Are Digital Photographs Forever? Part 1

When was the last time you went digging around in your closet to find something, and came across that shoebox full of old photos passed down from your parents and grandparents? Did you forget what you were looking for and just sit down on the floor and leaf through the prints, revisiting fond memories? Hopefully grandmother was good about writing dates and names on the back!

Photographic prints are an integral piece of our family history, and serve as a great reminder of faces and places when memories grow dim. Most of us would consider these photos priceless, and list them among the top five things to grab from a burning house.

Now we find ourselves in the digital age, and we produce photos by the thousands, daisy-chaining hard drives to keep up with production. I'm sure you get the gist of where this is going......hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. Data loss and equipment failure is eminent, and could strike at ANY moment.

As professional photographer, I am responsible for safeguarding against this, but after seeing how my parents manage their digital photos, I realize many people are not so diligent. Understandably, implementing a truly effective system for data backup can be confusing and expensive, but you owe it to yourself and your family to do something about it. If it's not already at the top of your to-do list, let's put it there now!

1. GET ORGANIZED: For extremists and professionals, I recommend The DAM Book to get an understanding of how to organize your file system so that it can easily grow over the years and make it easier to find files when you need them. A simple approach would be to place your family photos in a series of folders such as FAM_001, FAM_002, FAM_003 and so on, starting a new folder once it reaches about 4.5GB. By limiting the size of the folders, you can easily back them up to a DVD (which hols about 4.7GB) Once backed up, change the folder name to FAM_001_DVD, FAM_002_DVD.....so it will be easy to recognize that they have been backed up. It would be wise to make two copies of the DVD and keep one in another location, such as a safe deposit box at the bank
   
   
2. BACK IT UP: Don't rely on yourself to remember when it's time to back up. For PC users you could try AllwaySync, and Mac users can use Time Machine and/or SuperSuper! You'll want to use a good quality external drive with plenty of space. I use Time Machine AND SuperDuper! in conjunction to back up my Mac. Time Machine is good if you just need to go back in time and undo some changes you've made, but SuperDuper! makes an exact BOOTABLE COPY of your system drive, so if your hard drive crashes, you'll be able to boot up from your external and keep on truckin'.

In our studio, in addition to what's mentioned above, we also have a Network Attached Storage (NAS) device in use as our 'working drive' - not to be used as an archive. The beauty of this machine, (ours is ReadyNAS Pro by Netgear) is that it becomes a central data storage location for several users. It's like having all your computers connected to a single external hard drive. Plus, since it holds six hard drives (any size up to 2TB each - yes, 12TB total!), if one fails, you simply pull it out and replace it, without ever shutting down. It automatically rebuilds your data on the new drive.

The bottom line here is that backing up your precious digital photography is an important responsibility you mustn't ignore. In my next post, I'll talk about making prints and key-wording images.