data transfer than USB if you use the right router and CAT6 cable. Third, NAS can be used by multiple computers. It turns Lightroom into a real photo-managing beast when set up correctly.
I personally use the Lime Technology MD-1510 server. I was able to take the 8 external hard drives and install them into the server. So, I didn’t lose any money for the hard drives I had bought in the past. I use a parity drive which will automatically rebuild any of the 14 drives in the system that might fail.
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