Insurance

This was supposed to be a post about the type of tools I use when I am practicing my photography. I plan to highlight equipment, including cameras, lenses, tripods, cleaning gear, camera straps and computer hardware and software I use. Instead, this is a warning to all readers to make sure they properly back up all their images and their documents on their computers. This evening as I was doing some routine computer work, my main desktop locked up and will not allow me to boot it up. I have some good help dealing with it but even with the help I can't get it working. There are still some things I can try and can ultimately take it back to the shop that built it.

The warning is really to make sure your images are safeguarded. I am confident that even if this computer were dead, which I am pretty sure it is not, I can pull my internal drives and save all my images prior to 2010. I have two Western Digital 320 GB drives and the second drive mirrors (backs up) the images on the first drive. I essentially have two copies of all my photographs. The critical photos, I also back up onto CD or DVD as added insurance. For all my 2010 photos, I have started saving them onto a Western Digital My Mirror Edition Hard Drive which backs everything up on to a second drive within the same enclosure. I got mine at B&H Photo in NY. Western Digital has discontined my model in favor of a 2TB version (1TB for each drive.) It currently sells for $175. Pretty inexpensive insurance I'd say.

I am no computer expert and don't plan to become one but I do plan to take a hard look at how I back up my files to make sure my methods afford me the greatest protection that is reasonable. I would encourage you to do the same.