Safeguarding your work

You've heard it a million times.. maybe more.  Backup your stuff.  Make a copy and keep it off site.  Don't format a memory card unless you have at least two backup copies of your data.  In theory it's really easy to do but in practice, many if not most folks have woefully inadequate backup plans.

As recently as last month I have experienced hard drive failures taking with them valuable data, but truth be told I have never lost a single image that I didn't want to lose.  I've often thought of my backup strategy as excruciating to keep up with..time consuming and resulting in more hard drives than I can manage, but it works.


If someone expresses an interest in the details, I'll share...but the short story is..  I keep at least three copies of every image..

• Field backup to a Hyper Drive (deleted along with the memory cards after all other copies below are done);
• One working copy on a dedicated internal hard drive. (OS and editing apps are on the primary drive);
• One copy on an external back-up drive, usually a Western Digital MyBook of some incarnation;
• One copy in the clouds using BackBlaze.  
• I said "at least three" copies because I've gotten paranoid of late and keep a mirrored copy of the external drive off-site..that makes four copies. 

The problem is that these copies are across multiple drives and it has become increasingly difficult to track.  Add to this challenge that hard drives experience instant mortality..one day they work and the next...not so much.  The WD MyBook 1 Terabyte that croaked last month is a perfect example, and it was the straw that broke the camel's back.

Enter Drobo...by Data Robotics.  

The Drobo is an external housing that can hold multiple drives and writes data to them in a RAID configuration. Well, Data Robotics calls it Beyond RAID and truth told, I don't know exactly what that means or how it actually works, but it works well.  I put it in service as the primary back-up device about a month ago and it has replaced an abundance of external drives scattered around my studio.  I still keep one copy of critical data in the clouds and one off-site.

I bought the base model which can hold four drives with a maximum capacity of 4tb each, and you can mix and match sizes and speeds.  There are other Drobo versions that hold many more drives and all can be set up using either USB 2.0, Firewire or Ethernet cables.

It comes with proprietary software that allows all sorts of monitoring of the drives, updating, formatting and such, but my favorite feature is that it can perform scheduled backups of what-ever I choose.  Right now I have it scheduled to go once a week and I perform manual back-ups to it after each shoot, but at some point I am going to let go of the leash and allow it do it's thing.

Technology is moving way too fast for me to grasp all the nuances, so I have a bit of blind faith with this, but the front panel monitor lights indicate that all the drives are healthy (green LED's) and there is plenty of available space (Blue LED's).  MyComputer shows the multiple drives as one big storage device, and I use BeyondCompare to confirm that all the data is there and sync'd across the various backups.. 

I am watching this whole affair with a careful eye and will keep you updated over time.

Interesting side note...As I was sync'ng the data to the Drobo, I inadvertently deleted all images from 2001 through 2003... DOH!!   It happens.  I knew I had all this data in the clouds, but the off-site back-up easily repaired the data vacancy..

A moment of magic with Apple...

I'm still in love with my iPhone.. it's been over a year and I doubt I have come close to tapping into more than 25% of what it can do..and it's near bullet-proof.  Sort of...

I caved in a few months ago and made the decision to jail-break my phone..  Not sure why but it seemed like a good thing to do.  But as the days past, I realized that since all I accomplished was uncovering more untapped resources, when the next OS update Apple rolled out for the 3Gs I would revert back to factory spec.

Never as easy as others tell you it will be....

Yes, it's been a while...

Summer is coming to an end...  I've had a lot of time to reflect. 

From what I have read from other bloggers, there is a metamorphosis that occurs somewhere around month four of blogging...  You look back at where you started and question where you are going...

I've focused on what I thought others would want to read and realized it wasn't what I wanted to share.  At least not in the format in which I wanted to share it....

More follows the break..