Lesson 1 - How to Back Up Photograph's

Just finished working on my computer this morning. About to turn it off and get some housework done, do my Shred video, then hang with my kids this afternoon. I have all sorts of plans...plant a shoot from my beautiful new purple wandering jew plant into another planter...this is a big deal for this inept gardener, maybe make some peach preserves with Sophie. The peaches at the store were so good and a pretty good price so I thought she might enjoy learning how to can preserves today.
My goal is to work 6 hours a day on my computer while my kids are home, hope I can keep it to that.
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How do you back up your images from your camera?

I have so many people ask me this question. How do I keep my pictures safe? When I began to shoot digitally it seemed like a huge step just for me to get my images from my camera to my computer, making a folder was another big step. Sounds silly now looking back to that several years ago, but for me there was a huge learning curve with digital photography. I didn't switch my business to digital as early as I had wanted to because I knew it was going to be SO hard to learn how to work the camera, computer, photoshop...I was right too. It was hard, but I knew it was the best thing for my business. A lesson I learned very early in my digital experience was to back everything up. I lost hundreds of family pics because my computer failed. For years I was diligent in backing up my professional work but a little laxed in family pics. Now I have it all down to a system, I treat my family pics just like my work pics and they are all safe.

I will be writing a series of posts on backing up your images and some other helpful tips, so stay posted this summer.

It is not a matter of if your computer will fail, it is a matter of when. Could be a virus, could be an internal problem, could be that it is old and is going to give out at some point. But if you back up your images you will not be faced with the sickening feeling of years of documentation of your families life disappearing into nowhere.

Today I will share the first thing I do when I download images onto my computer. I put them on a hard drive. What is a hard drive? A piece of equipment that plugs into a usb or firewire port that is easily used to drop files from your computer into. It is extra storage space. You can plug it in or unplug it easily.
I use the Seagate Hard Drives they have a good reputation, but there are other great brands out there too. They sit on the back of my desk, right now I have 5 of them that I can see. I have filled 4 and am working on a 5th. They come in all different sizes. I normally buy what is on sale...the last one I bought was around 400 gigs of space. Because of my business I will fill that up in less than a year.

When I first buy the Hard Drive because I am a Mac User and most hard drives are configured for PC's I have to reformat using relatively easy instructions from the box. That takes about 5 minutes and I am ready to start moving data and pics over.

Cost ranges based on hard drive space, but they are normally found in the range of $79 - $250. I buy mine at Best Buy because it is convenient. But you can order them on line also. I am going to be checking out a mac hard drive that I saw a write up about that you can buy from the Apple Store the next time I need to buy. A great website I check is buy.com.

Lesson One done. Hard Drives...easy, inexpensive, convenient. But what if your hard drives fails? That's for the next post.

Comments

Lolosblog said…
Whoo Hoo!!! So glad you are doing this! I have wondered about this for a long time. I take so many pictures of family (OK, of MM) and have already lost some and I think DVD s are so inconvenient! I can't wait to read more!!!

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