For many years as an amateur photographer and working with digital photos, combined with even more years working in IT, having a strategy and the best photo storage and backup tactics for photographers is very important to me.

I would be devastated if I lost my precious photo vault. How about you? Just imagine: you lose everything and you cannot recover from it. This guide applies to both professional and amateur photographers, along with anyone who wants to protect their data.

Disaster Recovery for Photo Storage and Backups

I am not starting this guide with a spiel about hard drive failure, providing a list of things you can do if that happens. There are many events that can cause data loss.

Many years ago I got involved with the topic of disaster recovery. It’s a common phrase in IT circles nowadays, but the lid was just being lifted back in the 90s.

Disaster recovery, or DR as it is often termed, is not just about backing up data. It’s a strategy for storing data, and recovering systems, resources, and data in the event of a disaster. It’s pointless having your data to hand after a disaster event, but not having the hardware to load it or software to read it. So DR is about recovering the whole system or systems. A laptop’s hard drive is but one component of a system.

What is a disaster?

Disasters can come in many forms and various sizes. A simple power cut can be very disastrous for some, but just an inconvenience for many. Modern computer systems and software tend to cater to these types of events by performing background snapshots of our Office docs, and such like, as we work. It can still catch us out though.

DR is about listing various scenarios and assessing what each of these means to us – we have different needs. We can score, perhaps weighting, each scenario accordingly, based on the effects of each outcome.

Scenario Planning

We can play out our common processes and practices. Here is a photography example…

I go out for the day and load my camera with some great photos, hopefully. I return home and I copy my photos to my laptop’s photo storage area. 

Think about the above scenario. I have removed the vulnerability of having photos solely on my camera storage by copying them to my laptop. They now exist in two places and, in so doing, I have created a photo storage backup. A bit too simple?

It’s interesting that, throughout the day, I have the photos being created and stored in just one place – my camera. Like many people, I don’t put any effort into backing these up. If I were a wedding or events photographer, or maybe I’m visiting a special location I might put some thought into this and take some method of making a copy on location. There are many devices ranging in price, but I like the portability and versatility of this SanDisk Extreme. There are larger capacity versions, but it’s all down to personal preference.

Next part of the process…

On my laptop, I’ll put my better photos through the usual post-processing editing stage, enhancing them as required.

This makes my laptop copies and changes vulnerable now. However, I can still recover the originals from my camera and I can repeat the same process. It would be a pain, but not a complete loss. This is a key point – a photo data loss at this point is something that I can recover. This scenario carries less weight than, for example, if my process is to wipe the photos from my camera right after copying them to my laptop. This would be a game-changer. Yes, some software has an option to do just that. Don’t tick that box!

The point I’m making is just by thinking through everyday processes or workflows and the disastrous events that could play out, it’s possible to rethink things and work with more of a DR mindset.

Worst Cases

Most articles about photo storage and backup methods emphasise disk drive failure. Yes, disk drives fail. It’s a disaster, but not the only problem for photographers.

Let’s talk about bigger events. The worst thing that could happen, for me, is a major fire in my home. Getting flooded or structural damage by a run-away 10-tonner is also bad but, in all likelihood, the storage media in my camera and laptop will survive and data can be recovered. Fire is a different and much bigger threat.

House fires tend to start small, but combustible material with a small flow of air causes these fires to get out of control and very, very hot in no time. It is unlikely that disks and storage, mechanical or solid-state, will survive such that data can be recovered from them. The fire brigade will flood the property to put out the fire. Also, fire often causes structural damage. So, a fire might incorporate all of the above scenarios. That’s bad. Aside from a bomb blast, it doesn’t get much worse.

Another serious one is theft. Few people think of this scenario, but it’s very real. Someone could break into my home and take my camera, laptop and any other electronic gadgets that might get a quick sale. In doing so, they take my photo storage and backup systems. All or most of my data!

Think also about fire, accidents and theft in vehicles and public transport. This might be a higher priority scenario for professional photographers.

Businesses should also be concerned that in the event of a police investigation into a business or a member of staff, the police can close business premises for investigation. How would the owners sustain that loss of business continuity?

Photo Storage and Backup Equipment Insurance

Knowing the worst cases, I need to know that I can recover the equipment I use for my photo processing, storage and backup devices. Given we are talking about a possible loss of my home or important contents, these things, as a hobby, are just the tip of the iceberg. However, they will need to be recovered or replaced at some point.

For me, the replacement of such equipment is supported by my house and contents insurance(s). It’s important to note, though, that it will take some time for an insurance company to assess the damage and agree on a settlement figure, and finally payout.

Then there is the task of actually purchasing replacement gear. I imagine that this would be a struggle without my laptop and Broadband service. The things we take for granted are such important aspects of our everyday lives.

So, the message here is that, so long as there is adequate property and contents insurance, system hardware can be recovered by buying replacements, although it takes time. That’s great, but what about the data?

Data – Importance and Growth

For life’s eventualities, from a disk failure to a worst-case scenario, it is vital to have backups of important data.

It isn’t necessary to back up every scrap of data. Some data has no real importance. I’m like many people who simply horde data because I can. I am a little selective, though, when it comes to backing up data. Although gigabytes of disk space is relatively cheap nowadays, it still has a price tag and can get expensive when backing it up. Larger disks that are filled with data also take a good while for systems to run their indexing and other operating background processes. So it’s worthwhile having a filing system in the data storage system where important data can be differentiated from non-important data.

For the photographer, of course, there are photo assets. We take photos and store them, so we naturally think these are important for backing up. What about the software licence details and other resources supporting the editing workflow?

I try to determine how much my data will grow over the foreseeable years. It’s not too difficult to take a rough cut by totting up the number of files created over the last year as a percentage of the total. Then use this percentage to roughly reveal the number of gigabytes of data created in a year.

So, thinking through the importance of data and whether or not it can be or even ought to be backed up for recovery is a good step. Knowing roughly how much data is created in a year helps to size up various backup methods. Why buy a 10TB Billy Bifter NAS drive for your 2TB photo storage when a much less costly 4TB is a more than adequate backup device over the next 3 years?

Photo Storage Backup Devices and Frequency

When it comes to data, all too often I read or hear the advice to go and buy a NAS drive to back up household files. I have to admit, it annoys me.

They are good in that they sit there in the background, continually checking for updates on all connected computers, synchronising or copying without anyone having to do anything. Except to switch it on. And that’s the thing with NAS drives, they need to be on. All day, every day.  For me, that’s just too much. It’s not good for the planet either.

Like many amateur photographers, I might make sizeable data changes just once or twice a week. Where I make smaller changes, as already explained, I can recover any losses quite easily from the originals on my camera.  If manipulating photos were a day job for me then, of course, a NAS drive might be suitable.

The other issue I have with NAS drives is that they are often difficult to set up and configure for each member of the household. Much will depend upon the NAS drive product or make. Just to note: I bought a well-recommended NAS a few years ago. Both of the supplied disks failed within a year.

Go back to the worst-case scenario. In amongst that mangled and melted mess will be my laptop, camera, plus all that is precious that makes up my home. If I still had a NAS drive, that would be in there too.

So, a NAS drive isn’t the be-all and end-all of data backups. It’s an option, one of many.

Make use of old equipment

I use an old computer loaded with a 4TB drive and software, SyncFolders, which is loaded on my laptop and other household computers. I’m able to schedule SyncFolders to either copy or synchronize from files on my laptop to the old PC.

I also use an external powered hard drive that is set on my BT Home Hub’s USB port. I schedule the SyncFolders software on the old PC to synchronise files to the USB drive.

SyncFolders is free, the old computer cost me nothing extra and the external USB drive was part of a previous backup plan. I had to buy the 4TB internal drive. I have written a detailed guide on this setup. on another site of mine.

USB drives, powered and non-powered are coming along leaps and bounds. They come as traditional mechanical spinning drives or solid-state drives (SSD) priced from under £100 to £300 respectively at the time of writing. Keep an eye out for SSDs. Being smaller and not needing a power supply, they simply plug into your computer’s USB port. Software like SyncFolders can be used to sync or back up data. Keeping things small and neat means you can take the backup device with you while you are away if only keeping it in the car. If the worst happens, you still have the data.

Take a look at the dazzling array (excuse the pun) of USB Backup Devices.

Backup options don’t need to be expensive, they just need to work and cater for your disaster scenarios.

Cloud Thinking

My backup PC and the USB hard drive puts me in the same position as a NAS. They back up my data but won’t withstand my worst-case scenarios.

I’m currently with BT, using their mid-range Halo service, which comes with 1000GB (1TB) of cloud storage. That’s a lot of storage right now and, where I spent the time to sort out my really important data, I’m using just 50% of that space. It’s likely that other internet service providers lay on similar benefits. It’s worth investigating this when considering swapping to a new provider and, certainly, before paying for space from Google, Dropbox, and many other Cloud service providers.

Hot tip to set up BT’s Cloud Client

I use Symbolic Links (Windows 11) to reference the folders I want to be backed up to the BT Cloud service. Sym Links act as though the data exists on my C drive, which is where BT installs its local source root folders. but is linked to the additional internal 4TB drive I use for backup purposes.

SyncFolders runs through each Rule to copy files from the 4TB drive to the USB external drive. BT Cloud monitors the C drive Sym Link paths and synchronises the files accordingly.

So, worst-case scenario, so long as I can get my BT Broadband recovered, I can get at and recover all of my most precious data from the Cloud.

Strategy to Photo Storage and Backup

What I have achieved by storing and backing up my photos and other data in this way is…

• At least 3 copies of my data – including my laptop that creates or copies the data
• A minimum of 2 media types – various Disks and Cloud storage
• 1 copy of my most important data off-premises in the Cloud

This is commonly known as a 3 2 1 backup strategy. However, I also incorporate the systems used to create and manipulate my data in my overall DR strategy.

Companies that are serious about DR will put the effort into testing it. Once upon-a-time, I did this for the company I was working for. As much as it was a big eye-opener, it costs a great deal of money. For the amateur photographer or small business, the tests should mainly be about…

• Accessing the copies of data
• Making sure that files can be opened
• Ensuring restores from backups actually work
• Keeping the software that produced the files up-to-date.

Thanks for reading this guide. I hope it has been insightful for you. Drop me a line below to discuss this further.