How I Backup My Photos: Pro Tips for Wildlife Photographers
Dr. Simon J Pierce is a co-founder of the Marine Megafauna Foundation, where he leads the global whale shark research program, and an award-winning marine wildlife photographer. About Simon.
Update: I’ve had some excellent feedback on this post already, and I’ll make some changes to my process soon – notably, switching out the Lacie hard drive for an 8 TB Samsung SSD in an enclosure. I’ll change this post when I’ve got that implemented!
I take a lot of photos when I'm working. It's taken me a while to figure out how to store them. For a (long) time, I was just accumulating external hard drives, adding photos to them, and... hoping... that they wouldn't fail.
That's not a recommended strategy.
Over the past couple of years, I've created a more robust workflow for ensuring our images are stored safely, with a minimum of hassle. Though it's a fairly dry topic, I figure it’s worth sharing in case it's helpful for someone else.
1. Copy photos from the SD card to my laptop
Duh. But there are a couple of considerations here. First, I use *big* (and, sadly, quite expensive) 256 GB UHS-II SD cards that store a whole bunch of photos, even from my 42 MP Sony A7R III. That way, I don't need to format them too frequently, so I retain some redundancy in case I spill Coke on my computer or something similarly dumb.
I import using Lightroom (using an Apple UHS-II SD card reader) and build Standard Previews (and .xmp files to accompany the images). As soon as possible, I'll quickly review all the photos to flag obvious rejects (X key) and shots that are worth a closer look (P key).
My files are still on my laptop for this process, as it’s fast when working through a bajillion images. I've got a 1 TB SSD on my M1 Macbook Air (2020) – get the biggest SSD you can afford. Use 'Auto Advance' on the Photo menu in Lightroom to speed this up.
I'll export the picks as .dng files (which retain Lightroom edits) onto my 2 TB Sandisk SSD. My export preset (see below) runs them through DxO Pure Raw 2, which takes a while, but it’s generally worth it for the image quality improvement. Pure Raw is magical.
The 2 TB Sandisk SSD becomes my working folder going forward, but let’s mentally put that aside for the moment...
2. Move the photos from the laptop to my 5 TB drive
Once the copies of the original 'picks' have been exported to the SSD, I use Lightroom to move the photos from my laptop over to my 5 TB Lacie Rugged USB-C drive.
This has a slower data transfer speed than the SSD, so I'll generally do this at the end of the day, over dinner or similar, when I can just leave it running.
3. Duplicate the 5 TB drive to a secondary drive
At this stage, I have all the photos on the Lacie Rugged hard drive. You always want to have at least two copies, so I’ll mirror the Lacie over to another, older 5 TB USB-A drive. Again, I'll do this when the computer is otherwise idle.
Once this is completed, I'm happy to format the SD card when needed.
At this stage, I have a copy of the best photos on my 2 TB SSD and a copy of all the images on each of the two 5 TB drives. Just make sure you store them all separately!
Now, I'll also go ahead and delete the rejects from Lightroom (on the primary 5 TB drive). Don't do it earlier, or Lightroom will try to import these images again each time you plug in the SD card.
4. Back up my SSD and primary 5 TB to cloud storage
The next stage requires good internet. I copy the images from the primary 5 TB drive to Google Drive. Don't use the secondary drive, as it'll still have your 'reject' images on there.
This will take forever, so I run it overnight and set the hard drive to not sleep in the system settings.
I've purchased 20 TB of storage for Google Drive. Yeah, that's really expensive. Sigh.
I've got my 2 TB 'working' drive set to routinely back up to a secondary Google Drive account, and the primary 5 TB set to copy files to my 'main' (20 TB) Google Drive.
My archival folder structure in Google Drive:
Region
–– Country
–––– Year
–––––– Location
–––––––– Date
5. Sync Google Drive with my Synology NAS
Yes, there's still one more step! I know. The fun continues. Fortunately, this one is automated.
My Google Drive(s) are both set to synchronize (one-way) with a Synology 1618+ NAS – now superseded by the 1621+ – (with Seagate IronWolf 10–14 TB hard drives) that I've got running permanently in New Zealand.
I use Cloud Sync from the Synology package center to set that up; you can use the Schedule tab to set this to happen overnight.
Once that's all finished, and I've confirmed the files are safe on the NAS, I can delete the files from the two 5 TB drives and get ready for the next big trip.
At this stage, I've got at least four copies of the 'good' photos:
My ‘working copy’ on a 2 TB Sandisk SSD.
The 'original' on my 20 TB Google Drive account.
The working file backup on my 5 TB Google Drive account.
On my Synology NAS.
All the non-rejected files are on both Google Drive and the NAS. If I need to access them for some reason, I search for them on Google Drive and download the file. That works fine if the internet is okay.
I've had some minor file corruption issues on the NAS, so I don't trust it as much, but it does serve as a physical backup that I can still access via the internet if I need to.
Conclusion
Phew. Well done for getting this far. I know this will all sound expensive (yeah, it is) and time-consuming (yup), but... it's a necessary evil if you're a working photographer.
I'll try to keep this article updated, but don't hesitate to ask questions below :)
Simon.
