Backing up your images

Wondering how to protect your images from data loss? Here’s a short post on how I store and backup my images.

  1. All my cameras have dual card slots and are set to write files to both cards.

  2. Images get ingested into a new or existing Capture One Pro Session, onto a 2nd SSD in my laptop.

  3. After each ingest or editing session, I run a Goodsync one-way sync job which copies any new or changed files from all sessions to a Synology 4-bay NAS box (this is the earliest point at which I will delete the original files from the memory cards). The NAS box has 4 drives configured in ‘Synology Hybrid Array 2’, which allows for 2 simultaneous drive failures without data loss.

  4. Overnight, an Amazon Glacier client running on the NAS box performs an automatic incremental backup to Amazon Web Services.

  5. Periodically, I delete Sessions from the laptop drive (NB It’s important to have ‘Propagate Deletions’ disabled in Goodsync - otherwise these Sessions will also get deleted from the NAS when the Sync job is next run!).

Key principles here are:

  • Redundancy: at each stage of the process, there are at least 2 copies of the original files, or a single copy stored on a resilient device.

  • Off-site storage: protection against fire, theft, water damage etc.

Disclaimer

Unless I explicit state otherwise, I do not receive any incentive or inducement from the vendor/distributor of any of the products mentioned.

However, some of the links provided may be affiliate links from which I may earn a small commission which helps me to run this website.