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Backing Up Your System Drive

Before I get into how I have my image archive backed up, let’s consider another critically important backup you should have: your main system drive where your operating system, all your applications, essential preferences, settings, passwords, and everyday documents (i.e., email, finance software, etc) are stored. As photographers we are obviously concerned about our images, but a major failure of your main boot drive can wreak havoc on your important files and also turn into a “black hole” of lost time as you deal with such a disaster.

I use a Mac program called SuperDuper! from Shirt Pocket (www.shirtpocket.com) to create a bootable copy of the internal drive of my MacBook Pro. This copy is saved to a partition on an external FireWire hard drive. Having a bootable backup is critical because if my MacBook Pro drive fails, I can boot up from that backed-up system and be back in business with hardly any time lost. The backup copy will be exactly the same as my main drive. If I need to buy a new internal drive for the laptop, or buy a totally new computer, I can restore from the saved backup on the external drive.

I use a scheduling feature in SuperDuper! to back up my laptop once a night.An option allows me to only copy the files that have changed since the previous backup, so it takes less time. If the internal drive crashes on me this backup ensures that at most I will have only lost a day’s work. Knowing that a major hard drive crash of my computer can be recovered from fairly fast and with comparatively little data loss is worth a lot.

NOTE: SuperDuper! is a Mac only program. To find solutions for Windows, try a web search for “bootable Windows backup software”.

NOTE: In Mac OS 10.5 (Leopard) there is a great feature called Time Machine that automatically backs up your files to an external drive so you can find accidentally deleted files, previous iterations of files, or restore previous backups to a new drive. While this is a vey cool feature, the backups it creates are not bootable (meaning you cannot instantly start up from a saved copy of your hard disk) without either the Leopard install DVD or a workaround. I use SuperDuper! to make a bootable backup in addition to the features offered by Time Machine. Plus, that bootable backup is an essential part of my backup strategy when I am traveling.

Backing Up Your Image Archive

My main image archive is on an external 750GB Firewire drive (Image Archive A). The contents of this drive exist on another external hard drive of the same size (Image Archive B). In the event that either archive drive fails, nothing has been lost because the files still exist on the other drive. I use the SuperDuper! program mentioned earlier to update the backup to the B drive once a night.

I should also add that when I download new captures from a memory card, they are immediately duplicated to the B drive so that two copies exist right away. The memory card is not re-formatted until I have verified that the files are OK. If a program like Lightroom or Bridge is able to build thumbnails and previews of them, that is a good test that the files are not corrupted or damaged.

NOTE: A very cool storage system that is receiving a lot of attention these days is the DROBO from Data Robotics (www.drobo.com). This system uses a drive enclosure, multiple drives and drive monitoring software to ensure that there is always up to date redundancy for all of your files. The software will tell you when you need to add more drive space, or when a drive might be going bad, allowing you to replace it. You can hot-swap drives (i.e. remove and add drives) without turning the unit off. I do not use this system because my current system works well for me, but it is definitely something I am considering. This is even more tempting now that they have added FireWire 800 connectivity in addition to USB 2.0.

Next Page: DVD Backups, Off-Site Storage & Online Backups

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© 2008, Seán Duggan • all rights reserved