Backing up your media is as easy as 3-2-1
There’s a story making the rounds that a video editing software bug allegedly caused a freelance videographer to lose more than 500 hours of video. He says the mass deletion happened accidentally after he cleared his media cache, which is a common after-project house cleaning task.
All I have to say is —Yikes!
If you’ve ever lost media, you know how heart-wrenching (and expensive) any type of media loss can be.
But this type of loss should never happen… and it certainly doesn’t have to. For any creative professional, responsible media backup should be a vital and ingrained part of your workflow.
There’s a classic tried-and-true back-up plan that most serious professionals have committed to practice:
- 3-2-1 Backup: This strategy means that you always have 3 different copies of your data, saved on 2 different types of media storage, 1 of which is stored in an offsite location. You can see even the Department of Homeland Security recommends this classic workflow.
In today’s modern cloud-based storage era, there are additional recommended backup configurations— including:
- 3-2-2 Backup: 3 data copies stored on 2 different media storage options, along with 2 geographically-separated copies in the cloud.
- 3-2-3 Backup: 3 copies of data (one production copy and two backup copies) on 2 different media storage options, plus 2 geographically-separated copies in the cloud—and 1 offsite copy. With this strategy, you can perform disaster recovery either via the cloud or via physical discs.
Sure, some of these strategies get pretty deep in their redundancy, but it’s because drive crashes and other problems will happen. So you need to provide yourself a guaranteed insurance policy.
Personally, most people I know commit to at least backing their media up to a.) an internal drive, b.) an external drive and c.) the cloud—simultaneously transferring/uploading the media immediately after the shoot.
There are several courses in our library that address various media storage strategies. Check them out to get started on your own backup plan.
- Set up Time Machine for Automatic Backups
- Photo Management: Backup and Archiving
- Learning Dropbox
- Box.com Essential Training
- Cybersecurity Awareness: Backing up your Data
- Amazon Web Services: Disaster Recovery
#backup #mediabackup #backupdata #mediastorage #dataloss #datarecovery #disasterrecovery
I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to get a USB hard drive, set up Time Machine, and forget it. The peace of mind is SO worth it!
A decade ago, I remember the family pet knocking my external Hard Drive off the desk and I lost a month of editing work. I never got the data back but we still have our cat. Lesson learned! Thanks for the advice Ashley!