Digital is wonderful. Immediate feedback, immediate joy of seeing your results, the ability to share images seconds after the shot or that evening after a long, productive day of shooting. Digital is wonderful - no time for socializing; all available time spent at the computer either compulsively editing images, batch renaming, and backing up .....
On our last Kenya trip one of our participants literally wore himself down to exhaustion as he copied his laptop's images to two external hard drives and to DVDs he wrote, nightly, to back up the hard drives' images. By the last two days of the trip he was beat tired -- and one had to wonder if his excessive dedication to backup was a bit excessive.
It wasn't.
Even as I write this I am copying onto our main computer server our ONLY copy of our first of two Kenya Fall Photo Safaris. Mary and my procedure is to download our files, the images we make each day, onto our laptops into a Super Folder that we partion into the various days unedited images. Later, but not always the same day, we copy those files onto 250gb external hard drives. Provided our laptop's hard drive doesn't fill up we're left with three copies of all of our files, which, we hope, will be reduced in file size as we edit and delete material as we have time.
Both of us carry small laptops, and both of our laptop's hard drives reached capacity before the end of the second safari. Since we had copies of the first safari on two external hard drives, we deleted 'safari one' from our hard drive. Having the files on two externals virtually assured us that we'd have backup. We did not take the time to write DVDs -- which truly seems to take forever.
As I began copying files today, downloading our images onto our main server, I discovered, with horror, that all of the carefully labeled folders identifying the first safari's shoot were empty! Every one. No reason why, and I don't have a clue what happened. I must admit I panicked when I saw this, as there were some truly great images from that trip. Worse, I'm 'the computer guy' responsible for my work and Mary's, and I was looking for the stout rope I'd use to hang myself if I lost her stuff. Figure ... I may as well as do it myself before she got the chance!
Net result - for our first safari we returned, unknowingly, with one set of files. That HD could have failed to, or broke, or encripted. We dodged a bullet this time, but I'm not sure what route I wish to use to provide a THIRD or FOURTH backup. Frankly, I dread the thought of writing DVDs, and I've had those fail, too. I think, instead, I'll be ordering TWO 80 gig Epson 4000's - meant for downloading in the field, but handy and hardy hard drives, too. I'll keep you posted!
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