Why Photo Back-up Is Important (and how I learnt the scary way)

Image by immo-wegmann on Unsplash

Backing up is boring, right? It's hard to remember to do it, and what's the worst that could happen?

In my late 20s, I was fortunate enough to go travelling with my then-boyfriend, now-husband around South America. Armed with my trusty Sony Cybershot point-and-shoot, we visited Brazil, Argentina, and then Ecuador. I was merrily taking photos that I now consider some of my most precious, and just keeping them on my camera SD card. What was backing up and surely I didn't need to do it?

On arriving at an internet cafe (yes, that's how long ago it was) to write an update to my blog and add some photos to Facebook, I plugged my camera into the hard drive, went to the SD card folder in Windows Explorer and in amongst my photos was a file entitled 'Gossip Girl'. I don't watch Gossip Girl and why was this file on my camera SD card? Feeling the panic starting to rise up, I did a quick Google search and discovered that the Gossip Girl file was malware that had found its way onto my device through plugging in at one of the many internet spots we had visited. My heart beating fast, I realised these were the only copies of my photos and they were on a disk with malware. I paid over the odds for a 1GB flash drive, hastily copied my photos over, ran a virus scan on the stick (clear-phew!) and binned the SD card. I also find an online storage site (what we now refer to as the Cloud) to hold another back-up, so terrified was I of potentially losing these again.

This was 14 years ago and I've been following a similar method ever since, particularly when travelling which incidentally is very close to the 321 Back-Up Method followed by a lot of Photo Managers, and what I recommend to my clients as the best way for them to store their photo memories.

1. 3 copies of your data - You should always have 3 copies of your data. If something happens to one, your data is still safe somewhere else e.g. 1 external hard drive, 1 cloud storage & 1 set of printed albums

2. 2 different media types - To keep your data safe and secure, ensure it is backed up on at least two different media types.

3. 1 copy off-site - in case something happens to the location of one set of data, keeping an off-site copy adds an extra layer of security to your back-up. This might mean at a family member's house or a secure work location.

The 321 method is something you can easily set-up at home, or if you'd rather, Shutterbug Studio can do that for you, and let you get on with your life. For those of you who would like to give it a go, download the 321 Back-Up Plan below. For those who don't but still want a robust back-up plan for their treasured photos and videos, Get In Touch to see how we can help.

Confused by the Cloud? Take a look at my other Blogs to get the low down.