Back Up Your Photos...

The importance of backing up your files is profound. When you run a business with thousands of photos, backups are crucial. the loss of those photos could be immeasurable. Hence the reason why I choose to backup my photos. I am in the process of acquiring a portable hard-drive of 1TB (1 terabyte) capacity in order to backup my photos so that if there is a hard-drive crash I will retain my photos. I also back them up onto DVDs as a secondary measure of protection against hard drive crashes.



Unless you have gone through a hard-drive or system crash before, there is no way of realizing just how time-consuming and irritating that overcoming such a crash can be. I have files in my desktop computer that have remained dormant since my system crashed in November of 2009. I have decided that I am going to turn around and try to recover them by putting the hard-drive in a portable hard-drive case and get them onto the main laptop that I am using currently for my image processing computer. By 2017 I should have a new desktop computer and then I will be able to put some very heavy-duty image processing programs onto the computer. My three main photo-editing programs will be Adobe Photoshop Elements, Photoshop Lightroom and Nikon Capture NX2. This threesome will be able to accomplish the gamut of what I want done with most of the photos that I take.

Some of you who read this blog are not running a business but backing up should be a part of your computing routine. Why? Because family photos are the most important shots of all. They are memories and events that cannot be relived. A wildlife shot can be reshot. The 5th birthday party that your son or daughter had cannot. So do yourselves a big favor and go buy yourself a removable hard-drive, or a DVD burner. Burn your important images onto DVD and keep them for a lifetime.



Digital images are fragile, but less so than the paper photos of yester-year. We can save the original image and get "reprints" whenever we need them. A hard-drive or DVD hidden in a fireproof vault is a way of reclaiming our past the way our ancestors could not. A house fire in the past would wreak havoc because of the loss of all the possessions, that could be replaced and pictures that could not. The advent of digital imaging meant that if one kept a DVD of all the family photos offsite, the real loss of photo memories could be removed from the equation.

Keep your memories safe or your business intact. Make sure that you back up your photo image files regularly. Keep a copy off-site. Above all, no matter which images are important to you, backing up your files is crucial and may even bring you comfort in a time of need.

Happy shooting,