Backing up Photo Collections
The single nightmare for people with a large photo collection is when something goes wrong, either a disk drive failure, ransomware virus or a wrong key press which causes havoc. That is why, having backups is essential.
The 3-2-1 Backup Strategy is a simple, time-tested rule designed to keep your data safe, even if something goes wrong with one of your storage locations. It states that you should keep three copies of your data, stored on two different types of media, with one copy kept off-site. This strategy helps ensure that your memories remain protected against accidental deletion, hardware failure, theft, or natural disasters:
You keep the original photos plus two additional backups. For example, your main photo library on your computer, a local backup on an external hard drive, and a cloud backup.
Store your backups on different storage media to reduce the chance that both fail at the same time. For photos, this could mean keeping your primary library on your computer’s internal drive, a second copy on an external HDD or SSD, and a third copy in cloud storage or on a NAS (Network Attached Storage) device.
Maintain at least one backup in a physically separate location. Cloud services (Carbonite, Backblaze, etc.) are ideal, but an external drive stored at a relative’s house or a safe deposit box also works. This protects your photos if something happens to your home, such as a fire or flooding. A word of warning as all cloud services are not the same. Some online services may downside or transcode your images or strip out metadata altogether all in order to “optimize” (as they may call it) or to save space. Ensure that the Cloud Service provider saves the original image in the original state and it can be easily retrievable.
Following the suggested photo folder structure and file naming strategy mentioned, helps in managing your photo backups. For example, you can split up your backup jobs based on the top-tier photo libraries using software such as Acronis True Image. Photo library folders containing old photos can have a different backup strategy than say a photo library with more current photos which may have more additions and edits. Current year's photos can be kept in a OneDrive folder which is constantly being synced to the cloud and even provides version history. Even better, OneDrive can automatically backup and sync to your computer your smartphone's photos with the OneDrive Backup option.
Having a unique filename for each of the image files also aids in retrieving the files from your backup. If you need to quickly revert a change for example, you can simply look up the file in your backup software for restoration.
Also, make sure that your photo management application is saving the metadata back to the file so that your metadata editing efforts are not in vain. If possible, it would also be useful to back up your photo management application's database.
Prior to updating a record on the Image table, ImageDB will copy the Exiftool Metadata table for archiving purposes to the MetadataHistory table. Particularly useful to figure out what metadata fields have been changed by your photo management software.