I’m a bit late with this blog post. At the start of the year I set myself the task of writing one blog post a month for twelve months. The reasons I let this post slip a bit are…
- I got busy with commercial video work last month… I shot and edited three video jobs. I’m super happy to have this excuse and hopefully more of my blog posts will be late because of this haha. Watch this space for more video work and my journey as I expand my skills and what I can offer to my clients.
- It's not exactly that important! Please hear me on this… Out of all the things I am doing to run my business, writing these posts is not one of the most important lead generation/marketing things I am doing. The blog post which has been driving the most traffic to my site so far is this one: https://allankendall.com/mainblog/dropbox-vs-wetransfer-for-photographers-which-is-better This post is part of establishing myself as a photographer who knows what he is talking about, most of the people reading this will be other photographers… Not my ideal Client! Writing these posts has been about me learning how to write stuff that people want to read, a way of clients or potential clients to learn a bit about me and most importantly establishing myself as someone who knows what they are talking about. The point of this is to build trust, that thing a person need to have before they buy your product. See these links for additional reading about this…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZI_kzzyHo60&
https://www.paradym.com/blog/become-digital-mayor-town/
Anyway I’m getting distracted from the main point of this blog post which is how I backup my very important client data.
The core of any backup system is the very important fact that to be a proper backup you have to have your file copied in more than one place. If you change one file then you also need to change the copy. I have friends who buy an external usb drive as their ‘backup’ drive and move their files onto it basically to free up space on their laptop… this is not a backup people!! If you lost access to the external hard drive then you would lose your files.
Backing up files is about worst case scenarios!
Think about every way you could loose your files and then come up with an answer to each problem. I will tell you my system and more importantly why I do what I do and then hopefully this will empower you to think about your backup solution, make sure it is robust and see that it might be easier (and cheaper) than you think to employ a decent backup solution.
Worst case scenarios:
1. House/Office burns down along with all your computer stuff.
Answer: keep backups in more than one physical location.
2. Laptop explodes!
Answer: Backup any recent laptop files regularly (like every day!)
3. Your backup drive fails.
Answer: have more than one copy of your backup drive.
4. All electrical stuff in the world stops working!
Answer: your stuffed and to be honest getting access to your files will be the least of your problems!
So my current backup solution is multi faceted, automated (as much as possible) and solves my key problems.
Firstly I need to backup my Laptop, I use it every day and if it went down I would need to quickly access the files on it and restore it to a new or fixed laptop very quickly. I use an Apple MacBook Pro (Mid 2012 2.6 i7, 16gb ram, 500gb SSD). Apple have an out of the box backup solution called Time machine, it works very well and will check/backup files every hour. It works on Wifi or any external drive, you can buy an Apple Time Capsule with a drive built in and backup more than one computer to it. I don't do that because it's super expensice, I use an external drive and every time I plug it in it automatically backs up. The additional great thing about this is as well as the ability to restore all my files I can also go back in time and access a previous file I accidentally deleted. I can go back to yesterday/last year even and access the older version of the file (this function works for as long as there is free space on the backup drive, then it will start deleting the oldest versions of your files).
Apples's Timemachine backup solution.
If you have been taking notes you will realise that this backup solution is flawed! If my house exploded then I would loose my laptop and my external backup drive. So I can either make a copy of the external drive and take it to somebody else's house (very unlikely both our houses will explode but possible) or I could use the mysterious online Cloud! I have a fast(ish) internet connection and upload the 200gb or so from my laptop SSD to the internet somewhere! Introducing Backblaze!! https://www.backblaze.com
It is 5 dollars a month and is unlimited, It is automatic and as long as I have an internet connection is on all the time. When I first started it took about two months to fully backup all my stuff (I didn't have my laptop on all the time and didn't get fibre broadband straight away) This is my set and forget backup, I shouldn't need to access it (although it will take a while to download all my files again if I do) it is not a quick solution but along with my external time machine drive gives me added redundancy and off site backup.
Ok so thats my Laptop covered but what about all my Raw photo and video files? The solution is similar in that I have both external hard drives and a Cloud solution.
My main live drive that travels to jobs with me.
First I have a small Seagate 1tb external USB drive Called my ‘LiveDrive’ any live projects are saved here, mostly RAW files from my DSLRs or video files from whichever camera I am using. I also use my laptop drive to save files which I am working with as it is a fast SSD and much faster than these USB external drives.
This drive travels with me to jobs and I will typically save files first to my laptop and then additionally to my Live drive at the end of the shooting day. Once I get home I plug in my live drive backup drive (try saying that fast). This backup drive is identical to my live drive and is an identical copy incase the main live drive goes down. As I edit I use the backup drive to save files and deliverables and this gets backed up whenever I plug both in to my laptop.
My working backup hard drives, one is an identical copy of the other.
To make this as easy as possible I use a program called Carbon Copy Cloner https://bombich.com it’s awesome, only £30.60 (one off charge) and automatic! Remember I also need an offsite solution, I could take the backup live drive somewhere, or bury it in the garden somewhere but its 2018 so I use the Cloud. Backblaze backs up my laptop and it also backs up my Live drive (not the backup live drive as it's a straight copy) and my historic backup drives.
Carbon Copy Cloner works great in the background when you plug a drive in, you can also schedule backups and get email alerts.
Lastly I keep all my client work and this is very useful If (when) a client comes back to me a year later needing copies of their files. Once a project is finished and delivered I copy all files to these drives. I use internal desktop drives, (don't buy the really cheap ones) I plug these into an Inateck hdd dock.
This way I can use two drives at once (this is also where my Time Machine sits). I currently use Western Digital and Toshiba 2tb SATA drives and they are actually almost full so I will buy a couple more soon (3 gb seem the best value at the moment). Remember I will need two drives and an offsite solution (Backblaze). Carbon Copy Cloner handles the backup, when I plug both drives in it automatically copies to the backup drive.
Internal drives in the Inateck dock - don't forget to label everything!
So thats about it, each external drive has both a copy and an offsite backup. Last thing to say is that there is a flaw in my backup solution. It is down to me needing to remember to plug each drive in! This is an intentional flaw as one of the main reasons hard drives fail is they don't get used, they have spinning parts and these can seize when not fired up. By forcing myself to manually plug them in each week I am prolonging their life!
Hope this helps you start to think about your backup solution, if you have ever lost files you will understand how important it is to take a bit of time and work out your own backup solution, If you have never lost any files then why tempt the inevitable? Sort out your backup today!!
Cheers for now. Al