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Storage and Backup - Saving Your Bacon - part 3 of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

by Mike McNamee Published 01/12/2015

Beyond securing the files from the weekend's wedding, there are other storage issues to consider. The final, graded, sharpened and sized files need to be retained for a period of your choosing which extends from the day you have delivered the album out to a time when you judge there is no chance of selling any wall portraiture. For commercial photography the timescales can be longer; a company might come back for images you shot of building progrssion decades later _ no copies, no sales! Also if you have an image stolen you may need an original to prove your copyright. Then there are heirloom files, holiday snaps and the like. Finally a new requirement of the times - surveillance camera footage. See the callout for a fuller list.

Once you recognise that backup has to include such a wide range of files, it becomes obvious that you need some form of scheduling and incremental backup so that (on our system) you are not writing just short of one million files each time. At Imagemaker we use a mixture of incremental, automated back ups (at night) but to protect against losing a morning's work we also use Beyond Compare to make a backup manually as required. Typical of this is just ahead of building a PDF file for press. In the past this has corrupted an InDesign file and so we are very cautious. We use Beyond Compare to update a copy of the current issue and at this stage of the production cycle it may only include the InDesign File, a couple of repaired RGB to CMYK TIFFs and a couple of late-breaking adverts. So typically the Beyond Compare is called upon to transfer about 10 files. When the pdf is proofed we may spot a couple of issues such as page furniture being absent or a poor bleed placement. This is repaired, backed up locally again, and then the PDF file is remade and overwritten. This, again, is relatively quick, but it is surprising how you forget modifications that you make and if you don't back up, then fail at PDF build, you might not find the fault on second time around.

NAS Boxes
Network Attached Storage (NAS) is the current lead technology and, driven by the need to stream and save home cinema videos and the like, it has become much cheaper and mainstream. The NAS box provides an environment into which you can plug a number of hard drives so as to build various sizes and types of RAID arrays and have access to them through your network. This immediately offers flexibility in that permission can be given for several users to access the NAS box as might happen in a studio with a number of photographers or retouchers. The number of hard drive bays in the box is fixed and they come in 2-, 4-, 5- and 8-bay options (more if needed). For the larger boxes you can leave some slots unfilled to allow for expansion. You can also choose to populate your box with 1, 2, 3, 4 or 6TB drives to build your capacity. Additionally, you have the option to have 'hot spare' drives in bays. These sit there silently watching the system and step in automatically as soon as a failing drive is detected and then self-repair the storage. The better NAS boxes come with the relevant software for RAID set-up and control, along with backup software for scheduling backup operations. In the system we have installed at Imagemaker, we have duplicated the NAS box offsite and the two are connected through a VPN Tunnel. This is not home-TV level of operation and you will need help in all probability. However, the smaller NAS boxes (say 2- and 4-bay) are regarded as suitable for home installers rather than IT professionals.

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Contact Mike McNamee

1st Published 01/12/2015
last update 09/12/2022 14:59:20

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