| Permanently Keep Your Files on Hard Disc Drives | | | | accidental deletion. |
| Since your image files are already on a hard drive, | | | | Archive Completed Jobs to Writable CD or DVD |
| you can just leave them there! Obviously, today's | | | | The most cost effective and by far the safest |
| professional camera files are big, so you will have to | | | | archiving method today is writable CDs (700MB) or |
| add more disc space for your new shoots as well as | | | | DVDs (4.7GB.) To be sure, you will hear a lot of |
| to keep enough free space for "hungry" applications | | | | horror stories about discs that fail to read or "fade" in |
| like Photoshop. Fortunately the size of add on drives | | | | a few months. Chances are these failures were |
| has increased and most are currently relying on | | | | either not written correctly to begin with or were |
| reasonably priced 1 TB external drives. Although you | | | | written to very low cost, unstable media. Like photo |
| will see 2TB units, most experts feel that only the | | | | paper, there is good blank optical media and not so |
| 1TB units have shown enough reliability for day to | | | | good blank media. Use only media that incorporates a |
| day studio use. There are lots of options and | | | | gold (that's real 24 carat gold) reflecting layer, since |
| decisions to be made regarding how to power and | | | | the most common environmental failure for optical |
| connect these drives. You can directly connect them | | | | discs, besides physical damage, is humidity and heat |
| to one computer or put them on your studio | | | | attacking the disc's reflecting layer and rendering it |
| network (NAS)? As usual, if these are Greek to you, | | | | completely useless. Even though it take a little more |
| get some help where you source your hardware. A | | | | time when burning discs, only use recording software |
| lot depends on how your studio works. Of course, | | | | that supports "verify after write." This feature will |
| even though 1TB seems like a tremendous amount | | | | automatically read all data after recording and verify |
| of free space, you will be looking to purchase | | | | that the disc in fact contains all the data that you |
| additional drives as your space requirements evolve. | | | | wrote AND THAT IT IS ALL READABLE! Digital |
| Unfortunately, although you have all of your jobs a | | | | technology allows for identical copies, so make 2 |
| "mouse click away," you still need to address the | | | | copies of each disc, and store one at another |
| issue of archival backup since you literally have "all | | | | location...in case of a catastrophe! Chances are you |
| your eggs in one drive." | | | | won't use an archive disc for a while and if they are |
| Big drives are great, but relying on one is too | | | | stored reasonably (dark, clean, cool, dry) they will |
| dangerous. Camera negatives never spontaneously | | | | easily last longer than you need them to. One bonus |
| decayed (since nitrate!), but disc drives can and will | | | | of archival CD and DVD materials is that they can't |
| fail without much warning and the word archival | | | | be erased... intentionally or by mistake! |
| never appears in the same sentence with hard disc. | | | | Evolving Technology...Archiving and Backup to the |
| At a minimum, purchase and install a second identical | | | | "Cloud" |
| drive to act as a backup and install some sort of | | | | Today there is growing discussion of "cloud storage" |
| "mirroring" software, to automatically keep the | | | | and "cloud computing." In this model, your computer |
| second drive an identical copy of the first. Hard | | | | system automatically (and continually) copies all of |
| drives are not forever and they will fill or fail or | | | | your important files to large, secure and redundant |
| worse yet...both! You may want to consider a slightly | | | | storage facilities on the internet. This model could |
| more expensive RAID configuration (disk array), | | | | conceivably eliminate not only your backup hard disc |
| where multiple, identical drives are configured to | | | | but your DVDs well. |
| automatically "mirror" each other automatically. Save | | | | Thousands of consumers and businesses today rely |
| to one and you are really saving to both. There are | | | | on cloud backup services, from vendors like Mozy, |
| lots of options here and they need not be terribly | | | | Carbonite and Sugarsync, to automatically preserve all |
| expensive. RAID configurations will assure more | | | | of their important personal files, images and music. Big |
| automatic reliability in the event of a drive failure and | | | | commercial data centers are also adopting the model. |
| also often give some nice drive "health check" | | | | The appeal is simple. Lost or stolen machine...no |
| warnings. | | | | problem. Hard drive crash...no problem! Simply login to |
| No matter how good your systems get, most | | | | your service, download a new sync application walk |
| hardware experts consider multiple hard drives, even | | | | away! The system automatically retrieves all your |
| in a RAID configuration, only as a solution for | | | | files, restoring everything back to its state at the |
| protecting against hardware failure of dynamic "in | | | | moment of failure. Today, most of these services |
| process" work, since working files cannot practically | | | | are used for backup of files that are on your internal |
| be archived as they are far too dynamic. | | | | drive, but the technology can do much more. |
| However, after a job is shipped to a customer, the | | | | All of us need to stay up to date as things develop, |
| probability of file access or modification drops | | | | but for now, stay with mirrored disc drives and |
| precipitously. These jobs can be "archived" and | | | | archive to good quality DVDs. You won't be sorry. |
| protected against hard disc failure or even against | | | | |