I acknowledge that the title is a little bit harsh, but that is the situation. Develop a regular and organized backup process for all of your photos, or risk losing them. If all of your photos are stored on a single laptop or computer, you may push the button one day and nothing will happen, or you may see a mysterious error message that foretells your impending doom.
The good news is that it’s now affordable and simple to backup your photos. Additionally, you’ll have a ton of choices that are divided between local hard drive backups and online backups. I’d like to discuss the benefits and drawbacks of each approach right now.
Online Backup
As bandwidth becomes more accessible and prices for cloud backup services decrease, it will be easier to upload your images and restore them in the event of a disaster. CrashPlan is one of the more well-liked backup services for photographers. For less than $50 a year, CrashPlan allows you to back up an unlimited amount of personal data from a single computer. I haven’t found a better deal anywhere for online storage than that.
Pros Of Online Storage
Security
Data centers are experienced professionals when it comes to backing up your data because they use encryption, numerous backups, and tried-and-true data restoration plans. Though they do occur occasionally, mistakes do happen.
Automatic
Your backups will run automatically in the background once you’ve installed the backup software. There isn’t much more convenience than that.
Cons Of Online Storage
Requires Recurring Payment
You might lose access to your data if, for some reason, you are no longer able to make your payments. While $4 per month may not seem like much, regular monthly fees for gaming, streaming entertainment, and storage all start to add up over time.
Restoration Will Burn Bandwidth
The process of recovering your data from a cloud service in the event that your computer breaks down could consume a significant amount of bandwidth, particularly if you have a lot of pictures or videos. When each of your images weighs between 5 and 20 MBs, the total quickly mounts.
Unclear Ownership Of Data If Company Folds
One potential drawback of online storage that hasn’t received enough attention in court is this one. There is a legitimate concern that if your cloud storage provider declares bankruptcy, the bankruptcy court trustee may sell your data since it would be one of the company’s assets. Your labor of love might end up being owned by whoever bought your photos. The matter has not been resolved in court, despite the consensus among legal experts that it won’t actually happen.
Local Storage
Hard drive space is inexpensive—3 TB costs less than $120. Such a large amount of storage is incredible. Your data can be safe with regular backups and off-site storage under your own supervision.
Pros Of Local Storage
Fixed Cost
Once the drives are purchased, there are no further expenses until you need to replace them.
Speed
Local backups are incredibly quick, and you can perform one whenever you want.
Multiple Backups Don’t Add To The Monthly Cost
One data backup is insufficient for you? I have at least two backups of each original, so I agree with you there. Your monthly costs would double if you added that additional layer of security online, but you can add it locally for the price of the drive space.
Cons Of Local Storage
Harder To Make Automatic
Backups must be configured and maintained by you. That can be more difficult for some people and cause them unnecessary technical difficulties.
You Can Forget
You might neglect to run your backups. You are aware that the moment you forget to run that backup is the very moment you will experience a computer issue.
You Can Lose a Drive
While rotating your offsite drives, you run the risk of losing or dropping your backup drive. One of my backup drives was left in a car I sent to the mechanic! Fortunately, it was encrypted and it was still there when I got the car back. Nevertheless, that served as an illustration of what can occur if you’re not careful.
Any backup plan is preferable to none, no matter how inadequate. If you don’t have a backup plan, then start doing so right away. You have options, they’re affordable, and you should.