Your Complete Guide to Photo Backups
By Brian Auer • February 9th, 2009
photo credit: daryl_mitchell
Backing up photos is one of the most critical (ongoing) tasks for photographers, both amateur and professional. The “computer age” has been a blessing, allowing us to store and share huge amounts of digital photos. But that blessing has created the need to protect those delicate digital files, and many people have learned the consequences of not doing so.
Below, you will find a link to a PDF eBook that covers the topic of photo backups. The eBook was created from 12 articles written here on Epic Edits as part of our “Photo Backup” series (and the links to all 12 articles are also below). We covered many sides of the topic, including hardware, software, strategy, and more.
I should also mention that my friend, Andrew Morris (also on Flickr), helped me out with proofreading and editing the eBook. Thanks Andrew!!!
DOWNLOAD PHOTO BACKUP EBOOK
[PDF - 42pg - 2.5MB]
Please feel free to download and redistribute the eBook under the terms listed within.
ARTICLES
READER POLLS
How Many Photo Backups Do You Have?
How Big is Your Photo Collection?
Have You Ever Needed to Use Your Photo Backup?
Photo Backup on DVD: Love or Hate?
Brian Auer is a photography enthusiast from North Idaho. He's also the guy behind the Epic Edits Weblog. As a hobbyist photographer since 2003, his passion has been to constantly improve his photography skill set, to share his own knowledge with others, and to become an integral part of the photographic community.
Visit the author's homepage | View all Epic Edits posts by Brian Auer
Brian,
I was waiting for this to come out in one piece. It is a great series and I am sure reading it as a whole piece will make even more sense out of all this backup.
I’d love to see a follow up with selected readers comments, there were a few really great ones.
I had considered including selected reader comments in the eBook, but once I saw that the content alone made up 40 pages I figured it was best to leave them out. I’ll have to think of something to highlight the good ones.
There is some great information here. It is really important for photographers to back up their images in multiple places. When a client pays you to be their photographer, knowing that their images are safe is crucial. This information should be a must read for all aspiring photographers. Thank you for putting this information together.
Thank you for having this all in one piece. I have 3 external drives and now I think I am in the market for new computer. I need to save to dvd’s and that is my down fall at the moment as more and more folks are telling me that the eternal drives do not last very long. I have enjoyed the read and thanks for eh push to do a better job.
Brian,
This is a great idea. All that hard work collated into one easy to find ebook.
nice post, this gives everyone a huge amount of options to backup their precious photos. thanks, there are even a few i didn’t think of that could be efficient and cheap.
Good guidance. My PC got almost 10GB of photos downloaded from my digital camera. I’m seriously looking for some good storage kit and this is excellent options I have.
Great tips, can never be too safe.
This is a great resource for amateur and professional photographers. With the ultimate reliance on computer technology for our art and business, there comes greater risk of crash and complete loss. Many different methods of data backup is essential, so thanks for the huge amount of content.
There another simple way that you could email it to Gmail (7.8GB) to store your photo.
In the ebook section on software, you mentioned that some external hard drives come with backup software, but it may not be the best.
I found that to be true. I purchased a "My Book" external hard drive which came with software. I thought I was all set, until I tried it out and found it was not for me.
I actually tried three additional backup programs until I found one that was user friendly, easy to use, and worked well with the features that were necessary.
Backup Computer Files
I just stumbled across this guide. Very useful and informative! Photographers – especially pro photographers need to take this stuff seriously! I read somewhere that 100% – ALL hard drives – eventually fail so it’s critical to have a viable backup strategy. Thanks so much for putting this together!
Can never have to many backups.
Backing up is the most important step after the actual shooting. Thanks for the tips.