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Developing a Digital Backup Strategy
Protect your files from human error, hardware faliure, and natural disasters |
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Backups for the Traveling Photographer The final thing to consider is keeping your digital information safe when you are traveling. Essentially, the basic concepts are exactly the same: Make sure you have a copy of your new photos on a separate external hard drive or a portable storage unit such as the 40GB Epson P-3000 or the 80GB Epson P-5000. You could also address this issue by burning DVDs of your downloaded files. I travel with two small FireWire dives that I use to backup the photos I am taking during my trip, as well as nightly SuperDuper! backups of my entire laptop drive. This latter precaution is important since I am often traveling to give seminars or teach workshops and a hard disk crash would seriously impact my ability to lead a workshop or give a presentation. With a recent bootable backup, however, I could borrow a computer (or buy a new one if it was truly dead) and still be able to get the job done with minimal hassle. These backups are temporary and are meant to provide that redundancy “cushion” while I am traveling. Once I arrive back home, the files are integrated into my regular image archive. And when I am traveling, I always make sure that the backups are kept in a separate carry-on bag from my computer. That way, if one bag goes missing or is stolen, I still have a copy of all the important files that were created on the trip. Conclusion These are the steps that I have taken to protect my important digital files from the specter of a sudden hard drive failure or worse, the utter destruction of a fire or other natural disaster. It may not be the best system and there may be hardware and software solutions that offer more efficiency and automation, but the important thing is that there is more than one level of file redundancy and an offsite copy is a part of my system. This allows me to travel and be away from home for extended periods without worrying too much about the safety of my image files and other important digital data.
Remember that at the most basic level, a backup system is simply the presence of more than one copy on different media (i.e., external drives, DVDs, etc). Having an additional copy in a completely different location, such as my safe deposit box backup, provides an extra level of protection against natural disasters. The hardware and software programs you use to help you manage and automate this backup are secondary to the simple act of creating and maintaining copies of the data. If you do not currently have a backup system in place, your important digital data is living on borrowed time and I encourage you to give this issue a high priority. To that end, I hope this article has been helpful in providing you with some ideas and inspiration to get started on setting up your own backup system. If you have any additional ideas on this subject or hot tips on backup hardwre or software solutions to pass along, feel free to contact me [sean(at)seanduggan.com]. I will pass along good suggestions in future issues of the Newsletter.
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