How to Not Lose Your Photos: A Simple and Easy Backup Strategy for Photographers
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read an online post from a photographer friend who is asking for help recovering files from their crashed hard drive. First they’re figuring out how to recover the files, then they’re lamenting the cost of $1,000 to $2,000 they have to pay to the hard disk recovery company hired to recover the data. Losing critical images sucks, but it doesn’t have to happen. In fact, it shouldn’t happen — ever.
Over the years, I’ve tried a variety of backup solutions, some more expensive than others and some more effective. At this point, I’ve come up with what I feel is a reasonable balance between cost and ease of use. I’m sharing my scheme with others in the hopes that I don’t ever have to hear again from a friend who has lost his or her hard-won images due to a disk failure.
Basic Backup 101
The key to safe data practices is redundancy. Having your data stored on any one device is not acceptable. Until your files are located on multiple devices, regardless of how reliable you think your one device may be, your data is at greater risk than you should be willing to accept. Having your images in only one place is like climbing without a rope: one slip and you’re dead. Bottom line: the more redundancy, the safer your data.
The basic backup plan that I use is simple. I don’t store any of my important data on my computer’s internal hard drive. I reserve that for my operating system, applications that my computer uses (i.e. Lightroom, Photoshop etc.), the scratch disk space that these programs need to operate and for related files like the Library files created by Lightroom. If you’re thinking that my internal hard drive is pretty empty, you’re right.
To store the thousands of image files that I work with, I use an external hard drive. Actually I use two. I have one high speed drive connected via Thunderbolt and then another, slower and therefore less expensive drive that serves as an exact copy of the other drive. The way it works is that I download my image files to my primary/work hard drive, the Thunderbolt drive, and then use backup software (in my case Chronosync) to ensure that the files from the primary drive are all copied to the second, slower drive. Because I’m not working directly off the second drive, it’s okay that it’s not super speedy.
In my experience, Thunderbolt is just as fast, if not faster, than working with an internal drive so I don’t suffer from slower performance by working off an external drive. USB 3 and now USB C are pretty fast too but not nearly as fast as Thunderbolt. Drives using Thunderbolt are more expensive, but the speed advantage outweighs the cost. Since you’re only buying one, I say it’s worth it.
The idea here is that if one drive fails, I just throw it away and then replace it with another drive. Unless I’m replacing a failed drive, I always buy my drives in pairs of identical capacity.
After awhile, my desk does start to fill up with pairs of hard drives. What I’ve found is that as the number of drives on my desk starts to accrue, so too does the capacity of the hard drives available on the market. For example, I used to have 1 terabyte files mirrored to each other. After they filled up, I switched to 2 terabyte drives and then copied the data from the 1 terabyte drives onto the 2 terabyte drives. I then take the original drives and place them in an off-site storage location where they serve as another level of redundancy. (I’m up to dual 8 terabyte drives now.)
While the drives hold the information, it’s the Chronosync software that ensures that the two drives are in sync with each other. I schedule my backups at night so that the computer isn’t working while I am. It’s a simple but robust program for the Mac and definitely worth the price. I do suggest checking in on it from time to time to make sure that it’s doing its job and that it didn’t shut itself off for some reason or another (which has happened to me).
Now there are also various two-drives-in-one-enclosure options, some referred to as RAID drives or NAS solutions. I don’t recommend these for two reasons. First, if the electronics controller on the enclosure goes south, it will damage or render inoperable both drives. Though you have two drives, you really have one system connecting the two, thus killing your redundancy. Secondly, if you have two drives that require data retrievable, the cost to you is double. That $2,000 hard disk recovery now goes to $4,000. Ouch.
How do I know this? Well it happened to me. I can assure you that you’ll never, ever see another two or more drive enclosure anywhere near my desktop again.
Online Storage Solutions
Given that the key to a secure backup plan is redundancy, one should also include redundancy of location, in other words, having your data physically located in more than one place. This can be accomplished by copying your data to drives that you store in different locations, but this is tedious and difficult to accomplish on a regular basis. The other option is online via what’s referred to as “the cloud.” Of course, the cloud is merely a huge bank of hard drives located in a massive warehouse in the Washington state desert, but whatever, it’s still a viable option for backup.
There are many options for online backing up, but they generally break down along two lines of concern for photographers: jpeg and raw/psd/tiff files. Many online photography sites will host jpeg files but not raw/psd/tiff files. For example, I’ve been using Smugmug as an online image hosting platform for years now. I love how easy it is to upload images directly to it from Lightroom using a freely provided plugin. The service also allows for unlimited jpeg files so I can upload to my heart’s content. The only downside is that the site doesn’t accept non-jpeg files so I can’t back up my original raw files.
Regardless, depending on the project, I’ll generally backup just my first round of selects without adjustments to Smugmug. Later, once I’ve done my final edit, I’ll back up the final images to the site. These final images may or may not include the final Lightroom adjustments as well. Granted these are jpeg files not the original raw files but, in a worst-case scenario, they’re much better than nothing. Of course, if you work with jpeg as your capture format, this difference is moot.
For backing up raw files to “the cloud,” I formerly used Amazon Prime’s online backup solution. If you’re a Prime member (and who isn’t these days?), this service is free to you — and best of all, it accepts unlimited raw files! The downside to Amazon Prime is that the user interface is horrible. It’s awkward to find files and it’s buggy. I used to be able to drag and drop from Lightroom but ever since that capability was removed, it’s become too tedious for me to me to use regularly.
There are other dedicated online storage solutions like Dropbox, which for $20 per month allows unlimited data. Simply drag and drop files of any sort to the folder you’d like to have backed up. It’s easy enough, but it’s not automatic. Another service, one specifically designed for backing up data, is Backblaze. For $5 per month per computer, you’re allowed unlimited data and its software will automatically back up the disks and folders that you designate. For me, that’s a cheap check to write each month. Okay… so I’m not writing a check but you get the point.
When it comes to online backups, don’t consider that a replacement for your regular hard drive backup. Online backups are only good in case of emergencies. The data transmission speeds even for the fastest internet connections are much slower than USB 3 or similar connections. To either upload or download a hard drive’s worth of data may take much longer than you care to wait. I’m in the middle of trying to back up one of my large projects and Backblaze is projecting that it will take 650 days — over two years — to accomplish. Clearly, I’m going to need to pare down my files to be backed up.
Also, online services do go out of business. I’ve seen a couple of instances where an online backup service closed down. There was no shortage of photographers scrambling to retrieve their data only to realize that to download it all would take weeks. The key to a successful backup program is one in which you can lose any one piece of it without losing any data or much of your time or money.
Backing Up on Location
My heart aches when I hear from a friend who’s been traveling across Europe for the past month and then, perhaps on a train or in a restaurant, someone steals their camera bag and along with it all of the images that they’ve shot for their entire trip. This doesn’t have to happen and again, redundancy applies.
When I’m shooting on location, i.e. traveling, I carry with me two small hard drives in addition to my laptop. Each night, I download my images to one drive and then back them up to the second drive. I also carry with me enough memory cards so that I don’t have to reuse the same ones on back-to-back days of shooting. If for whatever reason I don’t complete my backup at night, the next day I can still go out and shoot without worrying about copying over my previously created files.
When I have time, I’ll make my selections in Lightroom and then back up jpegs to Smugmug so that, even if everything is lost, I still have my favorites. If I’ve been on the road for awhile, I’ll purchase a third drive, copy all of the raw files to it and then ship that home. Yes there’s a cost to doing all that, but it’s cheap compared to losing everything from a long trip.
Finally, when traveling or staying in a hotel room, I don’t keep the hard drives stored in the same place. I certainly don’t keep them with my camera bags. If any one bag gets stolen, I don’t want to worry about losing all of my images. I’ll usually stash one hard drive in one place and then the other in some other nook so that a thief won’t be likely to find both.
One more thing, I have one portable hard drive that I use as my primary road drive. It’s, you guessed it, a Thunderbolt drive. I’ll use that drive until it fills up, then erase it to use for other journeys. The other drive I use is an inexpensive USB 3 drive — make and size aren’t important. Once the secondary drive fills up, I file it away in a location away from my office so that if for whatever reason my entire system crashes, I can retrieve the data off it. As I’ve said again and again… redundancy rules!
That’s my backup solution in a nutshell. It’s not very high tech, but since adopting it, I’ve yet to lose any files due to a hardware mishap. If you have any questions or suggestions for improving my workflow and backup scheme, let me know. Have fun shooting and keep your photos safe!