Have you ever fried your hard drive? Ever do it when you may have forgotten to back-up your client’s files? Do you notice that it always seems to happen right after a huge wedding season? Been there. Done that. Got a tee-shirt and a whole lot of  “I told you so’s” (Grrr.)

Well, BEFORE this happens to you, let me introduce you to a redundant back-up method that has not failed me once in over 6 years ( in techno-time it really equates to a millenia). Here is what you need to get.

1) Buy a whole lot of HIGH Quality Burnable CDs or DVDs. (For an in-depth review from Tom Peterson, Product Line Manager for Rimage Corporation click here .
2) Invest in 2 or 3 external hard drives that you can swap out.
3) Sign up for an ONLINE back-up service.

Now, here is what you need to with your stuff:

1) After a shoot, download your images to your working computer in a folder that is easy for you to find. Personally, I choose a hard drive SPECIFICALLY for studio photography and place the images in a folder of the client’s last and first name (it should look something like this: f:\BlueStreak2010\Smith_Becky).
2) Now that all my RAW images are in the folder I use Adobe Lightroom to weed out and do preliminary edits to Becky’s photos.
3) Then, you need to CONVERT your images to Jpgs. Please, for the love of Pete, convert them to the SAME folder…
4) NOW, Burn a CD/DVD of your RAW and JPG images. Put them with your client’s contracts & receipts. Don’t touch them. Ever.

The thing is, you need to do these steps right away, AND you need to develop a habit of doing it every time you do a shoot. Skipping even 1 client could be disastrous.

Ok, here’s more:
5) Back up your data Online. There are a few choices you can go for nowadays. I did some research and found a few free storage sites.
- Dell has a great free plan with software (Dell DataSafe) that does automatic back-ups for you, but you are limited to only 2GB.
- ADrive has an awesome free plan, but is a little more time consuming to use. But for 50GB of free space, its worth it.
There are others and you need to read the fine print because they’ll reel you in with the lure of “100GB for free!” but its only for a limited time and then you have to pay for it. Not that I am bashing paid back-ups, but if it is available for free, then why pay? I need every cent and I am sure you probably do too.

I hope you take this advice BEFORE you get the ‘I told you so’ lecture that I earned.