Please view these and new updated posts here!
This blog has moved to the main website for the studio. Please view it here: St Charles Professional Photographer | K Thaemert Photography.
Well, almost as soon as I got this new blog and made a resolution to keep it updated, I had a little “problem”. LOL
My computer (and my backup laptop) BOTH had hard drive failures. So, after a little time, effort and money, I now have a new computer. The old one is awaiting rescue disks so that it can become the back-up computer.
That leads me to post a little about creating back-ups of your important files and images on your own computers. While a hard-drive failure is a big PAIN and takes up considerable time to restore, I did not worry at all about my files. If you are a portrait client of mine, you can have the peace of mind that the digital versions of your portraits are safe with me. All data on my machine is backed up 2-4 times. Photos are in 4 locations! Immediately, upon importing photos from the camera card, all photos are saved simultaneously onto two external hard drives. Within hours, those files are stored at an online back-up company. Eventually, once the editing process is complete, images are bulk-stored onto DVD’s and moved off-site.
I’ve been asked numerous times to help restore the computers of friends. So often, they are worried about their own personal photos. My first word of advice is to get an External hard drive! It is so much easier to unplug a drive and re-plug it into a new computer than it is to try and get files off a “dead” computer. My second word of advice is to have a back-up of that external hard drive. It can be a second external drive, DVD’s or you can subscribe to an online back-up company for as little as $50 a month. DVD’s are easy to make but DIFFICULT TO REMEMBER to create! (I know everyone is nodding their heads in agreement.) I use BackBlaze but there are many good companies out there. I originally selected them because they would back-up external hard-drives. Some of my non-photographer friends use online photo printing companies (like Kodak or Snapfish) as a method of backing-up photos. I don’t suggest that as your ONLY method but it is definitely better than nothing. Maybe someone will comment and let us know if you can download those images back onto your computer if you have image loss at home.
I’d love to hear if there are any other good methods of keeping your photos and documents safely backed-up.
In the meantime, I’m here, trying once again to catch up on the “to-do” list. At least the computer is mostly set-up. I still have a couple of programs to load and tweak for my own settings. If I owe you an email or a phone call or a proofing gallery, you are on the list! 🙂
More blog photo shares to come soon.
Karen Thaemert
St Charles Professional Photographer
This blog has moved to www.thaemertphotography.com/blog 