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Importance Of Keeping A Backup On Your External Hard Drive

Importance Of Keeping A Backup On Your External Hard Drive

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Importance Of Keeping A Backup On Your External Hard Drive www.sleeklens.com

In a previous article, we spoke about some of the few top external hard drives that I would recommend considering as a professional or beginner in photography. In today’s article, we will be talking about why it is important to back up your images and videos not only to an external hard drive but having your content backed up overall.

I’ve always heard its better to be safe than sorry and I’m sure many of us have ended up being sorry and not safe because we were either reluctant, stubborn or just cheap. In my case, as a beginner, I was actually being cheap and decided that my laptop had enough space to manage my raw files and all would be fine. Of course, as a beginner, I was very nieve to storing away my raw files and video on to an external hard drive and ended up losing everything due to my computer completely crashing. This made me a lot wiser as I learned through the pain of losing all my content. Hopefully, after reading this article, you won’t have to experience the same thing I had to as a beginner.

Table of Contents

1. Peace Of Mind

Keeping a copy of all the content you’ve taken will gift you with a peace of mind you will thank me for later. Having a peace of mind that your images and content is indeed safe and has the capability of being restored is what you need the most as a photographer. If you’re constantly shooting and adding more and more images to your library, you cannot make the same mistake I did and assume that having it all on your laptop is the best option. Get an external hard drive before you need one.

2. Client Request

Even after sending your clients the final edited images you’ve taken from a session, it is important you keep a copy of them for an extended period of time. I usually recommend having them for about 3-4 months before totally removing them from your library. Clients will often accidentally delete or misplace the photos you’ve taken for them and in this event, it always good to have a spear copy to give them peace of mind as well.

3. Staying Organized

Keeping a backup of your images will help you to stay organized and make your workflow that much better. Once you’ve made it a habit of backing up your projects on a weekly or daily basis, you will eventually create a more structured and organized library of your images.

4. Revisit Old Shots

As you progress or grow as a photographer so does your editing skills and knowledge. You begin to learn new ways and techniques as to how you can edit or recreate an image in software such as Photoshop or even Lightroom. Having your images backed up gives you the freedom to revisit some of these old images and try new techniques on them to see what you can create or even learn from your mistakes. You get a sense of where you’re coming from and it becomes easy to see the progress you’ve made over time. This also helps maintain your humility as well as having some awesome throwbacks for Instagram.

5. Mass Portable Storage

With your work backed up on an external hard drive, it becomes a lot easier to share images or videos while on the go. I can recall a time when I had to get some images off to a client but time was an issue as my internet was not moving fast enough for the client to get the images in time for their intended use. The folder was also too big to put on a regular USB drive so my external hard drive came in handy with having to physically drop the images off to the client. It wasn’t the most convenient method but nonetheless, it helped.

6. Extended Storage and Protection

External hard drives can be purchased in any capacity that matches how frequent you shoot or the number of images or videos you have. Most of these external hard drives have more space than your laptop or desktop and as a result, it allows you to have storage to your disposal at all times. In addition to that, your images are always protecting by software embedded into some of these external hard drives. This software helps to protect your images from becoming corrupted or if your hard drive fails, you can also recover the files that were on it as well.

There are many advantages and important reasons as to why having a backup of your work is critical as a photographer or videographer. The feeling you get when you’ve lost all the work you’ve is not a good one and I would not want anyone else to experience that as well. I hope this article will stand as a warning and lesson as to why you should back up your content.