How to Make a Backup

How do you best back up your photos?

Every photographer has to deal with it at some point; your sunny holiday photos, or worse, all the photos from a wedding gone in one fell swoop. This can have many different causes, but it is often due to a broken hard drive or a crashed computer. Of course, that can always happen, but you can prevent losing your photos with a good backup. Here you can read how to do this and what you need.

Why do you need a backup?

Devices can break, and often this happens at the worst possible time. That is always frustrating, but it does not have to be a disaster. If you lose photos because of this, it is very annoying, whether you photograph professionally or only take photos on holiday. Photos are often very valuable to you and to your customers. With a good backup, you do not have to worry about losing your photos. Below, we give you a number of options for backing up your photos.

Different ways to back up your photos

There are different ways to back up your photos; the two best-known methods are on an external hard drive or in the cloud. Some professional photographers also use memory cards or a NAS to store their photos.

• External hard drive

Most photographers use an external hard drive as a backup. Thanks in part to their affordable prices and large storage capacity, these are a good backup method. They are also easy to take with you and user-friendly. You connect the hard drive to your laptop or computer and copy the photos on it to the hard drive. Do make sure that you copy the photos and do not just move them, otherwise it is still not a backup.

Here you will find all hard drives

• In the cloud

When you want to save photos from your holiday, you can also do this in the cloud. Storing in the cloud means that the photos are stored online, so you do not need a memory card or drive for this. Examples include Google Photos, Apple iCloud, Microsoft OneDrive and Dropbox. This is often free up to a certain amount of storage and therefore ideal for your personal photos, but for a professional photographer this storage will be too little. Most of these services also have a paid version that gives you more storage space. Because the cloud is online, you do need an internet connection. If you do not have a good connection available, this method is not always very convenient.

• Memory cards

There are also photographers who use SD cards as storage. For every assignment, holiday or personal project, they buy a new card. They save the photos on a computer and also leave them on the SD card. In the long term, this is a more expensive way of backing up than using a hard drive, for example. In addition, you are also more likely to lose those small cards than a larger storage medium. During a long trip, on the other hand, it is useful to use compact cards as a backup.

Here you will find all memory cards

• NAS

With a NAS, you create your own personal cloud, but without the monthly subscription costs. A NAS backup is not the cheapest method and is therefore especially suitable for the professional photographer. A NAS system with two or more hard drives is called a RAID setup. RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) is a technology in which multiple drives work together. You can then store your files on duplicate drives or distribute them across multiple drives. This means your files are always kept twice as safe. Click here if you would like more information about NAS systems.

Here you will find all NAS systems

3-2-1 method

Most photographers use the 3-2-1 method to back up their photos. With this method, you make sure you never lose photos from an assignment or private collection again.

The 3-2-1 method stands for:

• 3: The file is stored 3 times, for example on the computer, an external hard drive and in the cloud.
• 2: The file is stored on at least 2 different types of storage media, for example on the computer and in the cloud.
• 1: Keep at least 1 copy in another location. For example, you can keep an external hard drive at work or with friends or family.
  

When you make sure you save your files three times, the chance of losing everything is already much smaller. If your computer crashes, you still have the hard drive and the cloud. Of course, it can happen that your computer and hard drive both break, for example due to fire or water damage. That is why it is wise to have all your files in the cloud or at another location, such as at work or with family or friends.

Need more help?

Have a look at these articles too:

• Creating a NAS backup
• Recovering deleted photos
• Everything about memory cards