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View Full Version : HELP!! BACKING UP QUESTION/ADVICE - long one sorry!


sabo
7th December 2006, 01:07 PM
O my God!!! While I love the digital era it is also a big pain in the arse! Let me give you a run down of what we have/do and maybe someone can help me.

At the moment, when we do a shoot whether it be a wedding, portrait, commercial whatever, we burn the raw ASAP. We then load it onto one of our many portable drives, they can each hold around 320gig (sorry not up with the mg, gig, talk just relaying what my husband has told me). Once they are on the drive we begin to process the images into JPEG/TIFF usually JPEG though, and place them into a print folder (in their assigned folder). Then from that print folder we retouch/create album (using photojunction), basically whatever we need to do before showing the client. Occasionally we will show the untouched JPEG if necessary. If everything is wrapped up with this client we will burn it and archive the disc, generally though our clients can take a little while so the folder stays on the drive for a long period of time, or sometimes we get too busy and just forget to take it off. Apart from the portable drives we also have another drive that holds 1 terrabite (hope this is making sense so far), this was ment to be for just backups but has gradually turned into just another portable drive that comes with us everywhere (home to office etc).

Our major problem is that over the past year we have had around 3 or 4 of these portable drives fail on us. Basically if its a wedding we have lost a good weeks even 2 weeks of solid work. We have never lost anyones work completely as we usually always have the raw but as you can imagine alot of time is wasted not to mention the embaressment of having to tell a client that we have had technical errors can I get the images to them in another week or so. We have been getting these drives recovered for us, but not everything is recovered successfully and completely...cost lots of money too! Usually I have to go back to the raw and recreate whatever it is the client wants again..heaps of wasted, doubling up time.

Oh and I have had a disc that has been burnt not work either, wont read or load etc...luckily enough my husband usually does 2 back ups on disc.

My question is if you shoot full digital...how do you cope in regards to archiving, having enough memory etc. We are so lost and everyday I we get by now without any 'technical problems', i feel as though we have just scraped in...almost like our luck is going to run out one day if we don't get this sorted.

Any suggestion/advice on the best way to stay above all of this.

I know you are all probably thinking that we have been pretty slack and yes i would agree with you. While we do do the best we can, and know how it seems that we are like I said just scraping in.

PLEASE PLEASE HELP! just tonight we had a scare with one of the drives that I have been using this last week or so (all of my recent wedding are on there). Luckily for some reason my husbands computer is reading the drive fine so he is in the process at the moment of transfering everything onto another drive on his computer. If that drive went thats a whole months worth of work at least...and just before Christmas too :(

BarryM
7th December 2006, 01:22 PM
I download raw from camera, put into a folder named blah blah wedding, i then have a folder within that for full jpeg crops, another folder for Processed shots and another folder for low res shots. All in there whilst working on them, then when done i put all onto dvd and a second dvd, and my spare drive plugged into pc i put a copy in there under a jobs folder, then nothing on cdrive. My drive is in the pc rather than a portable one. And its only pics and jobs on it.

george.monaghan
7th December 2006, 01:44 PM
Hi,

You are working at the problem raather well if I may say so.

Terra byte drives should not be failing like this: go to GRC.COM at look at SpinRite - it recovers failed drives. Lexar media do one as well for CF cards but is works on larger drives.

Can only suggest you save the Tiff files in an external hard drive. Then save as on to dvd and placed in hard case for indexing.

You can only back-up so much before you run out of space. Large drives mean large losses so suggest about 300-500gb per drive. A hard drive should last for many years and you can use hdd health (free) to monitor the drive. Switch on SMART in your PC bios and that will do the rest including telling you when it is about to fail etc.

Now all you need is a good indexing system for the drives!!

lostmysnorkel
7th December 2006, 06:58 PM
Yup, sounds as if you are doing everyhring pretty much ok!

Here's my workflow:

ALL of my CF cards are numbered. At a wedding I start with #1, and work through them all.

When I get chance, the full cards are downloaded to the laptop during the day, and put back in the card wallet ready to be used again. (Has never been needed, but just in case)

SO: there are now TWO copies of the RAW files, each in a different place.

Once at home, I do a quick edit down of the RAW files on the 'pooter, and burn a DVD disc with the ones I'm going to keep. I then copy them all to the client's own folder on an EXTERNAL hard drive.

THERE ARE NOW FOUR COPIES OF THE RAW FILES STORED: CF Card+Laptop+DVD+ExternalHD

I then work on the RAW files on the 'pooter and save out as jpeg or Tiff to own folder, and prep for the client to proof.

Copies of the processed files folder are also burned into ALL THE SAME PLACES AS THE ORIGINAL RAW files (except the CF card).

Then, AND ONLY THEN, will the CF cards used get put back into the camera and formatted ready for the next job. Unless I really, really need them. In short, the CF cards are re-formatted at the latest possible stage in the process.


When I was shopping for the external Hard Drives, I was advised by a 'pooter geeky friend to avoid the 'Portable Drives' if possible - he told me they weren't as reliable as a 'non-port' one.

There are portable 'Image Banks' you can get, but TBH, when comparing £/Gig storage costs, it makes more sense to carry the laptop in the boot.

george.monaghan
7th December 2006, 08:14 PM
Hi,

I almost forgot this: rapidshare.com

You upload you files in 100mb (maximum) pieces and then you get a link to delete the files when you no longer need them. This is a free service and is used by persons who need storage space for short periods of time.

Once you have archived, burned to DVD, transfered to external drive then you simply delete the file ready for your next upload.

Simple and effective it could work for you.

Hope this helps.

paulstmungo
10th January 2007, 06:25 PM
Why back up while your at a wedding ?

I just shoot away on cards no more than 1 GB in size, using a new one each time one is full.

When you get home you download to PC.

The danger is in your storage media.

Ive been warned off CD's and DVD's as they degrade in time.

I therefore use a hard drives only.

I have some small servers which are pretty cheap and cost effective.

Each has 4 hard drives.

2 are master drives the others are back ups.

Every change made to the master drive is copied to the back up.

If the main drive fails, you will get a warning. Replace the drive and a new copy will be made from the back up automatically.

With this system you always have 2 hard drives with exact copies of each other storing all the images.

If youre away for a while you can even remove the back up drives and store them elsewhere in case the office burns down !

Ive attached a link below to a website which sells them. They are under £500 now for a 1tb drive. (contains 4 250 gb hard drives). you can hardly buy drives seeratley for that.

Hope this helps.


http://www.broadbandstuff.co.uk/advanced_search_result.php?keyword=terastation&gclid=CLaRt4Ot1okCFR_kZgodLEhazg

lostmysnorkel
10th January 2007, 06:35 PM
Why back up while your at a wedding ?

I just shoot away on cards no more than 1 GB in size, using a new one each time one is full.



I only download to the laptop IF there is time to do so, and more for freeing up cards, just in case I need them again, than for backup. Generally, this would be when everyone os sitting down for the meal and I am needed aferwards.

I have never needed to re-use a card at a wedding, but that doesn't mean I won't ever!

paulstmungo
10th January 2007, 08:14 PM
Makes sense i guess if you get the time during dinner.

Gets a bit of the work done youd have to do next day as well.

sabo
11th January 2007, 04:43 AM
Thanks for all the great feedback! Although my husband is the one that looks after all of this i just wanted to ask you guys to see what other professionals do!

paulstmungo - I will be getting my husband to look at the site you sent me...sounds great! I too hate CDs & DVD's, while we do more than one copy, we have had cases of when one DVD/CD didn't work...scarey stuff! At the moment for weddings we download our CF cards to a phototainer (image tank), then once we get home put it onto our hardrive and burn the raw etc. We shoot quite alot at weddings so we need to reuse our cards all the time!!

Thanks heaps guys...you have helped alot

tonymidd
12th January 2007, 05:00 PM
I'd never trust a small portable drive or a large card, both have a nasty habit of failing. Lots of smallish memory is IMHO the answer, you can now get 2gig Kingston cards off Amazon for £13!!! Like snorks I number my cards and work thru them, download onto a remote drive and two dvd's when I get home. Just to be on the safe side the dvd's are burnt on different burners.
One is kept in my study/workroom and the other at my daughters so if my house is burgled, catches fire, what ever there's still a copy.
Talk about being paranoid :grin: :grin: