Back Up

Back Up

In several senses.

Stop, step back, think before proceeding.

Back up and running after a problem.

Copy all the files so that you don’t lose them if something goes wrong.

So – what are your backup arrangements? I have a disorderly arrangement of sundry external hard drives on top of my computer, and a second set, this one of ordinary internal hard drives, mirroring them, that go in a carrier in the front of my computer.



If only they were properly matched sets, rather than the result of enthusiastic but slightly uncoordinated copying, and disc sizes that don’t always match. It’s complicated by my relatively recent habit of having a sub-folder for each shoot or day with all the edits in it. Those can occur at any time, and I often don’t back them up promptly.

But however imperfect the system, I have got backups of almost everything, and I don’t delete files. In principle, I can find, give away, and re-edit anything I’ve shot digitally.

I file negatives in date order: so simple by comparison. And as properly-processed film doesn’t suddenly get corrupted or dropped, I seem to worry less about silver-based images than digital. After all, I can’t erase a stack of physical files with a couple of keystrokes and a click on the mouse. Digital is far more worrying.



Now is a good time for many of us to get our pictures in order… So if you don’t have that external backup, now’s the time to order one and copy everything.

It’s a short one today, because the idea is so simple: please, back up your files!

And maybe I need to sort a few things out.