As I write this, we are in the midst of photo saving month here in September – which is perfect timing for this current post as I continue in the sharing of my digital photo management processes. Post 1 was about gathering photos in one place and in Post 2 I shared my file naming strategies. In this post, I’ll describe my backup plan for my photos.
The Plan
I’ve chosen to adhere to the common principle of 3-2-1. Have 3 copies of my info, copies on at least two devices, and one of those copies should be geographically separate from me. Ultimately, the idea is that “lots of copies keeps stuff safe” – the more places you have your digital photos, the higher the chance they will stay safe from loss, disaster, etc.
One way you can carry this out is to have your photos 1) on your desktop/laptop, 2) on an external hard drive, and 3) cloud storage using a backup service like iDrive, BackBlaze (there are many options). In this scenario, you’ve got:
- 3 copies – desktop/laptop, external hard drive, cloud service
- 2 platforms – desktop/laptop, external hard drive
- 1 copy geographically separate from you – the cloud backup service
What is My Approach?
I use Forever as my primary home for my digital photos. I’ve written before why I have chosen this platform. Forever is cloud-based and they have your files backup-up on multiple servers across the country. That’s wonderful! But, because of the 3-2-1 backup principle, it is important to me personally that I keep my files in another place other than cloud-only.
Update 12/13/19 — my plan changed some from the initial posting of this blog entry. I now use Historian photo organization software (it is a Forever product), to save my photos to my laptop. Using Historian is the easiest way to backup photos saved to the online Forever Storage account and I do this every week. My offline backup is then saved automatically to the cloud with iDrive.
In my case, I have:
- 3+ copies – Historian(main copy and backup copy), backup on USB drive, backup in iDrive
- 2+ platforms – local on my laptop, on my USB drive, and on Forever Storage
- 1+ copy geographically separate from me – with iDrive and with Forever Storage.
I feel completely covered! If Forever were to go out of business, I still have all of my photos (including all the metadata I’ve added) because I have them on my laptop and in iDrive. If my laptop crashes, I still have everything online. If iDrive ceases to be available, I’ve got my photos in Forever and locally as well in Historian.
Whatever options work best for you, definitely try to work towards this 3-2-1 principle! Your precious photo memories will be much better off for it. If you have a plan in place, tell me about it in the comments below.
Disclaimer: I am an Ambassador with Forever and the link to FOREVER is a referral link. If you sign up for a free account (which comes with 2GB of storage space), we both get a site coupon. I am then assigned as your personal ambassador to help you with your photo solution needs.