Everyone thinks they have good backups, few actually do. More than a few people, including many professionals, are relying on systems that are putting their photos at great risk.
In the data world, like the real world, disasters are rarely a single point of failure. Rather they are a series of events, each in themselves insufficient to cause a disaster, but when they happen in a certain sequence, a catastrophe results and data is lost forever.
Here are a few questions to ask yourself about your image work flow and data backup scheme:
Are all your photos stored on the same device?
Are all your photos and backups in the same building?
If someone stole your backup data device, would they be able to access the information on the device?
The good news about data backup solutions is there is no one right answer. What’s right for you will depend on your work flow, the amount of data you’re storing and the time and money you have to put into it. The security of your photos will ultimately depend on how willing you are to guard against low probability events.
If all your photos are on the same device, usually a PC or laptop, then one day soon you will be one of those panicked looking people rushing into a PC repair shop, desperately hoping their data can be recovered. You need to take action today. External hard drives are cheap, sophisticated encryption software like Truecrypt is free.
If you use Gmail, you can now upload any kind of file to your account through GoogleDocs. There’s absolutely no reason to have all your eggs in one basket. Get going right now.
If all your photos are in the same building, you need to take action soon. Offsite storage at places like iDrive is inexpensive, the first 5 GB is free. The advantage to iDrive is the files are encrypted and you keep the keys to unlock your own files. I prefer to create my own encrypted containers and store them offsite, but with a site like iDrive it’s all menu driven.
If you have multiple backups of your photos, including at least one copy offsite, and you’re using some type of basic encryption on those devices, you’re probably in good shape for all but the most low-probability events. If the earth was devastated by an asteroid collision tomorrow, how big of deal is it if you lost some pictures? At a certain point you have to draw the line.
A Word About Cloud Storage
A word for those of you depending on outsource providers like Picasa, Kodak Gallery, Flickr, and Imgur for offsite backup should consider their situation carefully. Images stored with a third party are subject to the Terms of Service for that provider, most of which are heavily skewed in their favor.
What most people don’t realize is that if the parent company goes bankrupt, the data and customer information on their servers are part of the company assets. Companies purchasing that data in bankruptcy court may not be bound by the ToS you signed or limited in how they use it.
While in most cases copyright law should protect you, all bets are off in bankruptcy court where the court determines who owns the company assets and dictates the terms of sale. Whether a bankruptcy sale trumps copyright law is up to legal scholars to decide. What you want to avoid is footing the bill for an expensive legal fight to find out.
If your data is encrypted, it’s less of a risk. Few companies are going to go through the effort to brute force an encrypted container to get a look at your pictures.