Hey guys! This is Janine from Pangolin Photo Safaris, and today I would like to tackle
the big problem of backing up your files safely,
to make sure you never lose your photographs.
First, I would like to present you with the best practice method....
and I'll show you how you can adapt that, depending on what type of rig you have
at home - a laptop or a desktop - and how good your internet might be.
I also quickly want to show you what options Adobe Lightroom provides you with,
in order to back-up your files.
So let's dive right in and get started.
If you like this type of content,
please don't forget to subscribe. Just press the bell button down below...
and you'll always get notified when there's new videos coming up.
Backing up your files can be such a drama,
and we often tend to just postpone it to the next day...
and the next day...and then maybe the next day.
But believe me, I have seen grown men cry losing their photographs. It's one of the
saddest things that could happen to you.
Whether it's a natural disaster, or theft, or simply breakage because the
files become corrupt. It doesn't really matter how it happens...
at the end, it is sad. So, we need to make sure we back-up our
files safely and regularly. That is where the key
point comes in. First of all I would like to present you
with the best practice method, so you need to follow these four
steps, to make sure your photographs and files are secure
and safe. #1. You need to have the original
sitting safely, either straight on your internal hard drive,
if you have enough storage available, or
on an external drive just here. For the original files, I like to work
off a solid-state hard drive. Those little drives have gotten smaller
and smaller...it's quite amazing. They're my working hard drives.
Why is that? They don't get corrupted as quickly.
They don't break as fast, and they really robust when it comes to traveling,
especially on the photographic trips. I've got to pretty much connected
permanently here, and I took a little tip and trick from Guts,
my partner, and have it velcroed right to my laptop,
to make sure it's not dangling around, and wearing out my ports.
#2. You need to have at least one back-up on an external drive, that you
have easily available close by.
#3. You need to have at least one more back-up (a second back-up),
if not even a third...and one of these back-ups
should go straight up into the cloud, because up there
our files are safe from any natural disaster,
or break-ins in our house. So, if everything is stolen at once,
you will know you have your data at a different location...
where it's always kept safe. #4. My last and fourth point
is that you ideally need to have your back-up process
automated, so that you can't always postpone your back-ups
to the next week/month/years and by
that time, running the risk of losing your
photographs, is very high! So, how can you automise this process?
It depends on a rig...but there are several methods...
#1. If you're uploading to a cloud, the service providers available, such as
CrashPlan, Backblaze or Carbonite...
always recognize which files are added or changed
on your hard drives (in your originals), and automatically
back-up only the new data - in changes out there.
Really handy, because as long as you're connected to the internet,
you know you have an updated backup available.
Even though I'm not getting any benefits from any of the service providers,
I personally enjoy CrashPlan simply because
once you uploaded a file, it will never be deleted, even if you delete it from
your external hard drive. Some other service providers, on the
other hand, delete files if they don't regularly get to see them.
So, you still need to remember to plug in your back-up hard drives on a
regular basis...even though nothing has changed on them.
So, please keep that in the back of your mind.
For your external external drives, you can find similar mirroring apps, that constantly
mirror your original files, to another external
back-up, so that the process is automated, and you
can't forget! Service providers such as CrashPlan
actually do both...they back-up straight to the cloud,
and to an external hard drive - all automated -
without you having to lift a finger. Very handy!
So, this is the ideal world, however if you're stuck with bad internet, the
cloud up there is really not an option. I've tried my
luck with CrashPlan, over the last two weeks,
and I've worked my way from taking about five years - until my initial back-up is
finished - to down to a year and seven months.
If it takes me that long to back-up my files to the cloud,
they're not safe at all...and for me, that was simply not an option.
You might have similar problems if you have a bad bandwidth,
or simply if your data is capped,
and you can't afford uploading three or four terabyte into the cloud.
You'll have to weigh it off, depending on how much external storage costs
where you live, and how much internet costs/data costs.
Whether you can implement my ideal back-up plan, also very much depends on
what type of rig you work with at home. Do you work with a set desktop? Then you
probably have your original files sitting
on your desktop itself, as they usually come
with enough internal storage, that you can keep all your files and data there.
The other advantage of working from a desktop,
is that it's stationary...so whatever external hard drives you plug in
they will not be moved around. The port connections are not disturbed so much.
...and you probably have a set place for
them on your table. That sounds pretty obvious,
but it simply allows you to have your back-up drives permanently
connected to your computer, and if you have them permanently
connected to your computer, your mirroring process
- both by a mirroring app, or by the cloud - can always take place without being
interrupted. Working from a laptop on the other hand,
this becomes a very dangly process. I have three hard drives connected at
the moment. I can have up to four hard drives connected,
but I certainly can't do that at all times,
and permanently! While I move around, I teach
our clients, at the hotel (in our editing room), or on a
photo safari, out in the field. I won't be able to carry all these hard
drives with. It's too risky. I might damage them,
and I can't carry my laptop around, with three
external hard drives dangling off at all times.
So, that automated mirroring process might not take place uninterruptedly.
You will actually have to plug your hard drive in,
then your service provider can recognize the
hard drive, and start backing up the files.
For that, you need to remember though, to plug it in on a regular basis.
One idea would be maybe to set an alarm on your phone.
Take some time each month, or each week, depending on how much, and how regular
you shoot...and be strict with yourself. If you don't do it,
your risk of losing your photograph increases tremendously!!!
How well you can back-up your files, also depends on how many ports
your computer has. You can always extend your ports,
but obviously your computer only has so much processing power, so you might not
want to run multiple back-ups at the same time.
Also, if you work on a laptop, and you're busy with your back-up process,
please always remember to plug your laptop into a power source...
because your back-up will be interrupted if
your computer shuts off. Furthermore, go into your system settings...
whether it's Mac or Windows, it doesn't matter...and make sure your power saving
settings are set to a way that it never goes to sleep, as long as
you have your power cord connected. The same with a shut off computer...as long
as it's sleeping, your back-up is running. You might have it running
throughout the night, to make sure you get all your data transferred, and the next
morning you notice your computer actually only worked for 20 minutes, and
then shut off :( So you see if you work of a laptop,
instead of a desktop, you have the advantage of being more flexible.
Being able to move around...but you have the disadvantage that you're not
stationary, and cannot have permanent back-ups running.
What type of hard drives do I usually use?
As I mentioned before, I'm working off my solid-state external hard drive
as my main working tool. So, my solid-state, and my computer,
and my external hard-drive, are both fast and work well with each other.
Most of my back-up drives are just regular normal
hard drives. They're very sensitive. They can damage the data quite easily,
but as they mostly sit in my safe, it is not a problem.
But that's one of the reasons I don't like traveling with them,
or moving them around too much. These hard drives are also much slower to back-up,
so when you do your initial back-up (at first), you might need to take
24 hours (and even up to 2 days), depending on how
many files you have. For a full 2 terabyte back-up, you might
need up to 2 days. If you now say that none of
this is good enough for you, because you might shoot a lot of video,
a lot of 4k video. A lot of large files just take too long
to transfer back and forth....and making back-ups becomes an absolute
nightmare. You might have to look at one of the
Thunderbolt 3 storages. They're sort of hard drive
towers, with extreme fast processing capabilities,
due to their thunderbolt 3 connection to your computer.
They're rather expensive, but they make up for amazing
storage devices that you can work off, without having
any delay with your computer. Especially if you're editing movies.
If you have very old hard drives sitting at home,
even those that stand up straight and have their own cooling system
built-in, you might want to reconsider buying
yourself a new hard drive...and just transfer all the old information
over, to make sure you're not losing your photographs.
So, all this being said, let's dive into the actual backup process,
and see what can be done. You can see here, I have three of my hard drives
connected. My main hard drive is called 'jk photos'...
and a little note on the side, I call every single hard drive 'jk photos'
...that holds my original files. The reason being, is that I want it all to fall
under one drop-down menu, within Adobe Lightroom, to keep it nice and organized.
Sometimes, you have years greyed out, if that specific hard drive
is currently not plugged in. But at the end, it will remain
under one filing structure, which is really handy.
So, now you could go ahead and simply take these
folders, and copy and paste them onto your back-up drive manually.
However, if you do work with Adobe Lightroom, you don't just have your
original photograph, but also the little text file, that holds all your changes....
plus, the Lightroom catalogue that is able to decipher these text files,
and implement the changes, so your original photograph
looks as if you have edited it. So, another way to manually back-up your files
would be to take these folders within Lightroom,
go to 'file' and say 'export as catalogue'.
You can then choose your location where you would like it to
be backed-up, and you give your back-up a name.
Ideally I would choose a name including a date,
so that you know when last you have backed-up your files.
The disadvantage of manually backing-up your files like that,
is that Lightroom cannot recognise which changes, in which files, are new.
So, every time you do this back-up, it backs up the entire
catalogue...regardless of whether things have changed or not.
With one of the mirroring apps, however, you will save yourself a lot of back-up
time, because it will only back-up the newest images,
and the newest changes that have been made.
Additionally, Lightroom Classic allows you
to back-up your catalogue independently. If you go under your catalogue settings,
you can see you can back-up your catalogue once a week/once a month/
every time you exit Lightroom...depending on how much
you work with Lightroom, and that way, you can also backup your catalogue.
But please don't confuse that catalogue back-up
with an exported catalogue. Within an exported catalogue,
you will actually export all the original files,
alongside with the little .xmp text files, that hold all the changes.
It also backs-up your catalogue - cat file - which is the file that can decipher
these little .xmp files, so that you can read all the changes,
keywording, and organizing that you have done within
your Lightroom settings. If you can't follow me right now,
maybe go and check out my 'Lightroom course for beginners'.
It's coming out soon, and might be just the right thing for you!
So, when Lightroom backs-up your catalogue, upon closing the
application, you will find that back-up under pictures in general,
Lightroom back-ups...and here you can see (by date organized) all the Ircat files.
Again, it is only the file that helps you to decipher the changes done to your
original photographs. It doesn't have the original photographs.
To lose this file, can be just as sad though, because if
you've worked a lot within Lightroom, and you've put a lot of effort and time
into your photographs, losing all these changes can be very
painful too. So, I tend to copy and paste this manually
onto another back-up drive, to make sure I always have several
back-ups...not just on my computer. You can see this Ircat file is roughly
one gigabyte. This is for about 30,000 images right now, so
it takes up a little bit of space, and if you accumulate several back-ups,
and you work off a laptop that has limited storage capacity,
you might want to go ahead and regularly go
and delete all the older back-ups. Just double check and make sure,
that you don't delete your most recent back-up off your Lightroom catalogue.
So you can see that a mirroring app of some sort, can be very handy to help you
with back-ups. You might still have to manually plug in
your external drives, as they might not always be with your laptop,
but that's one thing that is easier
to remember, than to take the time of two to three days,
and manually back-up the whole catalogue,
every time, over and over again. I know this is not a one-stop solution that I
offered you, because everybody works with different
gear, but I hope it gave you a good idea what is necessary to keep your files
safe, and to keep them secure. If you have any questions,
or comments about backing-up your files...
maybe it doesn't work for you the way I suggested?
Please leave your comments in the section down below, or let me know how you do it?
Because back-ups is a whole art form in itself.
...and everybody is trying to scramble, to organize.
Some people have it really down to perfection...
and others tend to back-up only every year,
which can be very risky. Even with your cell phone pics...
those memory shots can be important to you too.
If you guys like our channel, and you would like to go on safari with us,
in Botswana, please check out the link down below here...
It absolutely stunning! Get yourself some photographs to be backed-up.
There is no better place than here!
Also, if you did like this video, please don't forget to press the like button..
and subscribe to our channel, to make sure you always get
the newest videos that are coming out.
I hope to see you soon again.
Bye bye!