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Backing Up Photos. Help :)

Hey Everyone. I like equipment and technology; however, I can't use a computer if my life depended on it. Business is starting to rapidly grow and we are having more important and more numerous clients. I need some help and some ideas on best ways to back up original files. I probably have one of the worst workflow's of any photographer out there as far as efficiency goes. But it has come time for me to start organizing my workflow and making sure that all files are backed up in case something happens.

First let me explain my workflow:
-All files shot tethered to capture one with my laptop.
-After shooting is done, files used for shoot are chosen on laptop.
-Original files are exported (used to be EIP, but now with Capture One 7, IIQ files with settings) to desktop.
-Files are put onto a CF card (fastest way I have of moving files)
-Files then moved on to Mac Pro for import into Capture One 7 for RAW editing
-Once finished, files are exported as TIFF then moved into Aperture for storage and organization.


What I need:
-Some help organzing my workflow to be more efficient
-Some way along the process that will backup and store versions of all original IIQ files and possibly finished tiff files.

I have currently 2 hard drives on my mac pro, so I can use my non SSD drive for storing backups. However, maybe its best to have an external?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank You.
 

Shashin

Well-known member
You can setup a shared file between your Mac laptop and Desktop and transfer them over your LAN.

I would have your working machine hooked up to a TimeMachine. That give a backup of your working files and system.

I would then use an external RAID drive for storage with a spare drive that is stored in a different site and swapped every month of so. I use the LaCie Two Big Quadra for my storage as it is easy to hook up and to swap drives.
 

johnnygoesdigital

New member
Time machine is a good option, but it's best to store photos off site too. The simplest way is just buy a couple of external hard drives (Lacie), with a couple of terabytes dedicated to photographs. Just drag and drop on the external hard drive.
 

Jorgen Udvang

Subscriber Member
I agree with regards to hard drives stored in an off site location. I use Carbon Copy Cloner for my backups with daily automatic backups to hard drives connected to my computer. I use two Probox units with 4 bays each, one work unit and one backup unit. A third Probox unit is connected to an old Mac Mini at a different locations with weekly updates (or whenever I visit that place). The advantage with CCC compared to drag and drop is that is that it will catch any update to any photo on the disk, but only copy what is changed or new.

In reality, I have a fourth copy of the data on the portable disks that I use to copy between on and off site locations.
 
I strongly suggest you buy, read & re-read Peter Krough's book, The DAM Book (DAM = Digital Asset Management). Several years back I built a workflow system based on Peter's book, and his expert consulting, and it works perfectly. I now welcome stock photo requests because I can quickly search my database of over 60,000 image files and prepare client specific web galleries. Locating client files literally takes seconds. Everything is backed up hourly to two hard drives and periodically to DVDs. Peter's book reviews everything from hardware to software to workflow. Here is the URL: The DAM Book: Digital Asset Management for Photographers
 
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