The LA fires and flooding across the south have my heart aching for all the families who’ve lost their precious photos, slides, videos and other irreplaceable memories - not to mention their homes and livelihoods. And even if they had them digitally transferred but had not put in place an archival strategy, it’s all gone.
How can you protect your legacy memories from disaster?
The key term is "BACKUP." There are several methods, but all require making COPIES of your materials and distributing them to multiple places, on the premise that at least one will survive. Digital copies are wonderful because each copy is identical to the original. Unless recompressed, there will be no difference between copies, regardless of what medium is used to store them.
Not Just for Old Photos, Slides, Films, Videos
The idea of a digital backup, which can condense all your memories into a single flash drive or portable hard disk applies to more than just the transfer services we offer. If you have a digital camera, smart phone or scanner, digitize things around your house and then copy them from your phone or camera to the backup drive. This includes:
- Important papers:
- Birth/death certificates, marriage license, deeds, mortgages, insurance policies passports, licenses, certificates or permits
- Visual inventory of your household goods
- Take lots of pictures of your house, and be sure to update it when something new arrives. Insurance will need the inventory for the claim.
- ALL the digital photos, videos and important personal or business files on your phone(s) or computers (especially if you are not using cloud backup)
- If you have hundreds of photos on your phone, connect the phone to the computer with a cable, then copy (or move) the photos to your internal storage. Then implement a backup strategy to include those digital photos along with the legacy transfers and other important files on the computer. (If you move the photos to your computer, that will free up storage on your phone for more photos.)
Backup Strategies
Basic Backup
When we deliver your digital transfers on a flash drive, we include basic backup instructions:
- copy everything to your computer’s internal storage (hard disk or SSD)
- Store the drive from us in a safe place
- Backup your computer
The backup is the critical part. Usually a backup is done by copying the content to an external drive. You can use a portable hard disk, a portable SSD (Solid State Drive), or a Flash Drive that's large enough. Many of the portable drives come with backup software that allows you to schedule automatic backups, or you can simply copy the data manually. There's also "Cloud" backup, which we'll explore below. Many computers offer to back up "the computer," but it only backs up the operating system and settings. While it's good to have that backup in case the computer becomes corrupted and needs to be restored, if the computer is lost, it won't matter. What will matter is your important files, photos and videos, so plan to make a separate backup of just the content.
Once you have a good backup, you can leverage the other preservation strategies:
Air-Gap your Backup
The original flash drive you receive from us with the transferred materials and the backup copy of your computer should be disconnected from your computer unless you’re using them. That "air gaps" your backups, These are impervious to hacking, viruses, ransomware or other typical computer maladies. If you have reason to believe your computer has been compromised, do NOT reconnect the backup drive until you're sure the threat has been mitigated. Over time the backup drives can fail, so you need to frequently recopy your backups to new media – about once every 5 years. It would be good to invest in a fireproof, watertight safe, and keep your backup with your important papers. You can even keep a copy on a flash drive in your "go bag" in case an evacuation is ordered.
Off-Site Storage
The next step is critical to a disaster plan. Create a copy of your primary backup and store it SOMEWHERE ELSE – preferably not on your premises. That could include your office desk drawer, a relative’s or friend’s house, or in a bank vault’s safe deposit box. It’s safest to locate your backup with a relative out of town, in case you face a fire scenario like in LA or flooding like North Carolina.
Cloud Storage
The cool kids all use “cloud storage,” which means putting your images online somewhere. This way you can see your images from anywhere on any computer, and you can share links to the images via email or on a website. There are several cloud providers such as Microsoft’s OneDrive, Apple’s iCloud and Google’s GoogleDrive, and dozens more independent cloud providers like DropBox, iDrive, Box, pCloud and many more. While some are free or included with your software subscriptions, they have storage limits, so to store all your materials there may be an extra monthly fee.
Pros & Cons
So let’s look at the pros and cons of each backup option.
Basic Backup
- PRO
- Cheapest and simplest. Requires backup media you need to buy anyway.
- Fast. Most flash drives have very good read/write speeds, so a backup should only take 15-20 minutes.
- Digital copies are exact replicas of each other so quality of images is maintained.
- If you have a computer, you can make a backup. There’s nothing special about it. Just attach another drive with enough space and copy the original drive to another one. If you don’t know how, ask a 3rd grader (or search “copy files and folders” online).
- CON
- Unless you store your backups elsewhere it won’t do much good in a disaster.
- They keep changing interface connections, so you’ll need to recopy everything when the next latest and greatest storage method comes along, or buy adapters.
Air Gapped Backup
- Pro
- Also very easy. Just disconnect the backup drive from the computer and keep it in a safe place.
- Protects your backup from hackers, viruses, malware, computer crashes
- CON
- Again, unless you store the backup elsewhere it won’t help with a disaster.
- Over long term, air-gapped backups need to be recopied because drives can fail over time. Just make another copy onto fresh media after a few years.
- REMEMBER: If your computer becomes compromised, do NOT connect your backup drive until after you are sure the malware or ransomware has been removed.
Off-Site Storage
- PRO
- If your home burns or washes away, it’s very unlikely the remote site will meet the same fate. (We recommend separation by a significant distance so the backups are not likely to be affected by the same calamity.)
- Quality of images stay the same because these are exact duplicate backups
- CON
- You must physically take the backup to the remote location. May involve shipping.
- You may forget about it
- People in the house where it’s stored may forget what it is and throw it away. (Labels are important.)
- People can plug in the drive and view the content, though it can be password protected. Of course, if you share it with a relative, it doesn’t really matter, since they’ll want the content.
Cloud Storage
- PRO
- Convenient access from anywhere
- Some platforms provide automatic cloud backup for certain folders on your computer, so the files stay synched.
- With most platforms, content can be protected by passwords and fully private
- With some providers, data is backed up to remote datacenters to create redundancy (this is usually an extra cost option)
- Content may be shared with friends/family
- To make online viewership possible, most video sharing sites “transcode” the video to lower resolution files so that the video can play on lower bandwidth systems.
- CON
- Can be expensive. Free tiers of cloud storage may not be sufficient for all your content.
- Providers can change their rates or levels of service on a whim (they usually give notice, but they know how much of a headache it is to migrate, so you have few options when a rate hike comes.)
- Providers have varying terms of service that may expose your content publicly. (Google, for instance, is famous for saying there is no “expectation of privacy” on any Google service.) Read the terms of service carefully. (Rule of thumb: if you pay for it, you own your data. If the service is free, THEY own your data.)
- Upload can be lengthy, as you are limited by Internet upload speed (typically slower than your download speed). With multiple gigabytes of data in a typical transfer job, this can take weeks/months to upload everything.
- Live backup (synched copies) will delete items from the cloud if you accidentally delete them from your computer. Use care with this option.
- Only valid as long as the bill is paid
- Susceptible to hacking, unauthorized access
- Can be accessed only if you have an internet connection and power
- Only good as long as the cloud provider stays in business
- Transcoding downgrades the quality of the image to make it accessible by people with lower bandwidth. Some services then delete the sources so you are left with only the downgraded ones. Review their retention policies when choosing a service. (Apple's iCloud backup for iPhones stores a lower resolution photo on the cloud. The full-size photo remains on your phone and should be copied to a computer to be included in a backup strategy.)
Conclusions:
At Advent Digitizing we do not really recommend cloud backup. Instead we recommend air gapped backups stored off site. Our motto is “never put anything in the cloud that you can’t afford to lose ” (which is closely related to our rule on computers, "never put anything on your boot drive that you can't afford to lose.")
That doesn’t mean you can’t use cloud storage to share your content. Just make sure you have your materials physically backed up.
We can start to facilitate your backup strategy by creating TWO copies of your master output drive, for just the cost of the drive. One is for you to use, the other to store offsite. We also offer 5-year archival storage at our facility, so if your transfer drive is lost, we can replace it.
So, if you haven’t done so already, time is of the essence to get those movies, videos, prints, slides and negatives digitized so they can easily be preserved. Make the right choice and choose Advent Digitizing!
Can Advent Digitizing help me implement a backup strategy?
Yes we can. Click below to start the conversation.
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