Today is World Backup Day, being ‘the day to prevent data loss’. It therefore seems like the perfect time to ask that all important question; are your photos backed up?
For some of us, the answer will be ‘yes’, and that’s great! But for many, backing up your photos is probably something that you are planning to do, as you know it needs to be done, but you just haven’t had time to do it.
This is where World Backup Day is great, because it gets people thinking about backing up their photos and other important documents and hopefully taking some action!
When it comes to digital photos, you may have them stored on various devices around the house, and you might also have some of them stored in cloud services such as iCloud. Ideally, it is great to gather any devices where photos are stored, download images from cloud storage, and then copy all these images from devices and cloud storage to a central location, such as an external hard drive (EHD). Having your digital photos in one central location, and creating a ‘photo hub’ will ensure that all of your precious memories are backed up.
There is an industry standard to backing up photos, and it’s described as the 3-2-1 method; three copies of your photos on at least two different types of devices, one of which is stored offsite. Following are two examples to demonstrate this principle:
Example 1:
If you have your photo archive on an EHD as described above, make a copy onto a second EHD. A third copy of your photo archive can then be stored offsite, using cloud storage or a cloud backup service.
Example 2:
If your photos are all located on your PC or Mac, back them up or copy them to an EHD, and then back them up/copy to a second EHD. Make sure the second EHD is stored offsite at a family member or friend’s home.
Note that if you regularly print your photos and put them into an album, or create a photo book each year, this counts as one copy of your photos. It is also worth noting that EHDs do not last forever. Therefore, it is beneficial to ‘migrate’ your memories to a new EHD every 4-5 years.
If you need assistance with the implementation of a backup system, or any aspect of photo organisation, don’t hesitate to contact me.