The Backup Plan

Haven't offered any tutorials or advice for quite some time but wanted to start again with my thoughts on creating a backup plan.


So I'll ask you. Whether you're a Mama wanting to record your children's precious photos, an amateur or a pro photographer, you'll want a backup plan for your photographic libraries. I wanted to write a brief article here which strips away much of the technical jargon I read when reviewing, well, technical stuff. Sure, I used to write databases, but have absolutely no idea how I did that now, especially since I moved headstrong into advertising in the '90s as a professional marketer, a beautiful creative direction which was much more my taste {smiles}.


There's a lot of noise currently about "in the cloud" the term given to storing data online (offsite) as part of a backup plan (onsite and offsite).


So what do you look for in selecting an online backup company?
- high-speed uploading, reassurance that you can quickly be sent a DVD of your library in the event of a crash or data loss
- ease of customer experience with tech support
- affordable pricing whether you want to capture your family's special moments, you're an amateur or a pro photographer (about $4.50 per month)
- and especially for me since I only store my photos on external hard drives, not my iMac, backup of disks which aren't connected to my computer, such as when they're hidden in a closet when I run out the door.

I've been testing them all from Mozy to Crashplan, Carbonite and Backblaze and am going to be sticking with Crashplan which won #1 Macworld Awards 2010.

I think even if you'd committed to an existing company by uploading all your photos to them and effectively tying you in (for me it was Mozy although after 3 months it's still uploading.. yawn!), it's worth keeping abreast of what the best option is out there. I combine this with my Smugmug pro (fantastic company for customer service and advice) for unlimited storage and my iMac's Time Machine. The two systems, Crashplan & TimeMachine are complimentary to each other as long as you tell Time Machine to ignore the CrashPlan.app file (or your disks will fill up in no time). And I always hide my external drives when I leave the house to ward against theft ;-(   


The huge downside for me of Mozy which I'd previously been tied into, is that when I left the house I had the hard drive disconnected (to prevent theft), and I'd have to stop Mozy from running, simply because it would assume the data on that drive was marked for deletion. Oh no! If I forgot to stop Mozy which I often did, the files would be deleted in 30 days. With Crashplan, I can store away my old hard drives but they'll still be backed up by Crashplan. My prayers answered. With Crashplan, I can also back up to a friend's computer who has Crashplan (working on this one), and do an instant restore from their computer, thus saving me the restore fee from Crashplan. Amazing benefit, especially if you have a friend living close by who's a fellow photographer, amateur or pro.


It's easy to think we can make one backup copy of our photos and that'll be sufficient, but can I advise the following:

1. Select an online storage company for backup, your "cloud", such as Crashplan, Mozy, Smugmug, Carbonite, Backblaze (outstanding), run with it, keep an eye on it, check it's doing what you want it to do.

2. Copy your photos to an external hard drive (if you use Apple's Aperture, run a Vault backup, with Lightroom, your Catalog Backup, with Bridge or iPhoto, your chosen backups)
3. Copy your photos to a second hard drive and keep it offsite (with a family member or friend with a reciprocal arrangement). Update it regularly, say, weekly. Target are selling 2TB Western Digital drives for $69, half price - incredible. I found this deal on Amazon under comments (thanks!).
4. If like me, your photo library is too big for your iMac/PC, move it to an external hard drive. That makes 3 external drives, 1TB or 2TB capacity, often different brands to spread my risk.


With these steps, I have at least two hard copies of my data on external drives and online copies with Crashplan and Smugmug (my website). Time Machine and CrashPlan are complimentary to each other.


It's really useful to draw a sketch of what your Backup Plan actually looks like (example to follow). This will help you follow simple steps with each download from your camera to ensure you stick to the plan as a plan will only be as good as its administrator (eh, that's you!). 


Please note I receive no financial incentive for endorsing products. I just do a lot of late night research and wanted to pass it on to save you the tremendous time and effort! I'm a Marketer by profession in the field of investment banking and finance focused on advertising, with previous experience on the technical side in programming and compliance, where backing up was essential, so hopefully speak with a little experience.


Have you had experience of a catastrophic computer failure (I have twice a long time ago which prompted me to make a Backup Plan) and do you have any personal backup plans you'd like to share? I fully respect that everyone has their own unique reasons for backing up and ways of working and that has to be taken into account. I haven't reviewed Windows backup plans as yet but certainly these principles apply to both.


Finally, would you like to see tutorials on particular aspects of photography, from what to wear to how to shoot in natural light (my favourite), editing or planning? I'm be writing a quick tutorial on what to do when you return from a shoot, or photographing your kids for the day. Just leave me a message in Comments. It's also useful for me to hear if you think these Tutorials & Advice articles are useful, to motivate me to spend the time researching and writing them. Thanks!