I spent this past weekend scanning two boxes of old family photographs in an effort to save them from being lost forever. It didn’t take long for me to realize that I was not going to be “repairing” too many of the photos. Instead I was simply going to be “freezing” them in their current state of deterioration. As I looked at the image above, of my Grandmother in her teens, it crossed my mind how glad I was that a large portion of the images I’ve taken over the years have been digital. It then crossed my mind how lucky my children were that I’m absolutely anal about backing up my work because back in the day there was no such thing as a “backup” for your images.
While I worry, and rightfully so, that someday the paper prints shown above will be lost forever. I don’t feel the same way about my digital files. My personal backup workflow currently consists of the following:
- Image files are copied to a work drive
- Nightly backups of my work drive(s) are made to an external storage device (not raid)
- Image files are backed up to an external hard drive which is rotated and stored when full
- Image files are copied to DVD twice and stored in archival sleeves in an archival case
Almost no backup plan is fool-proof but my basic plan is to keep a live copy of my files somewhere on my network as well as on a backup hard drive and removable media of some type. Why? Because keeping them accessible is important to me and I really don’t trust the DVD’s for long term storage at this point and consider them more of a final delivery method. My workflow is adapting and changing as the technology changes and soon I’ll probably be replacing my DVD delivery system with flash drives and I’ll be taking some older 250GB drives and merging the files onto a newer 1 or 2 TB drive just to keep them current with the technology and to spin those old drives up once in awhile. Who knows, maybe some day soon we’ll all be storing our photos in “the cloud” online.
As far as my clients go… I advise them, should they end up with their image files, to always keep a copy on the hard drives of their various computers as well as encouraging them make regular backups. It’s probably a pipe dream to think that they are going to do this but I really do hope they heed my advice. The photos we take and share, even just the snapshots, are part of our legacy and I believe that is worth protecting. Don’t you?
So what’s your long term storage plan? Care to share your workflow?
Back Home
5 Comments at "Are You Taking Care of Your Images?"
Mark,
its so important to look after our images. I have only just started to dig out my old files of transparencies. I am going to start scanning them. These moments, whatever they are are precious and we should be taking care of them!
great shot of your Grandmother!
best of luck
Noel
I’m running a small work drive for all my photos, and I have a separate drive for all my video work. All the original files are backed up to my network drive, which is a 1.5 TB RAID 1 configuration. After I am confident in my selection and deletion of files that I’m working with, I go back to my network drive and move over my work folder, effectively deleting the files that I didn’t want to keep.
Having my files on a network drive for backup is nice because it’s accessible by both my desktop and laptop, as well as if I go out of town. I’m probably going to need more than 1.5 TB soon though!
I store my files on a Drobo and subscribe to Crash Plan so my files are automatically uploaded in the background.
I use an external backup that updates daily (seagate has a nifty program for this) then immediately when I import my images in raw from a wedding I also burn straight to DVD (and verify content was burnt without any corruption). Then after all editing and delivering my disk to the bride I burn a finished set of images in JPG high res.
So if my client calls and says they lost their disk I can just put the one into my computer and hit duplicate. No hassle. And if that disk is bad then I have another one (at minimum 2). Then I still have my computer hard drive. If that failed then I have my external.
Lately I bought another drive now to swap out for offside backup every month. Somewhat my worst cast scenario type of thing. (ex: fire!!!)
I would just do an online backup but our Internet isn’t fast enough and we are Maxed out right now.
I have a Drobo and backup that to backblaze
Comment Now!