2011/07/03

Hey, Backup, Bud!

DaGoddess @ 05:38

I was a good girl and backed up my files before my trip and I finally maxed out my little external hard drive. I still had about 2gb left to go and decided we’d be okay since I knew my new 2TB external had it, plus the images were backed up on a DVD. I still feel like I want to cram this one last folder onto that hard drive though.

I don’t know why.

Lately I’ve been on a redundancy kick when I’m running backups. I mean, I always do that, but it’s getting a bit out of control. I have a minimum of four archives of everything. Is that weird or what? Sometimes I find I have five or six and, really, truly, I don’t need that many copies. Especially when most of them are stored in the same location.

I know other photographers — the guys who shoot multi-million dollar campaigns — have at least twenty copies of everything they produce. They have whole racks of storage, including off-site fireproof, bombproof safes. I’m not at that level, obviously, but even so, I can see why they’d go to such extreme lengths. One guy? As he’s shooting, he’s creating two backups. Then, after the shoot, the originals are with him, one backup goes with an assitant, and the other backup goes with another assistant. And they don’t stay in the same hotel just in case something happens at one of hotels. As soon as they get back to their respective places of lodging, they each create another backup and ship that to their main office. Once the backups arrive (by different shipping companies no less), more backups are made. When the images go into editing? More backups of each edit. Yep. A single shoot can generate a gazillion TB of files. Like I said, they have massive racks in various locations to store everything they do.

In a way, I’m glad I’m not a successful, big name commercial photographer with million dollar accounts. The archiving alone would drive even this OCD gal batty.

What do you do with your files?

4 Comments

  1. I think you’ll be okay…as long as you don’t start flying them home on a separate airplane or sending them home in a different vehicle – whatever the case may be. :)

    Comment by tina — 2011/07/03 @ 08:20

  2. Ahhh…remember film? I have scads of negatives from my father and grandfather that desperately need to be scanned.

    They had a towing company and were on call with the State Patrol, and thus photographed all the wrecks they went to. They made a business out of selling the photos to the various parties involved if there was a court case.

    There were times when one party or the other threatened not to pay, and my dad would threaten back “fire in the darkroom” or “flood in the darkroom.” The old time equivalent of “delete!”

    But I really gotta get scanning. Someday I will make a book. And frighteningly, right now I have no back up at all. “Fire in the darkroom” has new meaning for me these days!

    Comment by DogsDontPurr — 2011/07/03 @ 19:10

  3. Well, the photos from the festival made it home with me on only two separate sources. One: computer. Two: compact flash cards. Now that I’m home, bwahahahaha! I’m going crazy! Later. I’m too tired now.

    Marcie, get to scannin’! My dad started scanning his stuff, but the rest is just sitting there, waiting. Hoping he and LD get to work on that this summer

    Comment by DaGoddess — 2011/07/06 @ 00:15

  4. Thanks for the reminder; I need to back my stuff up!

    Hubby was supposed to install another drive for RAID, so it would automatically back up… have to ask what happened to that… ;)

    Comment by pam — 2011/07/06 @ 10:38

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