For me, the first stage of my backup
process happens here in the studio,
well more precisely in the camera.
I always shoot dual cards
and I make sure that
two copies of everything go on.
So it's called redundancy
shooting within the menu settings
on this particular camera.
So there's two SD cards,
both of them shooting
exactly the same thing.
The uncompressed raw files.
Now, the most important thing
once the shoot is over.
And I'm ready to leave the studio.
I take one of the SD cards
out of the camera.
And I pop it over here in this little box
so I don't lose it.
So when I leave,
I have two copies of all the images
in two separate locations
from the very beginning.
OK, guys.
So I've come back from the studio
with my extra SD card.
Everything else takes place,
at least this stage on the PC over there.
So when we go over there
and jump on a screen record
and take you through what I do
next as part of my backup process.
OK, so time to start my process.
You need to understand
how I PC set up a little bit.
There are several drives of my PC. So
Windows C, That's an SSD
drive, which, of course, contains
the operating system
and most of the programs,
Toshiba three terabyte,
that's an HDD drive internal
which is used for something
that's got to do with photography.
The USB drive,
that is the SD card
that I have just put into the reader.
Then we have the Seagate
expansion drive, Home you'll see later
why it's called home.
That's an external drive
that holds all my photography, archive.
And it also holds
a folder called Video Backup.
So then the pictures folder.
I'm sorry, within the
within the images folder we have.
Current photo projects and pictures
which is my archive, organized by date.
So anyway,
the important drive here as well
is this M2 SSD drive,
which is a one terabyte
internal SSD drive.
And this is where
all my current work goes.
So I use it for all my current
cache ongoing things, scratch disk, etc..
This is a way of making working faster
and easier than using the
external SSD drive as I go.
So anyway, now you understand that
bit about the structure
is a little bit more sense.
So when I pop my
SD card into Lightroom
to import, it's coming from that
and it's going to
the current projects folder.
I have a current project preset.
Don't import duplicates.
I always build a one
to one preview straight away.
I add it to a folder
- collection sorry called "to review",
which means it needs me to look at it.
That's generally
for ongoing personal stuff.
And it goes into a sub folder
organized by date.
So and then we simply
import that and while that's importing
I point out as well
that what I do is that whereas
personal workflow, I have that to review
for syncing with Adobe Cloud.
That means I can log in to CC on
version of Adobe Lightroom
on my laptop and
previews of these images will be
that's what's easy to review them now.
I wish I could do that more.
But unfortunately,
it's quite frustrating
because it doesn't have
an advance to next feature
when you star or pick
or whatever you want to do on an image
which makes the whole thing
a bit of a chore.
So anyway, now that that's imported
forget about the previews.
It's not really important, this process.
I use a program called
GoodSync.
TNow in Goodsync
I have lots of different jobs
but those four pictures
there we imported to the current
folder current projects on the m2 drive .
So I'll click on
it, analyze
it will show me what's changed,
and it will copy the images over
to the Seagate home drive.
So at this point,
I actually have four copies
of these images that I have taken.
There is the SD card in the studio.
There is a SD card
that's in the machine at the moment.
They're on the SSD drive
that is on the motherboard of this
PC the m2 drive.
And they are also now
on my expansion drive,
the external hard drive.
So I don't feel yet
that I can format
the SD card in the studio.
That will happen after
the next stages, is done.
So for me, the final stage of my backup
process happens here at my office.
So from home I have brought this
external hard drive "home zero one."
And as you know,
this contains a copy
of everything that's on my PC
archive and current projects.
This is just the archive.
It has the current projects on the PC.
So at this stage,
we have current projects,
and archive on here.
We have
an SD card in the studio
with a copy on an SD
card on the camera with a copy on.
So currently everything
is at three locations.
We also have located at the office
a second one of these drives,
which is completely
synchronized with this one,
which contains all of my archive.
Now, I brought this to the office today
with the intention of also
synchronizing this with the drive.
So I'm going to hook it
up to my workpiece.
And load the same program I use at home.
Goodsync And you can see on goodsync
I have a couple of quick jobs
for when the machine is at work
to synchronize it.
Quick analysis and sync.
You can probably hear the hard
drives ticking away
furiously in the background there,
because these are not SSDs they are
traditional hard drives,
much cheaper way to store things
just as reliable as the long term,
not necessarily as great
for working as you go.
Which is why my current projects
sit on the SSD, drive on the PC at home,
as well as being synchronized
as a backup to the HDD drive.
So when this completes,
I will also run two
other backups that run in this PC.
The first is really simple.
It's a program called Back
Bliss Ballplayer's
Simply backsup or your computer,
including all externally
mounted hard drives
as it is to a remote server.
There's nothing fancy about it
simply takes a copy stores
it in the same folders,
the same organization.
you have on your PC.
So if you need to recover something,
you can quickly do so.
The second backup process
is Amazon photos
which I have put in in the background.
Now,
the software for amazon
photos used to be quite poor,
but it's much better now
if you are an Amazon Prime customer
you get unlimited photo backup,
And this includes raw files.
It's slow.
It's not efficient,
but it offers a different
dimension to organization
and the ability to share
The system has facial recognition
built into it
to make it easier for you
to find things,
everything stored visually
so you can scan through the photos, etc.
So
so once everything is complete,
I will have copies of
everything on backblaze
Amazon photos the hard
drive in my office,
the hard drive at home,
and then I can delete
quite comfortably the SD cards,
because I have two physical copies
of everything in two separate
physical locations,
and I have two online
copies of everything
with two separate companies.
Now, I'm sure there's probably some holes
in my backup process.
Feel free to shoot through them.
And it's very much customized to me,
fits in with my lifestyle.
I appreciate not
everybody can keep
a second hard drive at work
and they can't or have to.
Their employer might not let them
back everything up at work.
So if you managed to stick it out,
well done you.
But I think what's really important
to remember about backup processes
is that the backup process is mine.
It's designed to work with my lifestyle.
And there's no point
trying to replicate it exactly.
Everybody's process needs to fit
with their own lifestyle
and their way of shooting,
their own way of working.
Otherwise, you won't stick with it
and fall behind.
So fundamentally,
I think what you need to achieve
with a backup process is you need
a local copy
and a nonlocal copy as soon as possible.
By nonlocal
I mean, not stored in your house
or your main place of work
so two copies in two different locations.
I think for most people
that would be good enough.
So for me, the studio to the home
to the office works fine
because I'm between
those places all the time.
I don't go out of my way
to take the hard drives there
and sync them I'm going there anyway.
It's just a case
of putting it in a backpack
and taking it along with me.
But for you, if you simply work out
and about in the environment
and you do all the processing at home,
then there are a couple of different
things you could do.
The simplest, of course, is
just to leave the SD card
in the glove box of your car
until you've finished
making an online backup.
But obviously, not
everybody has internet
that's good enough
to make online backups.
So in that circumstances,
what I would personally suggest was
I would just have
two external hard drives,
one for the archive
and one that I backed up to.
So then what I would do is I would.
Backup to the second external hard drive,
and I leave it in the boot
of my car.
Now, obviously,
there's a chance of the car being stolen.
Something happening with that,
you can get hard drives
that you can password protect.
And programs like goodsync
will work with that
you can save the password in it
so that it doesn't have
to constantly ask for it.
So, yeah, the key here,
as far as I'm concerned, is
make sure that you have your backup
in two completely different locations.