Want to make sure your photos and data are stored safely forever? We show you how to save your photos so that they are permanently secured and archived.
Why is it important to back up photos?
Extremely annoying for private users, the worst case scenario for professional photographers: a loss of the digital photo collection. Whether due to a technical defect, carelessness or theft: if the stored images are gone, many beautiful and priceless memories and snapshots are also lost. That is why regular backups of photos are obligatory. If you don’t back up your pictures properly, you risk losing all your photos, videos and other important data forever.
Almost every photographer has lost photos because they didn’t have a backup.
It is advisable to store the pictures on at least two other separate storage media, and these should be different types of media. Security increases if one of these drives is kept in a different location, for example in the cloud (i.e. in a secured data centre). This way you are on the safe side in case of theft, mechanical or electronic damage or even fire.
We have had the experience several times that customers have contacted us after some time to ask whether we still had the digitized images stored as a file. Their files would no longer be recoverable due to a hard drive crash or some kind of other problem.
Local backups: The simplest and cheapest method
Whether photos from your smartphone, your SLR camera or digitized by us: backing up photos is a mandatory task for every photographer.
First, copy all data from the SD card, smartphone memory or a USB-flash drive to your computer from time to time. This way you ensure that your images are at hand even if the shooting device suffers an unforeseen hardware death. However, you should not rely on it alone! If you only back up your data or photos on your laptop or a PC, you are in great danger.
Backup on external hard drives
A simple and inexpensive method is to store the photo files on an external hard drive. This also applies to all other self-created files, such as documents. An external hard drive is ideal for backing up large amounts of data. The read/write head makes them less robust than USB sticks, but hard drives have the better price/gigabyte ratio. You are more flexible with external hard drives than with internal ones because they can be connected and removed faster.
Sizes of 2.5 and 3.5 inches are common – the smaller external 2.5-inch models are popular because they do not require a power supply. As a rule, you connect the external hard drives (sometimes called HDDs) via USB; one end of the cable goes into the external HDD, the other into a free PC port. Look for free USB sockets at the back or front of the PC/MAC. If there are none free, consider buying a hub: such a hub works similar to a multiple socket, hangs on a PC/MAC USB port and in turn provides several USB ports.
Such hard drives are now quite inexpensive and can be purchased, for example, at Officeworks or online on the Internet. When buying an external hard drive, it is important that you pay attention to good hard drive quality. So, it is always best to look up the latest tests on the models currently available.
USB 3.0 is faster then USB 2.0
We recommend buying a hard drive with at least a USB 3.0 connection so that a data backup can run quickly. Even if your PC only has a USB 2.0 connection, USB 3.0 costs hardly any more. Furthermore it is downward compatible and offers flexibility for the future.
Besides, the hard drive should already have 2 TB capacity so that there is enough space available later. It would be annoying if you needed a larger hard drive after only a short time.
Tip: against a power surge, fire and theft, only several external hard disks in rotation can help when stored off-site.
We also recommend that you buy 2 external hard drives and always store one outside your house/apartment (e.g. with friends or relatives) and exchange it with the other one every few months. In case of a disaster (fire, water damage or theft) you still have the files available.
Software makes backup easy
For the actual data backup, you can use the on-board tools of your PC (Backup and Restore) or MAC (Time Machine) or an external backup programme. This makes copying jobs more convenient. Such tools are especially helpful if you connect an external HDD and the same files are stored on the internal and external storage – but with different actualities. The software determines which contents are newer on which medium, and replaces the older versions with those of the other storage device. Furthermore, you automatically copy what is missing from storage A to storage B (and vice versa).
“Personal Backup” is a simple, free and highly recommended programme for Windows users. Personal Backup is a software for saving personal data to any destination folder. Backups can be started either manually or automatically using a user defined time schedule. The program runs under all popular Windows versions.
☝️You should back up your data regularly, preferably as often as possible. Then each backup is done faster and you are always on the safe side.
Backup in the cloud
Backing up photos at home is right and important. However, to protect these cherished memories in the long term, it might be advisable to back them up in the cloud. Whether it’s water damage, a lightning strike, a burglary or a computer virus, in the event of a catastrophe, backups only at home can quickly perish. A so-called “offsite backup”, i.e. the backup of important data outside of one’s own four walls, prevents this. There are plenty of cloud solutions for this purpose. For example, Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive or Apple iCloud Drive securely and redundantly back up not only documents but also photos to online storage. Not only are your photos protected from disasters, but data that has been accidentally deleted can also be restored if necessary.
But the cloud has disadvantages. Working with large files does not work particularly well in conjunction with the cloud. Uploading and downloading simply takes far too long. And the cloud also quickly becomes expensive if you need a lot of storage space.
Backup on NAS
Even in times of streaming & cloud services, network hard drives remain attractive for many users. This makes sense: sensitive data such as videos, holiday pictures or documents do not have to be uploaded to the internet, but remain within one’s own four walls and are available to the entire family at the same time.
NAS (Network Attached Storage) systems offer a perfect complement to storage on the PC. These hard drives in the network are ideal for storing large amounts of data. The highlight: even inexpensive NAS drives rely on the combination of at least two hard disks in a so-called RAID 0 array. Even better would be a RAID-1 array, as this provides data redundancy. In such a system, all stored data is mirrored one-to-one on both hard disks. If one of the hard disks fails sooner or later due to a hardware fault, you can replace it without losing any data. The NAS operating system takes care of the recovery. It also warns you early enough if one of the installed disks causes problems.
The cloud is an important component of a good backup network. But for the home or small business, a NAS system offers many advantages. It is fast, access to your data is easy, and you can quickly set up access for different family members. And if you wish, it can be your own private cloud – Google and Co. stay outside, and you don’t have to worry about data protection.
Whatever you choose, NAS systems are not for novices in computer technology. In our view, you really need to be able to operate a Windows computer or MAC very well. A NAS is not for people who only use technology and don’t want to get involved with a NAS.
We don’t recommend the NAS to someone who only shoots JPG and doesn’t deal with image processing, or who doesn’t know anything about computers. Rather, the target group is probably a technology-savvy group of photo amateurs, photographers, videographers, IT experts, agencies, … who want to store large amounts of data.
Backup: twice is better
As with all backup methods, redundancy is key when backing up photos. Do not rely on a single location for your photo archives, but back them up at least twice. Even if you “only” make local copies, you should at least use several external hard drives in rotation. An external hard drive only lasts 2-10 years, depending on daily operating time, on average 5 years.
But it is even better to combine the methods shown. For example, if you use a cloud storage for photo archiving, you should still regularly export the images and back them up on a hard drive. This way you are prepared in case of emergency, if a backup is no longer available for whatever reason.
Tip: It doesn’t always have to be cloud storage. Digital optical data storage media are also suitable for long-term data storage, and thus especially for archiving photos and other data. M-discs are particularly suitable as write-once data carriers. They promise a service life of about 1,000 years according to the manufacturer.