Tech Blog

[#1]

Alex Lindsay of the Pixel Corps is famous for his saying "if it's not in 3 places, it doesn't exist."  As a digital media creator, his livelihood depends on having his files when he needs them.  If anything happens, his business shuts down.  Having a back up isnt enough.  You need the original, a backup AND an offsite backup.

Things may not be that hairy at your house, but think about everything you store on your computer and how devastating it would be to lose it all to a meltdown.  Back in the day people cried about losing family photos to a house fire.  Sure, that can still happen, but imagine how more prone you are to a harddrive crash than a fire.  Back. It. Up.

Here are some ways to get it done.

Burn To A Disc
Every month burn a cd of your photos.  Scribble "August 2009" on the label and then bring it to your office and leave it in a box.  This is the most important thing about backup.  Having an extra copy next to your computer is fine if your hard drive melts, but if your house is robbed or is destroyed, chances are those back ups go with it.  So burn the copy and get it somewhere else.

Portable / External Backup
It's still a good idea to have a local backup for your files.  My solution works in two ways: big external hard drives and smaller portable ones.  I have the backups doubled this way.  There's a copy next to my computer should it get fried, and then I always have a copy with me to work on other computers I may find myself at.

Offsite Online Backup
There are also cloud computing solutions where you can back up your files on someone else's system.  For photos, simply uploading them to sites like Flickr, Facebook, or Picasa offers an easy and instant way to not only share your photos with family and friends, but it also creates a backup of your images.  You should watch your privacy settings on the sites to make sure you're only sharing with the world what you want them to see and be warned that sometimes you're not archiving a full quality copy of your image.

Carbonite is a simple solution that works similarly to Apple's Time Machine.  You download a program that monitors your computer for file adds and changes.  Then, when your computer is idle the backups are sent to the secure Carbonite servers.  You pay a flat annual fee for unlimited backups.  Accidentally delete a file and you can retrieve it.  If your computer is damaged, or lost, you can recover all your files to restore on a new system.

Print Them
This is a brilliant idea that Greg Poole from Fuji was preaching when we met last week.  In this digital world, we all take thousands more photos than we ever did before.  All we end up doing with them, however, is dumping them to a hard drive and then never looking at them again.  Printing off your photos for albums or into unique photobooks offers the ultimate in backup security.  With the advancement in technology, there's always a chance your backup media could become obsolete.  Paper, however, has been around for millenia.

There are many software tools to explore for backing up.  If you use a Mac, the Time Machine software is built in to your operating system.  Some external hard drives come with their own proprietary backup solutions for you to use, or you can simply select the files and folders you want to duplicate and then drag them across your disc drives.

It's so easy.  It's not expensive.  You don't have an excuse.  From tax documents to baby memories, creating a backup is something you MUST do.

catch the buzz ... pass it on.

Message Edited by buzzbishop on 08-19-2009 10:48 AM

[#2]

Thanks for the reminder..  backing up is so simple but it's something I never think to do and we have 2 years of holidays and irreplaceable memories that I'd hate to lose!