“It’s not a question of IF you are going to have a hard drive fail, it’s a question of WHEN you will have a hard drive fail!” That quote is from a computer geek friend. The question is,
“ARE YOU READY??”
Obviously we need to back up our images but many photographers don’t have a great system in place. Ideally you would have a proper RAID system that is also backed up to a secondary location and everything is done automatically. But, we are talking some big bucks and high tech stuff there so I’m going to share the way I take care of my stuff. It’s a little more work but it is a plan.
There are four hard drives in my computer. One is for the Operating System and programs only. I try not to save many images or files to this main drive as it gives the best performance in allowing your main drive to also operate as the main space for your calculations to occur. Mine is called MACINTOSH HD. The other three drives are for the main data I need to store and labeled as such. WEDDINGS – COMMERCIAL – ART FILES. Each of these drives is cloned to another drive of the same name MACINTOSH HD – WEDDINGS BACKUP – COMMERCIAL BACKUP – ART FILES BACKUP.
Please note I did not say copied, I said cloned. This is important especially for the main OS drive. When you copy you have the data but you don’t have the ability to Boot up your computer. With a cloned drive you have a complete drive ready to start up your computer. Why is this important? (yeah I said it again it really is important!) If your main drive goes down and you need to recreate it you need to load in an OS, load ALL of your programs and reset ALL of your preferences and setting to do with the computer. It often takes a day or two to get things loaded then another week to really get all your settings back in place. If you had cloned your drive – you take the clone – Boot up your computer and clone that information into the drive that needed to be replaced and you are back to work full speed in about an hour or less.
OK Bob how do you do it??
Here’s the skinny. I work with a unit called Voyager from Newer Technology that sells for about $79 that allows me to work with hard drives that are not in enclosures. This makes for a less expensive back up solution because you are not paying for the enclosures and fans and various electronics each time you buy a hard drive. When I went to this link it was only $37! Way cool you need two anyway ultimately.
Newer Technology Voyager with inserted Hard Drive. You just pop different drives in and out to clone each one.
I’m on a MAC so I can only attest to the software I use called Carbon Copy Cloner. I available for $39.95 and will be the best bucks you spend on, as they say, “Saving your Bacon!” With Carbon Copy Cloner, your data and the operating system’s data are all preserved on a bootable volume, ready for production at a moment’s notice. When disaster strikes, simply boot from your backup and get back to using your Mac. At your convenience, replace the failed hard drive and then let CCC restore the OS, your data and your settings directly from the backup in one easy step. This is a great way to protect you when you are upgrading to a new OS also because you will still have a copy of your old setup until you know that all is working well until you clone the new system over it.
For PC users just click to search ‘pc clone software‘ and you’ll learn which software will work for you.
Hard drives from my back up system.
You notice there are more than four drives in my back up pile. That’s because in addition to the base drives housed in my computer tower I also have some drives for specific subject matter or specific clients who require a lot of storage. That’s why you need the second Voyager so you can clone from drive to drive.
Not a pretty system but a useful one. It doesn’t matter if you embrace this system but, run don’t walk, to get some sort of back up system in play before you end up shelling out a bunch of bucks to try and recover your data someday.
Yours, in Photography, Bob
