Backing Up

Years ago, I shot an important to me event and had thousands of photos. I went through, edited them, catalogued, and tagged them. Made sure everything was nice and labelled... Then I wiped my card. A few months later, I went to find the photos, and somewhere along the way, I lost the entire event. The raws, edited photos, all of it.

Let me say, there were words said. A lot of them. I'm still cursing that. But in doing so, I have also put a lot of effort towards creating a back-up system that I have put to the test in Canada and on my international travels. I would like to break it down for you.

First, what is the 3-2-1 back-up system?

3. copies of your data.

2. copies at home on 2 separate mediums.

1. copy saved offsite.

The heart of my back-up system is an unraid server that I maintain (and enlist the help of my friends when I am away if an emergency arises.. which it has). Using VPNs, I am able to remote into my server from anywhere in the world and copy my photos to it with minimal hassle. It is running a RAID 1 array, so if a hard drive goes down, my data is still in tact. It does not need to be built with fancy - or even new - hardware. Mine is built off from my old computer, giving it a second chance at life, and has been wonderful. Over the 4 years, I had one hard drive issue, which was an easy fix.

The second copy is a Windows machine that copies the photos to it's storage (should they be on something other than hard drives... yes. I didn't say it was perfect). It is also what I use to edit photos when I am at home. This can be whatever you want it to be. If you felt so inclined to have tape, blu-rays, or baller with NVMe storage. Or your standard working copies.

The third copy is on an online storage service. I personally use sync.com because they are Canadian and are priced very fairly. I can upload my photos directly to Sync from my laptop, and I have it automated to upload photos from my windows machine, and more importantly, download photos. It is fairly hands off, which is nice. I also really like Sync because I am able to share and maintain sharable links with ease. It would be nice to have Linux integration, given my immense disdain for Windows and what they are doing.

When I am traveling, I have my photos on both my laptop and a portable hard drive, and the original SD cards (fool me once), and when I am able to, transfer my photos to my home server or Sync. After they are for sure transferred, I feel safe enough to delete the photos off of the SD cards. Given how much those run now, I am not running out and buying new ones every time I fill them.

It's nice because every computer - and my phone - can access my all photos. It doesn't sound like much, but having that freedom to access everything on the go is great when I am out for months or years at a time.