As you frantically sprint into Best Buy with your non-responsive computer, you spot a Geek Squad rep and nearly plow him over. After assessing the situation you’re left with a short and not so sweet answer: your files are gone. “How have you been backing up your files?” the geeky genius asks. You sheepishly mumble that you um, don’t. As the geek squad representatives exchange eye rolls, you tearfully wonder how on earth you’re going to explain this to your clients anxiously waiting to receive their images. Oops…
If you’ve ever had computer issues, you most likely couldn’t help but cringe while reading that paragraph.
A couple years ago my trusty Dell crashed, sending me into Best Buy like a lunatic. Luckily, I wasn’t running a business (or doing much photography) at that point, and the Geek Squad recovered most of my files (for a fee, of coarse!) so the damage wasn’t too bad. Recently when my Mac did something weird and Google lead me to believe it was showing “the screen of death” (seriously?! way to freak a person out!) I couldn’t make an appointment with the Genius Bar fast enough.
Sometimes files can’t be recovered and if that happened now, I would be absolutely positively screwed if I didn’t have a tight backup plan in place! I bet you can relate.
A recent Seagate survey (via Harris Interactive) found that 54% of adults surveyed personally have lost or know someone who has lost files. Yet 25% never back up their digital assets.
Not to brag or anything, but when it comes to backing up my client’s files, I am an overachiever. It may be a little overkill, but better safe than sorry, right?!
Here is my iron clad backup plan that ensures I will never have to have the dreaded “we’re gonna have to do a redo!” conversation with a client (or the “sorry I lost your wedding pictures, hope your guests are good Iphone-ographers!” one):
- Skip the bathroom: you have work to do! As soon as I get home, I head straight to the computer and download my images. It doesn’t matter if I have to pee in the worst way, or if I’m about to pass out because I haven’t had time to grab a snack all day. I don’t have time for casual conversations with my family. I am a lady on a mission: those files must be downloaded from my card to my computer, pronto!
- Your pictures look good, won’t ya back those shots up (insert extremely offensive, inappropriate Juvenile song from 1999 here)! After all my images have been downloaded and moved into folders (I use the client’s last name and the date) I bring out the big guns, my external hard drives. I use three drives, one stays in my desk, one in a fireproof safe, and another stays at my Grandma’s house (I bring my computer there once a week to update that drive).
- The one and done rule, because who wants to edit a photo twice?! Word, Pages and Google Drive all automatically save your changes as you type, for good reason! If you’ve ever had your computer die or crash on you while in the middle of writing a document, this little tool probably made you want to kiss whoever invented it. Why wouldn’t you save your edited images in the same way? While I’m editing, I periodically move my edited folder onto the external drive I keep in my desk. This way, if anything were to happen mid-edit, I won’t have to start from scratch. When I’m done editing the entire session, I copy the folder onto my drives and call it a day!
While ensuring that you always have updated copies of your images at your disposal is important, it isn’t the only reason backing up your files is a habit about as important as brushing your teeth.
This family came to Chicago from out of state and their #1 goal was to get a black and white image of them on the ‘L’ tracks (their son loves the ‘L’!). I’m pretty sure they would have made a special trip back to tear me a new one if I had to let them know all their images from their day trip to Chicago were gone!
I am kind of (kind of, obsessively, that is) a neat freak, and clutter is something I avoid like the plague. I do not have collections, I throw things away that I actually need because I can’t stand “things” being around and if my kitchen counters have more than a cookbook stand and one decorative candle on them I have a mild coronary.
My computer is about as bare bones as it gets. I can’t stand having anything on it; I feel cluttered and overwhelmed if I have more than two folders on my desktop. Those folders contain the items I use on a daily basis, nothing more. Everything else is on my external hard drives. The only sessions I have are the ones that I’m editing and once they’ve been completed- poof!- they’re history!
This overly obsessive need for a minimalist existence (except when it comes to shoes, bags and sunglasses) has a perk.
My computer is never bogged down, Photoshop always works at the speed of light and I never have to stare at that annoying “I’m thinking” color wheel that I’ve heard so many people complain about.
Keeping your computer clean is an easy way to keep it in tip top shape!
Before you head to Office Max to get a few external drives, I have one final act of compulsive decluttering to share!
While having external drives is wonderful, they’re not the cheapest things in the world, and having all those RAW files takes up precious real estate.
To keep my drives as clean as possible, I let clients know that they have 30 days to request changes to their images. Once that 30 day mark hits, I delete all the RAW photos and only keep the folder with the edits that I provided them with. For the most part, you can still make changes on those images if you really need to, but this encourages clients to make requests in that time frame, and personally that makes my life easier!
Each year I buy a new set of three external drives, and move last years into yet another fire-proof safe.
Eventually, your computer will fail. Please, I beg of you, backup your files! At the very least, have one external drive that you keep in a safe place.
Make sure you’re never that person, standing in tears at Best Buy, wailing “there just HAS to be something you can do!” while the uncomfortable bystanders secretly tape your meltdown and upload it to Youtube. We’ve all seen scenes like this that we wished we caught on video. In fact, I have a crazy neighbor that this lady may have been channeling for her performance (seriously, dead ringer for the level of crazy, it is creepy)!
Now, go back up your files, and have a “cock-a-doodie” goood day!
