Data Management: Back it up

I make between 10,000 – 12,000 images a year.  That’s a lot.  Most of them can be discarded without worry, but keeping the pictures I want to keep is important to me.  There are as many systems to back up images as there are photographers.  I’m going to explain my backup regimen here.  If you have a different way, I’d love to hear about it. 

In the days of film, managing your photos meant keeping track of your prints and negatives.  This could mean shoe boxes and photo albums, or for the more fastidious, negative sheets in binders and proof sets, labeled and numbered.

With digital photography, it’s still important to consider how to keep track of your photos.  If your computer catastrophically crashes as you’re reading this, would you lose any important images?

Some tips I recommend when backing up your images:

• Back up to multiple discs
• Back up to multiple locations
• Take advantage of online services to back up online
• Have at least two copies of everything you want to keep

I say you should back up to multiple discs for a simple reason:  Hard dives fail.  I back up all of my images to an external hard drive.  Then, I back up the “keepers” to either a CD or a DVD-ROM.  Thus, if my computer fails, I have two backups.  If one of my backups go, I have a second one.  And if everything dies simultaneously, I have bigger problems than finding my photos.

Those CDs and DVDs?  If I kept them on my desk at home, one house fire could wipe out all of my backups simultaneously.  By taking one backup set out of my house, that minimizes the danger. 

(not my photo)

My “good” photos are backed up online – either on the photo-sharing service Flickr (public) or on unlisted directories on Picasa (private).  Should an asteroid take out Boston, I can still log on from outside the impact zone and get the images back.

And by doing all of this, I have more than two copies of everything I want to keep.  Even with the chances of multiple disasters wiping out all of my backups being very slim, media do fail.

My backup regimen is much more intricate, but explaining the complexities adds nothing to the point:  Back it up!  One of these days, you’ll be glad you did.