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!
