ADVICE FOR PHOTOGRAPHERS

In 2016 I had a major hard drive failure with a 1TB Seagate and a 4TB Lacie, which were both regular Hard Drives. I lost client wedding photos but months later was able to recover them!

After that incident I went from HHDs to SSDs because they are much more reliable, faster and portable. Today I’ve officially gone back to HDDs and let me tell you why.

In the photography industry there is always innovation. Things get smaller, faster, better built, more intelligent and easier to access. In 2017 I had issues with the amount of space I had to backup my files. 1TB was not enough for the pace my studio was growing plus the amount of video production gigs we are booking. So quickly my 1TB SSDs ran out of space and we had to turn to the cloud to backup storage space. Files where spread everywhere and that was not safe. I was using both Dropbox Pro and Amazon Drive, plus a combo of different SSD and regular HD drives.

The issue is not that HHD are not reliable it’s how safe you keep them. Safety means not moving them, good enclosures and having enough space that you won’t have to be saving files anywhere else.

In 2018 we are working with 4TB of local HHD space for the year on RAID 1. We are also using Adobe Lightroom to backup and archive files because dragging and dropping files or folders from a mounted memory card to a hard drive is faulty. I advice all photographers to setup their Lightroom, Photo Mechanic’s or even iPhoto app to backup your files when you mount your memory card.

I can’t dictate how you should backup your files but I would give you this advice. Always back them up right after your shoot or event and double that backup because those pictures are one in a lifetime memories that you might not be able to replace. Ready my personal story on that here: https://benbriones.com/2017/04/23/mistakes-of-a-photographer-ben-briones-studios/