Screwed the pooch and already gone south on your New Year’s Resolutions? Smoking again? Not hitting the gym? No worries. Forget health mandates and get on top of what really matters: backing up all your images easy, relatively quickly and with — your favorite! — no thinking.
I’m assuming you need to get on this, Dude, because, 1) You don’t won’t lose your images, and, 2) As, Peter Krogh notes, the vast majority of us silly Homo sapiens don’t backup our stuff.
For total backup security, Dude, just do this:
1) Guesstimate how many megabytes (or terabytes) of data you have.
2) Buy three hard drives that hold at least 20% more data.
3) Copy all your image files from all sources to drive “A.”
4) Backup up “A” to “B.”
5) Backup “A” to “C.”
6) Store “C” off site.
HALA-LUYAH!!!
You can now boast of having your images much better backed up than 85% of your photographer buddies, Dude. But better than bragging rights, Dude, you’ve gained peace-o-mind! And even better than that, Dude, you’ve backed up all your images — and well!
Yes, your images might be a total freekn’ mess, but organization can come later. I mean, you can’t organize what you don’t have. So don’t wait to get organized to get your images totally, awesomely backed up.
Yes, I realize, you did not burn your images to write-once material like DVDs, and that is important. But again, until you have copies of each image file on three drives in two locations, well, Buddy, write-once backup is purely academic. Over thinking this stuff, Dude, can be a real hazard — to your images.
Read the Article
To read a more detailed version of this same backup system (with an, um, more serious tone, Dude), download “Simple, Practical RAW Archive Backup & Organization,” my recent “Raw Processing Solutions” column for AfterCapture. I go into some fun stuff (for neeerds!), like zeroing out hard drives, performing validated data transfers, and “What is an Archive Anyway?”
Honestly, Dude, you really should know what this stuff is, but I don’t fault you if you don’t give a poop. Only neeerds care about this stuff. And someday soon — go technology advances! — you probably won’t need to.
But, um, Dude, until then, you’ve got to at least get your images safely backed up on multiple drives that you store in two locations. And that, Dude, is exactly what going through Steps One through Six steps (see above) will accomplish for you.
It’s easier than quiting smoking or forcing yourself to go to the gym, and it’s definitely better for your health — or, at least, the health of your images.
Start Reading the Article Here: Continue reading “Backup All Your Images NOW: The Simple System”
