March Message from the President
 
An Ounce of Prevention
Last week I encountered the biggest nightmare of the digital photographer, a failed hard drive on my computer.  While it wasn't the first time, and I'm sure it won't be the last, it reminded me that for many photographers who are not experienced with computers have a real challenge, and that challenge can be a nightmare if they don't have a good backup and recovery plan.  Coincidentally a member who saw my Digital Workflow presentation a couple of weeks ago at Vienna Photographic Society called me and asked for more details on how she should backup her computer.  She explained how she had recently lost some files due to a hard drive failure. I'll bet there are a number of members who have horror stories of their own.
 
While my hard drive was under warranty and Dell sent me a new one overnight with my original image (impressive), the restore was not without some data loss.  Thank goodness it wasn't much more than one day's shoot of still life for our themed competition (I could have been a contender!) and a presentation I have of my images that I can certainly recreate.  It could have been much more disastrous if I didn't have a good backup plan.  I'll share with you some of the basics and you can consider for your own backup plan.  I am a Windows user, however the concepts I'll present here should translate to any operating system, but I will describe some specific Windows tools.
 
Basic Strategy
Software can always be reinstalled it just takes time, your pictures and documents are not replaceable so always have more than one copy of images and document files.  Your first priority should be backing up your images and files, then worry about backing up everything else if you have time and are so inclined.
 
Every time I copy image files to my computer I then run file synchronization software to copy them to my external hard drive.  At the same time any modifications to my images will get picked up and copied off as well.  Also every time I spend some time working with my images in Photoshop I synchronize to my external hard drive.
 
I use the Windows backup program to do a complete backup of my computer once a week. I schedule it to run at night when I'm sleeping.
 
Tools Used
1.       External Storage
2.       Backup Software
3.       File comparison/synchronization software
 
External Storage
I use USB 2.0 external hard drives (Firewire will work also) to store my backed up files.  Make sure you get a drive(s) that has plenty of free capacity for you to grow as you shoot more images.  Also hard drives tend to perform poorly when close too full (90% or more).  Hard drives are the most reliable long term storage device and are relatively easy to work with if you have comfort with copying and moving files and directories/folders around.  I suggest not going for the cheapest drive you can find, but to buy a reputable brand with good ratings.  You can check CNET for example for ratings (http://reviews.cnet.com/4244-3190_7-0-1.html?query=external+hard+drive&tag=cat_1).
You might consider getting multiple drives and storing one at a friend's or relative's house or in your safe deposit box if you have a large one.  I keep one at my desk at my office.  If we had fire, flood, etc. I wouldn't lose all my data.  Start with one if you don't have any, then consider expanding after you get comfortable with the process.
 
CD's & DVD's (even archival versions) are far less dependable than an external hard drives.  They are also more cumbersome, slow and it's an error prone process making sure you get all of your images backed up.  If you have a 300 GB hard drive it would take more than 60 DVD's or over 460 CDs.
 
Backup Software
Windows XP & Vista include their own backup program.  While it's not hard to use if you are comfortable with computers, you can select what to back up, where to back it up and what type of backup (complete, incremental, etc), and allows you to schedule your backups so you don't have to remember to do it.
For a complete article on backing up Windows XP checkout http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/learnmore/bott_03july14.mspx
For Windows Vista see the following article: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/features/details/backup.mspx
There are major changes in Vista's backup program and be sure you choose the type of backup that will work for you.
Articles for you Mac users: http://www.index-site.com/backup.html and http://8help.osu.edu/1247.html.
 
It's important that you experiment with both backup and recovery.  Not only will you boost your confidence that you have properly backup your images, when faced with a stressful situation as a hard drive failure, there's nothing to clam you down more than having some experience under your belt.
 
File comparison/synchronization software
These tools come in a lot of different flavors, but one that really stands out for the novice or the experienced computer user is SyncToy from Microsoft.  Version 2.0 beta was released last year and it is very easy to use.  It takes a lot of the guess work out of backing up your images, documents and whatever you would like.  It detects changes to existing files, new files added and files deleted and will keep a directory on your hard drive in sync with a directory on your external drive.  It has a preview mode which allows you to see what it will do before it actually makes changes to your files.   You can find this tool at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=C26EFA36-98E0-4EE9-A7C5-98D0592D8C52&displaylang=en or  in the Microsoft Professional Photography site http://www.microsoft.com/prophoto/default.aspx.
 
For those of you who want a more robust synchronization tool try BeyondCompare from Scooter Software (http://www.scootersoftware.com/), I've used this fairly inexpensive tool for many years.  It detects differences, additions, deletions, allows complex filtering, content comparisons, etc.  While it's very useful for some things, I find SyncToy 2.0 to have some advantages.
 
Here's a listing of other file comparison tools available: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_comparison_tools
 
I hope this helps you get your backup plan in order before you lose any of your precious images.