FAQ: Backing up your Images

Updated August 9, 2010 to include the latest additions to our backup schematic.

We frequently get asked how we go about backing up our images, and I've been really surprised by all the photographers I've come across that have some pretty wacky backup schematics in place that are not only time consuming but can be frustrating and complicated if something goes wrong. So today I'm going to talk about how we backup our images and our system, and hopefully this will be helpful for those that either don't have a backup system or have one that is causing more pain than gain. I want to preface this post by saying that this may not be the absolute best way of doing things (there are tons of options out there), but I think it's a pretty darn good backup system and I would definitely recommend it to other photographers.

The first thing to note is that if you're not backing up your images, you absolutely need to be. Its the same as having mandatory backup gear at our photo shoots - if we don't have a second line of defense against digital image loss, we're playing with fire. In today's digital world, it is much easier for image information to be lost or corrupted, and we need to have the attitude that our information will be lost, not if. A wedding is a once in a lifetime event and its our professional responsibility to keep our clients' images as safe as we possibly can.

There are three rules to abide by when it comes to creating your backup schematic: 1) Redundancy 2) Redundancy and 3) Redundancy. You must have multiple layers of backup. Simply backing up to a external hard drive you bought from Costco isn't going to cut it. Every hard drive WILL fail at some point, it's only a question of when. So putting all your eggs in one basket (like using one external hard drive) is not the best idea. What will you do when (not if) that one hard drive fails with all of your images on it? See the need for multiple backups?

So here's what we do in our backup schematic. I thought it would be most helpful to talk through this in chunks, and I'll explain the ins-and-outs along the way.

Downloading from CF Cards & Initial Backup

We use PhotoMechanic to download our images because we're able to use several (3 typically) of our Lexar Firewire Card readers which can download multiple cards simultaneously, and PhotoMechanic is the best program out there that can work with multiple card readers at once. Also, PhotoMechanic gives us the ability to rename the files upon import according to our specific studio's naming convention AND copy the images to two locations while importing. This means we have images importing to our working drive (the drive we use to work with our images) as well as our external backup system (a Drobo - more on that later). We do this as soon as we get home from a wedding, so before we go to bed that night there's three copies of every image: 1) on the CF cards which aren't cleared until just before the next shoot 2) on the working drive and 3) on the Drobo.

External Backups: Drobos

The Drobo is a unique tool because it's not just an ordinary external hard drive. The Drobo is a type of RAID system where the actual Drobo enclosure contains multiple drives (4 or 8 depending on the model). The Drobo will then duplicate your information across those drives in such a way that if one of the drives in the Drobo failed, no data would be lost. In other words, if you ejected one of the drives, the Drobo would reconfigure all of your information across the remaining drives, keeping all of your data intact. You can just throw away the ejected or failed drive and put a new one in its place. The Drobo would then reconfigure across the drives and everything would be back to normal. This can sound much more complicated than it really is, and there's a really good detailed explanation of how this works on the Drobo website. They've got a great demo video that should help explain some things much better than we can here!

We've got two Drobos on-site one that holds an Archive of finished RAW images (and Lightroom catalogs) and one that holds all the untouched RAW data once we get back from a shoot. We call these DroboArchive and DroboVault, respectively. It's important to note that images in the Vault are considered to be untouchable - we don't ever touch them, unless we need to restore a deleted file. All "work" is done on the copy of the files that lives on our local internal drives.

Internal Backup: The System and Working Drives

It's easy to focus on the external backup of our images, but sometimes people forget completely about all their applications, client files, financial records, & client communications. Can you imagine what would happen if all your records of all your clients and financials was wiped out suddenly? Yikes. For us, this information is contained on our internal drives - the drives that are actually contained within our 8 Core MacPro. We have two main internal drives: 1) a 500GB system drive which contains all of our applications, client files, financial records, word documents, etc. and 2) a 1TB working drive which is what we use to process our images. Both of these drives has a duplicate hard drive that functions as a backup, which makes our total number of internal hard drives four (you following so far?). We use an application called SuperDuper which will, at midnight every night, duplicate our main drives to their backup drives within our MacPro. This means that our system drive and our working drive both get duplicated each night, every night, without us doing anything. Since SuperDuper uses an incremental approach to duplication, the app just copies the files that are new or have changed, so on the average night a duplication of our 1TB drives takes about 5 minutes. There's a free version of SuperDuper, but the paid version is the one that lets you schedule backups. You can also have it do this backup procedure multiple times a day, if you're so inclined.

Off Site Backup

This is the big hurdle in every backup schematic, and with the sheer amount of data that we generate, an over-the-internet approach is just simply too slow. Backing up through the internet can work fine if you're not shooting much, but when you have a bunch of back-to-back shoots, the system just gets clogged up (I speak from experience!). What we're currently doing is backing up files as soon as we've imported them to bare hard drives using an eSATA dock. We then take these drives, put them in an anti static bag, and then into a padded anti-static shipper, and then go drop the drive off at a neighbor's house. This is some manual work, but it's the best solution for now. I'm currently trying out another hair brained idea, so more on that later (if it works).

Preserving the Final Images

All that we've discussed so far is for the original images, which in our case are all RAW images. It's also important to have backups of your final (JPG) images that result after they have been processed and color-corrected. We use Pictage to host all our image galleries (love them) and one of the many benefits to using Pictage is that they'll retain backups of all our final images indefinitely, behind multiple layers of redundancy. So if everything else fails, we still have copies of the final images in multiple locations, thanks to Pictage.

One More Backup: BackBlaze and ShootQ

At this point, it may sound ridiculous to back things up one more time, but seriously peeps, this business is your livelihood and you can't be protected enough. This is where Backblaze and ShootQ come in.

Backblaze is an internet backup service that runs in the background of our systems and is constantly making sure that there is always a complete backup of our system online on their servers. Since Backblaze is only working on our system drive, this doesn't take any time (or bandwidth) since we're not really creating large files or making major changes on the system drive like we do on our working drive. It's $5 month, and completely worth it. They have a free trial that's worth checking out over on their site. This is different from a solution like Time Machine in that it's backing up everything off site, instantly.

ShootQ is a studio management service that we completely love. All our client communications, contracts, & invoices are all contained in the ShootQ system and it allows us to be almost completely paperless, which is awesome! Aside from being powerful and easy to use, all the information that is in ShootQ is backed up by the folks at ShootQ redundantly. We love ShootQ so much that we'll be doing a whole blog post on it in the future so stay tuned for that. In the mean time, go over there and sign up for their 30 day trial or take the visual tour of the system. I can't emphasize enough how much this has simplified our workflow. For reals. Seriously, go sign up for the trial. Not kidding.

Putting it all together

To Recap, here's a list of the hardware & software we use in our backup schematic:

• 8 Core MacPro with 2 1TB drives & 2 500GB drives (1 System, 1 Working, and two mirrors of System & Working)
• 2x Drobos (1 remote, 1 local, each with 4 500GB drives, which can be upgraded as we need more storage)
• PhotoMechanic for the Download and immediate duplication of Images from CF Cards
• SuperDuper for internal duplication of System & Working drives & remote duplication of Drobo
• Backblaze for remote (internet/cloud) backup of system files and records
• ShootQ for housing contracts, client relations, invoices and serving as the backbone of our Studio.
• Pictage for hosting our images once we're done processing them & retaining backups of final images on their servers indefinitely.

If you've actually read this far, then major props goes to you!! I know there's a ton of information here, but building a fully functioning, reliable backup system that won't screech your business to a complete halt if something fails is PRICELESS. Be sure to consult your IT guy with any backup system you'd like to put in place to make sure it's the right fit for you. Whatever you do, don't 'wing it' when it comes to your backup system. Put something in place NOW that makes sense. This is a much better investment than the next camera or next lens. To put things in perspective, professional recovery of a 500GB drive will start at around $1,500. Yikes.

As always, if you have any questions, or would like to have a question answered on a future FAQ post, leave it in the comments below!! And because all posts are cooler with pictures, here's a shot I grabbed a few weeks ago at the Wild Animal Park of one of my favorite birds - a Lorikeet!

Follow up questions from the comments:

Tonhya asked: What backup suggestions would you make for people that can't necessarily afford a full-blown automated backup system?

While backing up you images and records is one of the most important things in your business, I realize that not everybody can afford to invest in the necessary tools to have a full blown system in place, especially people just starting out. So, on a limited budget there are three things I would do, without a doubt. 1) Begin using a service to host your final images that backs them up for you. Like I discussed earlier, Pictage does this for us. Not only do they serve as a place for us to do our online proofing/ordering for our clients, they also backup our final images. Click here for a sweet deal on Pictage. 2) Use an automated system to backup your system files and records like BackBlaze or Mozy (or others). It's critical that you don't lose your records for many many reasons. At $5/month, this is a no brainer. 3)Purchase multiple external hard drives and duplicate/mirror them on a regular basis. A 1TB external from Costco is around $100, buy two of those and use one as your working drive, and dupe your working drive to the other one on a daily basis using SuperDuper or a similar utility. This is NOT a permanent solution, but it's a start while you build up the capital to invest in a solution that has multiple layers of redundancy.

Shannon asked: What happens when all that space is filled? Do you ever use DVDs?

Part of the beauty of the Drobo is that as you run out of space in the disk array, you're able to replace/swap drives out for larger ones. This is explained in the demo video on Drobo's website and what it does is essentially creates limitless storage (to a certain extent). This gets rid of the need to have to keep buying new external drives every time you fill one up, or backing up to DVD's. The problem with using DVD's in your backup system is two fold 1) It's a time consuming process - shooting RAW means an average wedding will take 25 DVD's to back up. Talk about a misuse of time! 2) Optical media can go bad, too if stored improperly. The main reason we don't use DVD's to back up is because it's one more thing we have to do and set aside time to accomplish. By automating the immediate backup upon (as discussed above) it's a step we don't need to even think about.

Be sure to check out our other FAQ Posts by clicking here.