PCPhoto

Backup Strategy

Five steps to ensure you never lose an image

By Wes Pitts

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This Article Features Photo Zoom

Epson P-5000

Pro photographers are masters of archiving and safekeeping their photos. They have to be—losing a saleable image can amount to hundreds or even thousands of dollars of lost revenue. And when you consider that a typical working pro may capture thousands of images a month, a plan is needed to ensure that images are securely stored and backed up quickly and easily, with no room for error.

While not all of us depend on our photography for income, our photos are no less priceless. No one wants to lose a once-in-a-lifetime shot. Fortunately, losing an image is a crisis that can be entirely avoided with a proper backup strategy. Even the best-grade hard drives can fail. DVDs and CDs can get scratched or lost. Redundancy is the key.

Depending on your tolerance for risk, you can omit some of the following steps, but if you follow them all with every image, the likelihood of ever losing an image is, if not statistically impossible, ridiculously improbable.

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