My Backup Plan

There should be a term used to describe photographers’ backup paranoia. (I tried to find one via Google, but no luck. I did, however, find this: Toddler with rare lumpy food phobia eats 14 yogurts a day.

But I digress. Backup paranoia is due, mainly, to the truism that all hard drives inevitably fail. So, in order to avoid data loss caused by a failed hard drive, photographers are constantly seeking ways to "back up" their data. And in so doing, some are going extreme. We see folks out for a shoot taking along laptops and multiple external hard drives along with a labyrinthine tangle of computer cables.

For someone who has his roots in the film era, this is all very interesting. Of course, with film, there never was any backup. If light accidentally hit the emulsion, then it was over. (This happened to me.) If X-rays fogged your images, then that was it. (Never happened to me, but I always had to hassle with airport security.) If your darkroom caught on fire then no more negatives (never happened to me, but happened to Ansel Adams: "On top of a rather jittery state of mind we had the misfortune to suffer a fire which consumed half of our new darkroom and burned up a lot of my good negatives. Insurance covers material loss - but the negatives!!" Quote found here.) Well, you get the picture: there was always the chance, however slight, that your images would never make it to the printing stage.

The question remains,how far should one go in order to banish uncertainty? One thing that’s interesting to me is that there seems to be little actual data on the hard drive failure rate. So when deciding whether to succumb to paranoia or to resist it, there’s little evidence upon which to base a rational decision. I know, I know: "all hard drives eventually fail." Yes, but what are the percentages? I’ve seen hard drive failures before, at work. But not one at home.

Anyway, my current backup plan involves copying as many files as I deem worth saving to two external hard drives on a quarterly basis. (Not often enough, to be sure.)

Travelling, I’ve got a Hyperdrive, a small iPod-like device, and several CompactFlash cards (see above.) As the cards are utilized, they’re downloaded onto the Hyperdrive. Once all cards have been filled up, then I start reformatting them. This would in no way satisfy a true backup devotee, but I think it works for me.

Photo: Digital Backup Equipment—Marin County, 2008