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Take back photos from Big Tech in 2023

I’m guessing you took thousands, if not more, of photos and videos in 2022, because with a smartphone in our pockets, it was just so easy to do.

And like most people, if you thought about backup at all, you did what was easiest. You signed up for the automatic backup programs on Apple and Google, which made copies of the photos and videos on your phone, and placed them into the “cloud” for a monthly fee.

But as we talked about several times in 2022, what if Apple or Google stopped liking you? What if the companies, rightly or wrongly, decided you violated their terms of services and locked you out of your account? (Read this blockbuster piece in the New York Times for more about how this actually keeps happening.) What if you suddenly died, and forgot to leave your password behind for loved ones? All your photos would be unavailable to future generations and lost forever. (Please take a minute RIGHT NOW and share your digital photo passwords with loved ones!)

New Year’s project: Make 2023 the year you took back your digital footprint and control of your images. How to do that? Thanks for asking. I have several ideas.

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How I store and backup my photography

 

Storing and backing up efficiently and securely more than ten years of photography is a complicate technical task.

At the center of my setup I use a Synology DS1515+ NAS, with 8 disks configured in Raid 6 for a total of 14.54TB of available storage.

I wrote about this set up a year ago, but I recently updated it to be more streamlined and secure.

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How to save $50 on a Seagate Barracuda 8TB drive while completely voiding its warranty

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If you need to get an 8TB disk and fancy a Seagate, we have a way for you to save $50 per drive, while getting a free enclosure and a 100% void warranty. The disk in question is the Seagate Barracuda Internal Hard Drive 8TB SATA 6Gb/s 256MB Cache 3.5-Inch. Long name, I know. The 8TB flavor sells (new) for $180 on Amazon, or you can get the faster spinning 005 flavor for $319.95 over at B&H. Either way, there is a way to get this drive for $139.99 and still have some spare parts.

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Backblaze report shows larger hard drives are more reliable than small ones

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Hard drives are something that all of us have. Some of us just have the one our computer came with, while others will have a whole mountain of them. I’m in the latter camp, although I do try to keep things to a minimum. Every few years I replace all my storage drives as faster, cheaper, larger capacity drives are released.

So, every few years I’m in the market for new drives. So, I look at large consumers of hard drives. Consumers like Backblaze, who just released their Q3 2018 report, showing their hard drive failure rates and they’re quite surprising. At least, they surprised me. It seems that those huge 8TB, 10TB and 12TB drives are actually far more reliable than smaller drives.

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If you don’t want to risk losing your data you need a good backup workflow

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There’s one simple fact about hard drives. They’re going to die. It’s not a question of if, but when. And when it does happen, because it will, there’s two things you can do. The first is that you could panic, research data recovery services and spend a small fortune trying to get the data back. Or, you can simply replace the dead drive and restore from backup.

Personally I prefer the latter option, which means having a good backup workflow in place. Photographers and filmmakers create a lot of data. So, you really do need a good backup solution in place if you don’t want to lose weeks, months or even years worth of work. In this video, Caleb Pike from DSLR Video Shooter talks us through his backup workflow.

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Seagate Wireless Plus – A Review For Travel Photographers

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After first trying out the WD My Passport Wireless Pro as a solution to backup photos and video while traveling (click here for the full review of the My Passport), I thought I would try the competition – the Seagate Wireless Plus.

The main issue that I had with the WD My Passport is that it could not effectively synchronize files with cloud storage (Dropbox, Google Drive) without the need for a laptop computer.

The Seagate Wireless Plus seems to have this issue solved with built-in synchronization apps for both Dropbox and Google Drive, but as you will see, it has its own issues…

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