Post-Snap Tip: Back Up Often

I love the digital age - taking a lot of photos and being able to review and print only the best (and keep the rest just for kicks). Unfortunately, many of us take the photos - download to our computers - and then do nothing else. I’m at fault here too. THIS NEEDS TO CHANGE! Please. Take my advice now before it’s too late. My most recent computer crash gave me a quick kick the in the pants to take action now. Thankfully, I had backed up most of the files so I didn’t loose too much, BUT getting back up and running was still a pain. There’s just no telling what could happen to your computer and files. So - here are a few ideas / suggestions that I would like you to consider … and then DO!

1. Set up a secondary hard drive for back up. An external hard drive hooks up to the back of your computer via a USB cord, come in a variety of different capacities and are relatively inexpensive (especially for the peace of mind they bring). You can manually drag and drop folders and files on to the drive OR set up your computer to automatically back up files on a regular basis.

2. Burn your files to a CD / DVD. I know this is a bit of a pain, but it’s vital for your precious images. If you’re backing up to a hard drive, maybe you only go through and burn your favorite pics 1x/month. Maybe it’s once a week. Either way - make a point to burn CDs. You can buy what’s on sale, but the life span on cheap CDs is short. A better investment is an archival gold variety. More expensive, but worth the extra bucks.

3. Back up to an online storage site. I’m currently considering: https://www.backblaze.com/ For $5 a month they will back up most everything on my C drive and any other internal or external drives I have hooked up to this computer. $5 a month? REALLY? That sounds like a steal!

When it comes down to it, nothing will last forever so the more ways you back up your important files the better. If the hard drive crashes you have the CDs. If the CDs go bad you have the hard drive. If the hard drive and CDs go bad you have the online storage solution!

I’m going to do all three. My personal photos are so valuable to me … and so are the ones I take for my clients! I hope you will do the same!

Signed,

Bonkers for Back-Ups