022: How to Backup Your RAW Photos & Client Data

Episodes The Bearded Tog

September 20, 2017

How to Backup RAW Photos

Do you have a backup strategy to make sure you don’t lose the data on your computer when (not if) it crashes? Are all your digital files only on one device? If that device broke, would you lost all of your client’s images?

Computers and hard drives are not meant to last for a long time. In this Episode of The Bearded Tog Podcast, I talk about my backup strategy and how backup RAW photos and keep data safe. From my computer to my external hard drives to a cloud backup, this is a nerdy episode about everything I do to backup and what you should do too!

How I Backup RAW Photos and Data

Backing up your data means making a copy of your digital files on a second electronic device or in the cloud.
According to Schofield’s 2nd law of computing, data doesn’t exist unless it exists in two places. Ideally, you should have copies, in at least two different locations. This is the only way to ensure you are successfully backing up your RAW photos.
Use an external hard drive, (or two, or three, or twenty…) to make backup copies of your files and of your computer’s boot drive.
Next, use a service such as Dropbox or Backblaze to have a copy all that data onto online cloud based storage.
Continue to keep up with the changing trends to find out what to do next as technology evolves!

Nerdy Tech Term Glossary for Backup of RAW Photos and Data

Hard Drive: Every computer has a hard drive inside it. This is where data files that need to be stored live.
External Hard Drive. This Hard drive lives outside the computer, and can be connected through one of your computer’s ports. (USB, Firewire, Thunderbolt). This is where you can begin to backup your RAW photos.
RAM. Random Access Memory. This is how much multitasking your computer cna do. (Or, how many objects a juggler can juggle at one time.)
HDD. Hard Disc Drive. This is a box with several spinning discs stacked on top of each other. Files are written to this device.
SSD. Solid State Drive. Same idea as the HDD, but with no moving parts. Faster and safer for reading your data, and has a better chance of not failing if accidently dropped.
Raid. Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks. A type of hard drive that has two hard drives inside it can be used for mirroring, or having an automatic double backup of your storage. Can also be used to access a single set of data faster.
Cloud Storage. Online based data storage/backup where you upload your data to the hosting company.
Time Machine. Macintosh based program that makes a backup of your computer’s boot drive to an external hard drive.