Backing Up for a Disaster

The severe weather warning sirens in my town have been going off more and more lately due to tornadoes. But this isn't what prompted me to write about the importance of backing up your computer.

One of the students I taught in Hawaii packed her computer and backup drive in the same bag. This, of course, is the bag the airline lost when she flew home. She lost everything she had worked on at school.

My cousin works for a large furniture store. They dutifully backed up all their computers; however, they kept the backups in the same store with the computers. One night the store burned to the ground and they lost all their computers and their backups.

I am not even going to go into my losses through the years.

Tornadoes, computer crashes, lost luggage, burglars, floods -- there are a lot of things that can make our important files and photos vanish. So I'd like to talk a bit about planning a system for backing up our computer files.

My Backup System

First, I prefer a permanent backup of important files to CD/DVDs. It is a more stable solution than a hard drive. Hard drives fail more often than CD/DVDs.

I make two copies of these backup CD/DVDs and put them in different locations. I keep one backup with me where I can get to it in a hurry if my computer fails, but I put other copy in a safety deposit box or at a friend’s house.

Second, I have an external hard drive and make regular backups to it. Most external drives come with software designed to help you make backups.

I use this external hard drive to mirror -- completely duplicate -- my computer's hard drive. When my computer dies, I only need to do a restore and everything will be put on the new hard drive or new computer.

Third, I bought yet another backup hard drive. I labeled one A and the other B. I alternate backups between the two. I make sure these A and B drives are rotated, not just with the computer, but the location where I keep them (bank vault, neighbor, etc.)

Another option for backing up important files, like photographs, is to use an online backup. To take advantage of this solution, a high-speed connection is needed. Your first backup takes the longest, but once this is done only the changes to your hard drive from the last backup are needed each time. I program my computer to do this at night after I've gone to bed. It takes longer than backing up to a hard drive connected to a computer, but it is off-site, and it is one more place to keep your data. One such provider is Carbonite, which is only $49.95 a year for unlimited storage.

I stay away from tape backup systems. The computer department where I used to work decided to use a tape system to backup their image library. The system corrupted the files and, after five years of inputting data, everything was lost. After restoring all that had been lost and adding four more years of images, it happened again. As far as I know they never recovered the images from those nine years.

You Need More Than One Safe Place

The estate of President John F. Kennedy's personal photographer, Jacques Lowe, archived all their images in a safe deposit box housed in the vaults at 5 World Trade Center next to the Twin Towers.

I make sure my images and other important files are stored in more than one location.

Now, when I hear a weather alert, I've got one less thing to worry about.

Share this post: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

Stanley works to make your job easier

Stanley usually provides a DVD-R immediately following your event. The ID information is printed directly on the inkjet-writable DVD-R, which is more archival than a paper label. The data includes the name and date of your event plus Stanley’s contact information making it easy to locate images later.

A duplicate DVD-R is kept on file by Stanley as an off-premises backup for you. Everyone should make their own backup as well.

Each image is high resolution JPEG. Usage rights of the images are negotiated prior to the assignment.

For most editorial assignments, photo identification is embedded with the image. This is helpful when writing cut-lines for your newsletter or matching the photo with the person in a story.

One of Stanley's clients has 500 plus new portraits made every year. Many of the faces are new. The office staff uses the imbedded identification to match the portraits to bios. This helps those who have not met the new people to match the person with the name.

Below is an example of what this looks like for you when you are using Photoshop to view the images. Go to the menu option Menu>File Info to pull down the box.

If you have many photographs made each year and have ever had trouble locating a particular photo the above example should interest you. This ID information is recognizable by most image archiving software such as Extensis or MediaDex . The file information box of Photoshop is known as IPTC for short.

Here is example of the same example of the photo in PhotoShop now in MediaDex.

As you can see, the information is the same. Since Stanley has done this work for you, after setting up the software like MediaDex to recognize IPTC then you only need to drag the folder from the DVD-R, which Stanley provided to you into the database software and let it ingest the images. You do not need to add any more information. The name of the event is searchable and you can find people because you can search the caption for names.

You can also use services on-line like PhotoCore. This provides a live, searchable database for you to use. Your photographers can upload from anywhere in the world and you can determine access by creating accounts for photographers, designers and clients. Look at some of Stanley's examples here.

With this service provided by Stanley, you can find a photo within seconds. If you choose to save all the images on a server then the artist only needs to click to place the photo into their design. It only takes a second.

You can use the information printed on the DVD-R to locate a project, place the DVD-R the computer and just drag the photo from the Database straight into your document.

Today we must be good stewards of our budget and resources. Since Stanley has completed most of the data entry for you he has saved you hours of work that translates into savings for you.

There is more than meets-the-eye in Stanley’s photos. Not only has he provided you with the images you need, he has increased their value to you because of the wealth of information he has provided about those images.

The ease of use, the ability to locate quickly a single photo in you collection and the in-depth information about that photo all located together is what makes a photo shoot by Stanley more valuable to you.

Yes, Stanley truly does work to make your job easier.

New Venture

I am helping a good friend of mine, Chris Gooley, market his software Photocore. It is an online database for people to store their images and search their images. They can give access to clients and friends through passwords and keep records of who visits their website and what they see and download.

We are in the beta versions of the software now and you can see it by going to my website www.StanleyLeary.com and clicking on . We hope to have this were you can license your images 24/7 365 days a year while you do your own thing. People can log on agree to a license and pay you for using your images.

Another function will be to order prints online. These two functions will help photographers turn their images which normally sit on their computer or in a drawer into profits.

I am going to be presenting this software to companies and individuals. If you would like a personal demonstration give me a call. Believe me PhotoCore is the most efficient way for photographers and agencies to catalogue and search their images from any where in the world.