the last word

Here are my specific recommendations. Local storage. If you can, keep all your images on internal drives on your main workstation. If you have several networked workstations, use file synchronization software to keep all copies in synch (be careful of two way file synching; done wrong, it can turn a small error into a big… [Read More]

How to move your data around among disks. You could move images from your primary storage to your backup storage simply by dragging changed files over. I don’t recommend this; you want to use a method that keeps your backup data current automatically. You don’t want to have to remember which files you changed, and… [Read More]

If you implement my backup philosophy in your own home or studio, you’re going to need three kinds of non-volatile storage. The first kind is your main disk storage. It should be fast, and large enough for all your images. The second is your backup disk storage. It should be equally capacious, but needn’t be… [Read More]

The drawback to the online-storage-with-backup approach has traditionally been cost. But disk cost per byte has been plummeting at a greater-than-historical rate for the last fifteen years, and it’s now so low that, for most serious photographers, it’s not an impediment to online storage of all your images. Why are disk prices dropping so fast?… [Read More]

Okay, let’s get started. People occasionally ask me what techniques I recommend for archiving images. I tell them that I don’t recommend archiving images at all, but I strongly recommend backing them up. Let me explain the difference. When you create an archive of an image, you make a copy of that image that you… [Read More]