This is another one of those very quick tips that’s going to take me a long time to say.

The tip itself is very simple: Back up your data! Your photos don’t really exist until they exist in at least two places. Hard Drives fail. Optical Discs rot. Floppy Discs are tiny. So what do you do? You make sure that you have multiple copies of every single one of your important files. And you really should have one backup copy of all your important data that is quickly and easily accessible, and another copy that is stored at an off-site location that can’t be affected by the same flood, fire, or theft that could get the other two copies.

Hard Drivesare cheap. If you just consider your backup drives as part of your photographic kit (just like the camera, lenses, and these days the computer too) then you will be in a much better place mentally when it comes to buying them. You need all of these things in order to successfully create, manipulate, and preserve your images. It’s just that simple.

How to Backup

This is the long part. I’m not going to tell you how to backup your photos and other important documents. That’s up to you. But I will tell you what I do, and why I do it. Unfortunately, because my system is so robust it is also quite complicated. And that takes a long time to describe…

I recognize that most people won’t even come close to doing what I do. But I hope you will do some of it, because (say it with me) “All Hard Drives Fail“. Even if you only do some of this it will be much more likely that your data is safe.

• First of all I keep the original copies of all of my important documents, data, and recent photos on my laptop. I would prefer to keep absolutely everything on my laptop, but laptop hard drives simply aren’t available that are big enough to do so; therefore, I can only keep my recent work on my laptop and older stuff must be stored elsewhere.
• My laptop and my desktop are connected via a network and I do automatic backups of all my important documents so that they are readily available on either machine. The frequency of these backups varies depending on the type of data.

  The automatic backup is done using AJC Directory Synchronizer. This is a very powerful program that allows you to choose exactly what you want to backup and where you want it to go. It is easily scheduled via the Windows task manager so you can create multiple jobs with appropriate frequencies for each job. I have used many similar pieces of software over the years and I’m much happier with this one than I was with any of the others…

• I have 2 D-Link DNS-323 Network Attached Storage (NAS) cases that each contain 2 Hard Drives. One of the drives in each NAS contains my entire photography library (including the recent work from my laptop), which I can access directly over the network from either computer using Adobe Lightroom or Windows Explorer. The other drive in each NAS contains all of my other data and documents. I do an automatic backup every week to copy everything from the primary NAS to the secondary NAS. This backup syncs any additions, deletions, or changes to any files on the primary. I do this weekly because that provides a nice buffer in case I make a mistake on either of the computers and it gets propagated to the primary NAS before I catch it. I then have a few days to recover any necessary files from the secondary NAS.
• This next part may sound crazy to some of you, but it is actually the most important part of my backup strategy… I use a portable USB drive that contains another copy of absolutely everything, and I store this drive off-site. This protects me in case of fire, flood, or any other major disaster that would impact my house, and which could potentially destroy all of the other backup copies at the same time. I only update this drive every few weeks, so there is always some exposure to losing my most recent files, but I have years worth of work stored on this drive that will always be safe.

  This drive can be stored at your workplace, at a friends house, in a safety deposit box, or even in your vehicle (as long as you don’t park it in the garage attached to your house!). The important part is that it must be an off-site backup, and therefore you have to get it out of your house. With this drive stored somewhere else, my absolute worst case is that I lose a few weeks worth of data.

  Note that I even go to the extreme of taking my secondary NAS off-site prior to bringing in my external drive!
  

Note that if you have a relatively small amount of data, a system like this could easily be created by using 2 inexpensive USB Hard Drives. These are readily available for under $100 if you need 1TB or less. You could use one drive as your primary backup and the other as the off-site backup. In fact this is exactly what I did for a long time before my storage needs outpaced the USB drives that I had. One benefit of using the NAS cases is that they are directly connected to my gigabit ethernet network, and I really like the performance and speed that the NAS is capable of.

The beauty of this system is that it can be easily upgraded by replacing the portable hard drives as your storage needs get bigger. These drives get bigger, faster, and cheaper all the time. Depending on how much storage space you need, you may never have to do this. Or you might need to start off with a multi-bay NAS right off the bat if you already have lots of data and you don’t have a good backup system.

So even if you only get one backup drive, and even if you only backup your data every once in awhile, I hope you are doing something. Do whatever works for you! Feel free to drop me a line if you need some help setting up your backup system!

If you’ve purchased a new computer in the past few months it likely came with Windows Vista installed AND an offer for a free upgrade to Windows 7 when the new operating system is released. It’s almost a certainty that if you purchased a new system sometime after June 26, 2009 then you qualify for an upgrade. Some refurbished systems will also be included. You will have to check with the manufacturer of your computer, or maybe with the retail store that you purchased it from, for the terms of the deal and for the specific details on how to get the upgrade package.

Windows 7 officially comes out today, so don’t forget to take advantage of the upgrade opportunity. By all accounts Windows 7 is a much improved operating system over Windows Vista so this is one upgrade that you don’t want to miss.

Just to make your life a little bit easier, I’ve compiled a list of websites that should help you to get your upgrade package faster and easier. You will need to have your Proof of Purchase dosucments as well as the make, model, and serial number of your computer ready before you apply for your upgrade. This list is by no means exhaustive, but it does include all of the major PC, Laptop, Notebook, and Netbook vendors, and even a few of the smaller ones as well:

• Acer – http://www.acer.com/windows7upgrade/
• ASUS – http://event.asus.com/2009/windows7/
• Averatec – http://www.trigem.com/us/event_win7.asp
• Compaq – http://www.hp.com/go/windows7upgrade/
• CyberPower PC – http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/LandingPages/win7/
• Dell – http://win7.dell.com/
• eMachines – http://www.emachines.com/windows7upgrade/
• Fujitsu – http://www.shopfujitsu.com/Windows7Upgrade/
• Gateway – http://www.gateway.com/windows7upgrade/
• HP / Hewlett Packard – http://www.hp.com/go/windows7upgrade/
• iBUYPOWER – http://www.ibuypower.com/Info/Windows7Upgrade.aspx
• Lenovo / Thinkpad – http://www.lenovo.com/us/en/windows7/
• LG Electronics – http://lg_upg.gmd.co.kr/
• MSI / Microstar – http://www.win7msi.com/
• Samsung – http://support-us.samsung.com/windows7/
• Sony – http://www.sony.com/ca/windows7/
• Toshiba – http://www.toshibawindows7upgrade.com/
• Trigem – http://www.trigem.com/us/event_win7.asp
• Velocity Micro – http://www.velocitymicro.com/windowsupgrade/

Note that in most cases these offers are totally free, but in some cases there may be an administrative or a shipping & handling charge.

I find it very odd that I’m ranting about a Microsoft Windows XP issue. I rarely use XP anymore and when I do it generally just works. You don’t want to get me going about Vista (especially when it comes to “User Account Control”; I have a long post coming about that but I can’t finish it because I get too irritated every time I sit down to write it!), but I’m usually pretty happy with XP…

I have one XP machine remaining in my house. It’s a desktop machine that sits in the back corner of my basement and mostly acts as my file server. It wouldn’t be my first choice of machine for that purpose, but I’ve had it for years and it still works, so I leave it there. I’ve been using it as my iTunes server for a long time and so it was an obvious choice to use as the primary connection to my new Media Player as well (see my recent review of the Popcorn Hour PCH-A110).

The Popcorn Hour is a network connected device with an internal hard drive that mounts as a network share. It was a piece of cake to get it connected to my home network, and I was transferring files onto it within a few minutes of opening the box. It was just that easy.

Until the XP machine needed a reboot after a Windows update. That’s when XP started to annoy me. It turns out that Windows XP Home is designed not to save passwords for mapped network drives. You can connect to a drive by giving it the password when you map it, but it doesn’t keep the password after a reboot…  Every other version of XP, NT, or Vista has this capability, but XP home does not.

I had to come up with a workaround to get the machine to “remember” the password.

1. create a new file in the startup folder with a .cmd extension. I called mine connect.pch.
2. open the file in a text editor (notepad is fine)
3. add the following line of code to the file:

NET USE U: \ComputerNameShareName password user:UserName

Where U: is the desired drive letter

This file is a Windows Command File which will execute every time windows boots up.  Essentially I have created a program that will remap my drive every time the computer reboots.  It’s kludgy and it’s ugly, but it’s simple and it works.

It should be easier than this.

If you’ve ever had a hard drive failure you’ll know exactly why I’m writing about this topic. If you haven’t, know that you will, and I hope for your sake that you will be prepared for it. Hard drives die. It’s a simple truth, and not a matter of if, only when.

Backing up your stuff is a very personal thing. I probably go way overboard on this, but I’ve made a conscious decision that I don’t want to lose any of my important files, ever. Mostly that means my original images and other photography data, but it also includes all of my other important documents such as personal letters and financial and tax data. I even include the settings for some of my favorite and most important software iin this category. I have all kinds of presets and defaults for Lightroom in particular that would be just plain painful to figure out how to reset if the main drive on my computer were to fail, so I make sure to back that up too.

Backing up your stuff doesn’t need to be complicated or expensive. You don’t need to run out and buy a NAS box (network attached storage) to connect to your home network, and you definitely don’t need to shell out the cash for a Drobo (but that would be awesome!) or a hardware Raid system.

Backing up can be as simple as buying a second drive and manually copying your important stuff over every couple of weeks. This could be a second internal drive in your desktop machine, but these days it’s far easier to pick up an inexpensive external drive that you can connect via USB or Firewire.

Using a simple backup strategy like this will protect you from a single drive failure. Keep in mind that this will only protect the data that you have up to date on the backup drive, so if it’s been a couple of weeks since you did your most recent copy, you may still lose a lot of files. For me that would likely be hundreds (and sometimes thousands) of new photos. It’s also important to be aware that this will only be protection against a drive failure. It won’t protect you from a natural disaster such as a fire or a flood unless you store the backup drive somewhere other than in your house. It’s easy enough to keep it in your shed, your car, or over at a friend or relatives house, but doing so makes it that much more likely that your most recent backup will be from weeks ago instead of just days…

A much better strategy would be to buy two external drives. Keep one of them connected to your computer, and store the second one at an off-site location. Use software that will automatically copy your important files to the connected drive at regular frequencies, and swap out the two drives every couple of weeks.

Although my personal backup strategy is much more complicated than this (in order to ensure absolute redundancy), the basis for it is essentially this second alternative. I like to do a backup every night using a an automatic backup program called “AJC Directory Synchronizer“.

There are many other programs out there that would also do the trick, but this one works and it’s not very expensive. Windows users should also check out “Cobian Backup” (it’s free!). I’ve never used it but it gets great reviews.

Of course Mac users should check out “Time Machine” and “Super Dooper“. The combination of these two systems working together will make your life so much easier than anything available for Windows…