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Being Real With Divine Photography

Your Photography Questions Answered

January 17, 2015
Being real with Divine Photography

Your photography questions answered!

Please send any questions you’d like to see answered here to jenny@divinephoto.net and if other moms have the same question, we will write about it for Macaroni Kid!

“My computer crashed and all my photos are gone; now what?”

It’s a very real and devastating situation for many people. Has it happened to you or someone you know? In this digital age, the majority of people don’t even print most of their photos, let alone back them up. Why is this important? Aren’t there ways to recover lost or deleted photos? 

I have personally had 3 hard drives fail on me in the last 10 years. One in the form of an external hard drive that held several wedding photos. Another in the form of a memory card. The last in the form of my laptop (which was used for everything). I have always been very diligent in making sure my client's photos and my personal photos are in two different places at all times. 


WHAT’S THE BEST WAY TO BACK UP PHOTOS?

First of all, back up your photos immediately after you download them. I download them to my computer, then drag them over to an external hard drive. Once I’ve edited them to my liking, I will make a copy of the images on a DVD. Many people now are using cloud services. These are online storage services that have been around for a while and they charge based on how much space you use on their server.

I don’t believe that there is a best way to back up photos. It depends on what you are personally comfortable with. Cloud services are nice because the images are stored online, so if something should happen to your hard drive (fire, flood...), your images are all still retrievable. Or you could invest in a fire / water safe and have it in your home or at an in-law’s residence. Another option is to leave an external hard drive in a bank deposit box. If you are using a hard drive or DVDs, I recommend creating a new copy to updated media every few years. Hardware and disks do wear out over time.


WHAT TO DO WHEN YOUR HARD DRIVE / COMPUTER / DVDs/ NO LONGER WORK OR FAIL?

If you notice your computer running slower, acting funny, etc., get it looked at right away. It could be the hard drive failing. Make sure you do a back up of your entire computer regularly (on a Mac, the program you’d use is called Time Machine).

If you run into a situation where it seems everything on your computer or drive is lost (photos, documents, your computer won’t even start up...), I recommend contacting a place called Drive Savers in California. They
have top notch customer service, a fast turnaround, and competitive pricing. They range usually around $1500 - $2700 to do a full recovery on a computer. It’s expensive to “fix” so back up your photos! ;)

Photographers, if you run into this situation, contact the Professional Photographers Association PPA (make sure you’re a member!) and they will help you cut the cost down to only a few hundred dollars.

Thanks for reading and feel free to send your questions to us at:
jenny@divinephoto.net
Jenny :)