While working on a future blog post a tv commercial came on that caught my attention and I wanted to blog about it. It’s a funny commercial that starts with a boy posing in a crib while his parents are taking a picture of him on their digital camera. The boy is about 9-11 years old and they are recreating his childhood in photos because his father dropped his laptop and lost the originals. While it was a comical look at the situation that I’m sure has happened to you or at least one person you know, the commercial’s intent was to promote their online storage services. You can read an article from the Wall Street Journal Media & Marketing by Andrew Lavalee here and watch the commercial.
As a photographer, back up is very important and we take every effort to back up and archive the images we create. My husband is in IT so I’m very lucky as he helps me come up with the best solution. So the question at hand is… how do you protect photos of your loved ones that are stored on your computer?
One important reason why I do not like to offer CDs of proofs only is because you can lose them as illustrated in the previously mentioned commercial. It is always very important for me to offer the images in printed format first and foremost. Not only does that put my mind at ease, but it also shows you how your images should look when processed by a professional photographer and printed by a professional lab. Think about this; do you really get around to printing the images that you have stored? I’d really hate for you to lose your treasured photos. So even though I do offer digital media, I always emphasize the need to back it up and again it is the main reason while I do not offer you the option to only purchase digital images, it’s always an add on or a bonus gift included in the collections. I don’t want to give you a false sense of security.
While it would be great if my clients wanted printed portraits only I know in this digital age that’s it’s not fair to expect. So I want to share some possible options and give my thoughts on each option. As a disclaimer, I am not affiliated with any of the products or services I mention nor am I offering this as a foolproof method. Having said that, with 6 years in the business of creating lasting memories digitally and protecting people’s portraits, I think I have learned a few things.
1. External Hard Drives
While this sounds like a great option and believe me I was quite excited about it too, hard drives crash. I’ve had two external hard drives fail on me and luckily I had the images backed up in multiple ways so I didn’t lose anything. One hard drive was even brand new, it crashed within 1 week. The other hard drive was about 1-2 years old.
2. CD or DVD
This also sounds great especially with the gold digital media out there that says they can last 300 years. Three hundred years…how is it even possible to know that if the technology has not existed that long? Not to mention, there will probably be something much much better by then. Remember floppy disks and 8 track tapes? Of course, you personally won’t care 300 years from now and the guy that tested that is laughing because he won’t be held accountable, but the generations after you will care. Don’t you love seeing portraits of your grandparents and great grandparents in their younger days? I know I do. I do use CDs and DVDs but I also make multiple copies and store them in different locations as well as have the images stored elsewhere. I’ll get to what I use in my final option.
3. Jump drive, thumb drive..whatever you call it.
These little things are great for mobility, but they are meant for temporary storage so please don’t rely on them alone, they can crash too.
4. Online storage
I believe this is the best solution for the every day person. There are companies like Flickr Pro and Mozy that give you space to store your photos and some online storage places allow you to store your data as well. Online file hosting sites are very cheap these days. I recommend reading this article from Mashable - Online Storage: 80+ File Hosting & Sharing Sites. I personally use Flickr Pro and for temporary purposes I use the company I host my website on when I need originals to be accessible from multiple locations.
5. RAID and mirrored drives.
This is what we have in place. I don’t want to get technical on you especially since I don’t fully know the details, but simply it’s a way to replicate your data. For example, say you have your photos and data stored on one drive, raid and mirrored drives allow you to have an exact copy of that on another drive should the first drive fail. It’s much more complicated so I don’t want to understate that, but you will need someone with knowledge to set this up for you. It might be overkill for most people, but if you take A LOT of photos or if you are a small business it might be something you should consider.
Hope this helps or at the very least gives you something to think about.
Until next time,
AR
