Backup strategy for the poor/budget photographers
Believe it or not, I’ve lost all my raw files from my Paris trip in 2006. I only (and by chance) have 16bit tiffs of the best rated images and 8bit psds (I only had Photoshop 7 at the time) of about 60% of the tiffs. This was my 4th trip to the city and my most productive in terms of time invested and number of images made.
Bottomline - back up !!!
- On the road I take many memory cards with me. I plan to purchase 4gb cards so that backing them on a dvd gets easier. But then putting those many eggs (I mean photos) on one card is risky so I stick to 1 or 2gb cards. I safely store these cards. They are virtually indestructible and with Photorescue almost any problem can be solved. You can carry heavy P5000 or something similar but we are talking about people on budget.
- At home download all the images to your pc/mac, make a back-up copy on a DVD (make sure it is written correctly, this is how I lost my Paris files). And make a copy on an external hard drive. And then only re-format the card.
- If possible add another drive and keep it in your office or somewhere else. You can use sync-toy or something similar to sync the data. Always make sure it is done correctly.
- be happy.