3-2-1 Backup Strategy Continued

In part one of this series on the 3-2-1 strategy of backing up photographs, I went into detail about RAID arrays and their importance for any professional who takes their photographs seriously.

Your photos are your business assets. So, it’s time that you start treating them as such.

In this next installment, we are going to dive into the “1” of the 3-2-1 backup strategy.

3 is the number of copies you should keep of each photograph. 2 is the number of copies you should keep on site and accessible at home or your office. And 1 is the number of copies you should keep off site.

In the old days, keeping a copy of your photos offsite usually meant a stack of hard drives in a safety deposit box someplace. The idea behind this was to make sure you were safeguarded against any sort of catastrophic scenario such as your house burning down or being burglarized. If you have all your photography eggs in one basket, and sh** hits the fan, then you stand to lose everything.

But that was then, and this is now.

Now we have better access to better technology. And despite what we all learned from the Terminator franchise, in this instance, we should definitely trust the machines.

In today’s world, offsite backups are best handled through cloud storage.

There are many different companies out there where you can store images online these days. Some folks like to use Amazon. Others, Dropbox. Or in even iCloud.

But these are not serious solutions to the problem.

Instead, it’s best for us to look at mass storage companies that, in case of a catastrophe, can quickly, and easily, ship you a hard drive or SSD of all your images immediately.

While the backups that we keep at home on our RAID drives function to not only create redundancy (read: multiple copies of our files), they also need to function in such a way so we can access any particular file we want to right then and there. For that reason, these function just like a single attached drive that you can access through Adobe Lightroom or Bridge or whatever your post processing poison happens to be.

Online backup, or offsite backup, isn’t about being able to access single files. This is about backing up huge numbers of photographs. Or more to the point, we use these services to back up entire drives.

This way, if a MAJOR problem occurs, a simple phone call or email will have the company shipping you a drive with copies of all the photographs that were associated with that particular drive you lost.

So, let’s say that a tree falls on my office during a thunderstorm and smashes through the wall and destroys my RAID with some 700k photographs on it. I can pick up the phone, or send an email out, and I will receive all 700K photographs on a series of hard drives or SSDs in the mail within a day or two. Then, all I have to do is move those onto my new RAID array.

Brilliant!

Of all the many companies out there to choose from, the best, in my opinion, is Backblaze.

When I am home, I have Backblaze set up to run constantly in the background.

The way a service like Backblaze works is by taking inventory of the drive or drives you have it set to backup. Every time you connect to Backblaze, which for me happens automatically when I attach to my RAID system and am online, the software will scan your drive for any and all changes or additions. When those are found, Backblaze goes to work uploading the new files to your cloud based backup on their system.

I am currently in Florida at the moment photographing birds along the Gulf Coast. When I return to my office in a couple weeks and move over all the photos from travel drives to my RAID, Backblaze will immediately begin uploading copies of those photos for me.

Big trips can often equate to many thousands of photographs that need to be added to the system. So, I simply leave my laptop connected for a day or two in order to let Backblaze get everything uploaded.

But I don’t have to do this if I don’t want to.

Every time you open your computer and are connected to the internet, Backblaze will just quietly go to work uploading the photos from your drives. If you need to disconnect, or take your laptop elsewhere, no problem. The backup is paused, and the process picks up right where it left off when you reconnect.

Backblaze only works to back up the specific drives you tell it to backup. So, you don’t have to worry about all your information being stored online somewhere.

Dialing in your 3-2-1 strategy is game changing.

Work with a RAID system like DROBO and you will no longer worry about your images. You will no longer worry with piles of hard drives and the entangling office spaghetti associated with all of that. A RAID system simplifies your life. It cleans up your desk. It gives you peace of mind. And it makes your workflow as a professional wildlife photographer so much simpler.

Combining a RAID 5 (or RAID 1) with a service such as Backblaze takes it all to the next level and completes the strategy. Once your photographs, aka, your business assets, are safely backed up onto the RAID, Backblaze goes to work creating an additional backup of your work that is offsite but quickly accessed if ever needed.

The products that I have mentioned here are simply ones that I use, or know intimately, and can recommend. Don’t worry, I’m not sponsored by DROBO or Backblaze. You will not find an affiliate link to these services giving me a kickback for sending you there.

The 3-2-1 Strategy is pretty much universal amongst working wildlife photographers. This creates a bomb proof strategy to ensure that no matter what happens – save for the total collapse of civilization – your photography is safe.

For me, and many others, however, there is an additional step here.

And this is where our backup strategy bleeds over into ACTUAL sales. I realize how crazy that may sound. Backing up your images is just an insurance policy against losing your life’s work. However, there is more than meets the eye here.

I use an additional service as part of how I backup my work that translates to regular monthly sales from magazines for me. And this will be the topic of my next article, so stay tuned to the Business of Wildlife Photography. . .