I think one of the greatest advantages that Digital Photography has over Film is how easy it is to make a copy of a photograph. The real big problem is that not many of us do. We tend to store everything on a small, mysterious device called a Hard Drive, never thinking about what would happen if the drive crashed. This is a device that has replaced the family Photo Album but will never last as long. Lets look at what can happen if things go bad with your hard drive.
A hard drive has one or more disks in it called platters. A typical Desktop Hard Drive spins about 7200 Revolutions Per Minute, faster then the engine in your car. A small read/write head hovers over the surface of the platters, less then the thickness of a human hair away, reading and writing data on the disk. The head moves so fast you can't see it. The drive also has a controller board attached to the bottom that tells the read/write head what to do, where to write the data on the drive.
Here are some of the things that can ruin a drive, and your photographs:
A Lightening Strike can destroy your drive, even if it is not close to your house.
Power fluctuations from your electric company, including blackouts, brownouts and surges
Fire or Theft
A virus can wipe all of the files on your drive, or even hold them ransom for money
The read/write head can come into contact with the surface of the drive, “crashing” the drive.
Some or all of your pictures can be accidentally deleted.
The controller board can fail
The drive motor or bearings can fail or wear out
Well, as you can see, there are many reasons a drive can fail. In fact, some 3% of all drives fail every year! (Not so much IF your drive will fail, but WHEN!) So, how do you safeguard your photographs as well as other files? BACK IT UP! Backing up your pictures is so important, yet not many of us do it. Is backing up easy? It can be. Here are a few options:
Back up your data to an external hard drive and store it away from your computer. And by away, I mean far away! Your backup should not be stored in the same building as your computer. A good rule of thumb is to store your work files at home and store your home files at work. IN this case I would get in the habit of backing up your data every week.
Back up your data to a recordable CD or DVD, then mail it to friends or family. This is a great, not too expensive way of backing up. It does take some time but the important thing to remember is that your pictures are away from the computer. Please note: Recordable CD and DVD disks do not last forever. To maximize their life store them in a cool, dry, dark place. Replace them after 18 months.
Use an on-line service to back up your pictures. Carbonite is the one I use. Mozy is another good backup service. They back up your files to the Internet for a fee. It is best to have a broadband connection, it would be way to slow if you had dial-up!
Two things to keep in mind. First, back up often. Second, keep the backup off site, away from the building where your computer is. It is not a backup if it is sitting on top of your computer!
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