The Proper Backup Strategy for Photographers

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How to Protect Your Photography from Drive Failure

Backup Strategy is a popular discussion among photographers. What is the best way to backup photos to protect them from being lost? This article is designed to show the recommended backup strategy for photographers in order to have full redundancy and photo protection. This will walk you through the backing up workflow process.

The workflow below can be summarized as:
Memory Card-> 2 (or more) Local Backups –> Offsite Backup

  1. Memory Card: When you click and capture that perfect image, your file first goes to your SD or CF Card. This means it is in one place and therefore very vulnerable. If something happens to that card, your files are gone. And those of you who shoot critical moments, such as weddings, know that this is not an option. So the first step to your backup strategy is to get that image off of your memory card as soon as possible.

  2. Local Backup: Whether you use Lightroom, Photoshop, or any other program to enhance your images, you will want to import your images to a hard drive. Usually this means your computer or an external hard drive. But why not take it a step further and backup to a network attached storage device, like Synology? Synology makes standalone storage devices, called DiskStations, that hold one or more hard drives. It is connected to the internet, and you can access your storage from any computer, from anywhere in the world. It’s like launching your own private data cloud. And what’s even better, it duplicates your data across your hard drives, so that if one hard drive fails, your data will still be safe. Synology devices also let you connect a USB/external hard drive and have automatic sync your data onto that USB. So you can have your backup in two places, automatically synced at all times. Having 2 (or more) local backups synced at all times will protect your images from being lost if one backup fails.

  3. Remote Backup: To protect your files against theft or natural disasters (such as fire or flood), make sure to have your files backed up in a different location as well. With Synology DiskStations, you can have two DiskStations syncing with each other, from different locations, allowing you to have a complete backup of all your files offsite. Or if you prefer to use a cloud service, such as Amazon Glacier, you can sync your DiskStation to back up your files there as well.

The key thing to remember when it comes to backup is to have your eggs spread out in different baskets. Redundancy, and lots of it, will keep your photography from being lost.

Also Read:  41 REASONS WHY YOU SHOULDN’T DATE A PHOTOGRAPHER

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