The fatherly/brotherly advice-nag thread... Back your work up!!!

Yes, its time for the semi-annual nag from your photographer kook friend who nearly lost his work due to hard drive failure.

For three days I've been prepared to leave for my annual Colorado gold rush but a series of mishaps has kept me at home, but the last of which became a running nightmare that we all dread. The loss of our lifetime of work. Needless to say, my trip has been postponed until I get my work recovered fully.

As for the damage... it was created by my Seagate 1.5 Terrabyte drive which died after only six months of use, containing nearly 100,000 shots over a 7 year period. Recovery looks grim unless Seagate's warranty can actually recover my work miraculously. (A sidenote, Seagate has had a notorious track record with their 1.5 Terrabyte drives, buyer beware!)

Anyway, I'm fortunate that I keep my work backed up on multiple drives both internal and external as well as much of my work stored online. I still did lose about three months of work but it could have and should have been much much worse had it not been for preventative matinence. So dont let my near disaster become yours! Back up your work.

This has been an annual public service announcement

Thanks for the timely reminder Bryan. I have always used Western Digital drives and have never had a problem (so far). But.. the advice is good. Good luck with the recovery.

Sorry to hear about your problems with the drive Bryan, hope it works out. This will be on my purchase list very soon!

http://www.drobo.com/products/drobo.php

super thread, also consider DVD media - theyre cheap enough now. I have 2 huge Caselogic CD folders with every image archived in it - one at home and another offsite - tedious work but worth it. Just keep a DVDROM around -- FYI when BDROM (bluray) becomes viable they can hold 50gb in dual layer mode (wow).

Remember the 3-2-1 rule, three copies, two different types of media, 1 copy off site.

There was also a good blog post on the Photoshelter website not too long ago about workflow and backups. Also if you really want to get into some workflow and digital asset management check out The DAM Book: 2nd edition, which I know at DPL version 1 is available to check-out.

I've been a follower of the 3-1 (3 sets of backup, one off site) rule for a very long time. I back up all my data, photos, and catalogs every week, more often if I've made significant changes. Each month, I take my newest back-up to my safety deposit box at the bank so, if I lose my house, I don't lose my files. During the month, I alternate backups, using the older removable drive so I always have a new one and a one-back alternate.

I used DVD's for some time but my files have gotten too large and time consuming so I switched to Western Digital removable drives about six months ago.

This scheme saved my hash about 3 years ago. Without warning, my computer died and there was no way I could find to recover anything from the hard drive. Once I bought my new computer and reloaded sotware, I had restored all my files and photos in less than 2 hours.

Good stuff. Have two. Need three. thanks.

Bill Brennan

Very good info. My seagate just failed a week ago and it does not like there will be a rescue. Most info is on another drive as well but man....

I subscribe to the 3 and 2 plan with two external drives plus DVD's...but this reminded me that although the hard drives had been updated and sync'd, I hadn't done any DVD's in a while. Took care of that yesterday. Thanks for the reminder.

There are several commercial and open source data recovery products out there. About 99% of the time you think your work is lost, it's not. As long as the disk head is still spinning more than likely you can recover a good majority of the content. Some cases you might not recover much, but it's better than nothing.

Don't forget that a good UPS will also save all your devices from being fried at once by bad power. You could have 3 external backups but if they're all plugged into the same $10 surge protector your data won't be safe.