Cloud backups: I didn’t touch on them in this video because for most working photographers that shoot raw, there can never be enough bandwidth to keep your photos synced online. The ways I do backup online are that all our final client photos are stored in Dropbox, and our phones are always backed up to iCloud and Google Photos. If I had a fibre ISP, I would definitely be using other services but at the moment it doesn’t make sense.

Tyler, your videos are always so informative and reassuring. Please never stop making content! You have a very unbiased approach in your videos and it's easy to see. I love your photographs/videos and so please keep educating us all. Thanks!

Kudos to those who do all this backing up a back up for a back up on your backups. I'm just over here living on the edge of corruption.

Kraig Adams would have an anxiety attack with all the backup hard drives.

iJustine had pretty much the same storage problem that you have, so she called in Linus from Linus Tech Tips in Burnaby B.C. do a collab and build her a custom storage system so she wouldn’t have scores of portable hard drives littering her home. He did a great job.

I didn't even need any of the information from this video, I just loved how beautiful it looked lol

Perfect timing, thank you for making this video, Tyler!

A stellar video, Tyler! Thank you for sharing this.

I have this video saved in a playlist so I can always refer back to it. It’s that useful! Thank you Tyler!

what a great video, backups are so important and so underrated! thanks for sharing this great content with us! loved watching this!

Thanks so much for making this video man

Super helpful video being a working photographer too. I do more or less everything you covered, except for the chronosync bit, which will definitely clean up my routines - keep at it!

This is a great reminder and well thought out. A DP I used to work always says, "If it's not in 3 places, it doesn't exist." A friend of mine takes things a step further and does a cold-storage NAS pair that goes into a rotation that moves offsite to another location on a monthly basis.

My suggested solution: 1. Ongoing work-in-progress on external hard drive with backup to another external hard drive (your solution) 2. Last 5 years of finished work files (RAW) on local NAS with backup to external hard drive kept in another building 3. RAW files older than 5 years on external hard drive with backup to external hard drive kept in another building 4. All finished work (JPG) on the NAS with external hard drive backup 5. All finished work (JPG) also and on the Cloud if I need to access it while I'm out in the field. I have 1TB of storage on Onedrive with my Office 365 subscription

This is a FANTASTIC resource! Thanks so much. I know my current system is HORRIBLE, so this was just what I needed lol

"Two is one, and one is none." The codependent anthem. ;) Great video, Tyler! One thing I would recommend checking out is Lightroom CC. It's not as powerful as Classic obviously, but if your editing workflow involves Classic AND Photoshop, then swapping CC for Classic isn't as big of a deal, you're just doing a little more lifting in PS. The thing I love most about CC is the cloud syncing and being able to tweak edits on my phone from anywhere when I have some time to kill but I'm without my laptop.

love how this videos is shot, what are you using? Also super helpful information, thank you!

Top video mate. I’m currently trying to improve my photography backup too. It’s so hard to find the most effective and efficient way. This video definitely gave me some ideas. CHEERS.

Thank you for the informative video - you answered all my questions and funnily enough I have the same storage system as you. I was contemplating a RAID or NAS system - questions answered - thanks again

Thanks for sharing your tips about backup. It was very helpful!

Love it!! I’ve always just bought new external every year. I also keep all my final Film and Photo client stuff in Google Drive unlimited storage. Great video.

Great stuff! A few questions: Do you keep the old video files after you've finished the job and have the final cut saved? (I keep hanging on to old files that have been edited and completed). What is your advice on setting this up when the system has been up and running but with no real planning. i.e. copies and drives all over the place/different computers/versions of Lr? Does Chronosync help that? Does it freak Lr out when you move media to different locations (as I've found) it can. I didn't see the shirt because I was hanging on every word, Obi-Wan.

Great video, Tyler! I keep seeing you around Calgary. Saw you getting your photo taken in a red coat in front of the LRT yesterday!

I’m new to photography and and Lightroom. What do you mean when you refer to keeping your catalog on your system drive and backups to an external?

First time I heard to a real discussion of photography and video backup problems and solutions even though nothing is quite right, and everything helps. I'm in the same backup boat. Have tried several cloud based systems to supplement local backups but not finding them designed for me and have quit them both. Your discussion was helpful. I'll check out more of your work. Thanks.

Can you suggest what's the best external drive to buy.. I own a Samsung T5 for active projects ...but need something reliable for backups

Some great tips here. I don't think I use anywhere near as much drive space as you (maybe around 2TB per year of photos), but my solution might be appealing now that you are on team USB-C. I use the same dongle as you when I'm mobile, and the CalDigit TS3 at my desk (I used to have the Plugable Thunderbolt 3 dock, but it only passes 60W of charging, and I wanted the full 80 for my MBP 15"). At first I grumbled about the "forced" USB-C life, but now that I've bought all the cables/adapters, it's honestly pretty great. I use ONE cable to "dock" my computer at my desk, which connects to a 16tb Promise RAID (TB2) daisy chained to an apple cinema display, and then my BenQ SW2700PT, other external drives (time machine, mobile disks), and a big USB-A hub for all the other things. I basically have a full desktop workstation with one cable and my laptop in clamshell mode with my wireless keyboard/mouse, or a mobile editing solution. I keep a copy of my current year on an SSD (1TB T5), as well as previous year copies on my Pegasus 16tb disk (in RAID 5, so 12 useable). When I'm home, I edit off of the Pegasus, when I'm mobile, off the T5. Instead of mirroring like you are, I use the "Synchronize Bidirectional" mode after either returning for a trip, or after an editing session if I'm at my desk. This keeps my Capture One library identical on my redundant "desktop" setup, and on my mobile drive. I then use a cheap Seagate 4tb drive (like yours) to make mirrored backups when mobile. I don't backup the Pegasus because RAID 5 is already redundant, and I have the T5 synchronized most of the time that I'm at my desk. Now if only I could afford a few more Samsung T5 SSDs! Then I could have my entire library with me on the go. As it is now, I keep my 1TB with the current year of photos, which usually runs out sometime in the 6-8 month range 🙄 I then swap the library to a 2TB "slow" SSD, and leave the T5 empty for the rest of the year, or just make a new library for the rest of the year and merge them later. There is a great workflow writeup that gave me some of the ideas I've employed, though I have modified it slightly (or don't do some of the things he recommends... mainly because I'm lazy). If I were to adhere to his methodology, I'd buy a NAS to backup my RAID, but I guess I'm willing to live on the edge a little and hope that I don't have two drives simultaneously fail at the same time that my mobile disks are corrupted 🤷🏻‍♂️ www.martinbaileyphotography.com/2017/04/26/the-mobile-photographers-image-management-strategy-podcast-570/

Great vid. Again, you highlight the importance of back-ups and give options and insight into your workflow. Gets people thinking, even if there are varying opinions about the ‘best’ way to create an optimal back-up process. Next Vid Request: Colour Calibration! How do you do it, why is it important, what tech do you use! Please and thx. Cheers

Hey Tyler - I feel your pain with the travel backup dilemma. I run into the same exact problem with traveling and it seems like there ought to be a better solution. I hope someone can speak to that. I shoot 5-6tb a year, mostly stills. My set up is somewhat similar to yours. I'm curious, would you be able to read the drives from your Synology with a Dock? I'll share how I do my file management below. I run 3 OWC Maximus' (2 bay raids) for my most recent three years of work, two Seagate HD's for travel, and a slew of External HD's in CRU drive boxes. The OWC's currently are "2018" (6tb), "2017" (6tb), and "2016" (6tb). When 2018 rolled around, I took the drives out of 2015 and label them "2015 A" and "2015 B". I stashed the B drive off site and remember to sync it up if I do any major work with files on the A drive with the App Superduper! (an app similar to the one you use). I also use Superduper to sync a 3rd drive for each of my current OWC raid's (2018 etc) and keep that 3rd drive (ei: 2018 C) offsite with all my B drives (like the 2015 B and previous years) in their own CRU drive box. For travel... pretty simple. I call my drives "Travel Buddy 1" and "Travel Buddy 2". I either dump to both drives using Photo Mechanic, or just use Superduper after I dump files so I can sync the travel drives. I run into the same problem you're having where I'll want to back up all the travel files to the OWC Raid, but often keep a duplicate copy on the Travel Buddys of the most interesting or urgent shoots so I can still export full size jpgs. This is often the case when I have back to back jobs mixed with personal travel and want to be able to finish delivering images to a client (or have that option while traveling). After all that, sometimes it's a nightmare syncing up LR catalogues to folder locations and moving files around that have been partially updated, or you're not sure what state they're in, or which drive has the files were the most recently updated. I've been trying hard to be diligent about keeping files on the OWC Raid, clearing off the Travel Buddys (just like you would an SD Card), and working off of smart previous when I'm away, but that doesn't always gitcha where you need to go.

Great video! Do you have videos about the 7r III?

Great video Tyler 👌🏼

Convenient.... I was literally just backing up all my stuff 😂😂😂

Thanks for the backup tips. When you have finished using the 2020 drive for example, do you carefully store both the original drive and the backup drive somewhere for future access and where do you recommend keeping your Lightroom catalogue backups? Also I’m glad I’m not the only one who gets confused over storage solutions. I’m a relatively new photographer and I find I stress over file storage so much, it makes my brain hurt and takes the fun out of editing my photos. I do also own a NAS drive but unfortunately don’t trust it enough to use it for storage at the moment, on account of one of the drives failing after only 6 months in. Haven’t got around to sorting it out, but I did think I could use it as additional backup for finished edits which would then also be easier to access than my portable HDs.

Premium, important information. Superb presentation. Many thanks.

This was really helpful for me, thank you so much!!!

Great Video! Would you mind to show us an example of your file structure? Like, how you arrange your folders on your drives and computer. I know - it's different from person to person and for what purpose but it might help a few people out there. I am a photographer/videographer myself and I'm lagging at this point pretty badly right now & I can't find a solution... Thanks for inspiring and sharing videos :)

Great video! One question, in Chronosync is there a reason that you use backup left to right vs mirror left to right?

The color correction and editing if this video is ON POINT!

where dud you get that shirt?!!! I need that in my life!

great info thanks!! :)

I’ve got a 10 tb server that is constantly backing up to a NAS. Everything is also synced to dropbox. When I’m done with the project i back it up to two disks and keep it on dropbox

Chronosync is great. Used now over a year and flawless

Believe or not after all automated software and hardware come back to traditional backup, for photos I use photo mechanic ahead so it cuts the unwanted photos b4 importing to LR

You need a synology 1918+...great video BTW

Question. Do you store your photos and video in separate directories? Being a KZfaqr, I often shoot both videos and photos on the same day so I keep them in the same project folder. I was wondering if anyone recommends one way vs another. Is it better to have a directory for ONLY photos and another for video projects? Thanks in advance!

I need to say I loved your shirt.

Listening to this... This system is insane! The rule is simple: 3-2-1. Three backups, two local, one remote. Have one copy on your computer, and a large archive of all your photos that you backup to a much more stable system. I'm a huge fan of Synology NAS systems. That's where all your photos mostly live. That's your two local. Then you do another copy somewhere else. Maybe that's backing up your main machine via Crash Plan (great service) or rolling your own in some fashion. But that covers you way better for almost everything. When you're on location? Two separate hard drives as you're doing now but you move data off of those ASAP as they are drives that get bumped around and are more prone to failure. You can also just get a single RAID 1 drive that'll protect you from a drive failure but two separate drives that are mirrored in some other way is still best. If you want to avoid the "oh no, I deleted everything" issue, something like a Synology will have snapshots that will let you roll back deletions and versions of your backups. This system covers you from: - Failed hardware - Corrupted files - User error (why did you delete EVERYTHING?) - Theft - Property damage - Fleeing the country due to a collapsing government...

Hope I'm not too late to know this~ I just started making film. I precious my work alot. I want to back them up and keep updating the data storage for them so the data can stays as long as I lived. Thanks for the sharing Tyler! Old video but Gold for me

What was the solution you found? I'm starting to run into that problem of several hard drives... Help🤷🏽

If I were you I would buy a server that you could configure as a NAS, much cheaper than a synology. I personally use a Dell R710 which has enough bays for me, but you could add on a DAS enclosure if you run out, for again relatively cheap (think 20-40 bays for sub $500).

Great video! Thanks for sharing. You have to get a NAS. The methodology you are using is a PITB, and very risky. You can get a buy on time option if needed, and your efficiency will go way up and your risk way down. They also make it easy to do an online (Dropbox, etc) sync automatically as well.

This was a great video! You identified key problems that come about when performing back ups....My personal favorite fear is when a person finishes their work and then backs up onto a second drive, or better still a third drive. Now, What if they made a mistake?...they wrote that mistake to their back ups and now....it is all gone and corrupted. I have come up with a simple solution. I'll add it to my boring video collection and upload it. I call it my Triple Drive back up. Very low cost system I should add.

Where did you get that fire shirt ?

So knowing that photo and video work is almost exclusively going to live on external drives, how do you decide what size drive to put into a new laptop?

I'm now in the same spot like you: many external hard drives, 1 NAS not so sure how to deal with it, a lot of new material every month, the same dilemma. I'll just keep watching you. It's fun. :)

Looking Sharp with that Welcome to Macintosh shirt! Also, how’s the MacBook Pro working now that you’ve had it for a while?

Can you leave the links of the chromosync, and the other apps that you used

Where can I get one of those Macintosh shirts?

Hi Tyler, hope you are well. I watched this Video awhile back. I wanted your opinion, as DropBox has just pushed out an update that will move your DropBox folder to another location, which will break everything for me, and it has made me look at my Backup solution again, as if I am going to go through the pain of re connecting so many things, after moving my DropBox folder, I may aswell take a look at competitors. Dropbox also now won't let you run it from an external Drive which also breaks this in a serious way for me. Can you suggest any good replacements? OneDrive for Business won't backup file types I need, iCloud Apple is useless for our type of files, and I can't find any other provider that does what I need. Anyway thought I would ask you, as if anyone knows, it will be you ! :) thanks in advance.

Those JPEG’s that you record to your CF card. Do you do anything with them once your raw files are imported and backed up? I’m wondering if chucking those JPEG’s up in the cloud could be the ultimate location redundant back up

I do a lot of editing in sketchy situations, in the car, on the couch, moving from one place to another, etc. - is it better to get an SSD to minimize risk and being able to move my computer around willy nilly while editing or doing anything else? I hate being tied down to one place when my HD is plugged in - then if I have to move quickly in a situation I have to eject it, wait for it to stop spinning, etc. whereas an SSD I could just pick everything up and move while it's still plugged in. Thoughts anyone? Thanks in advance.

Unraid is what you want. I have it set up on my old PC - it is working great!

Tyler! were i can buy that macintosh shirt??

Which USB hub are you using?? I just purchased my MacBook Pro-2018 and cant figure out which to buy...

Where did you get your Mac skin from?

Where do I get this wallpaper?

Good stuff!

Will you ever do a “my studio setup” video?

You are missing an essential scenario: a physical event at your home, such as a fire. This is why you should always save a copy of your data offsite. To me, the logical solution is to get a faster connection and use the cloud. If you cannot or will not do that, store your backup drives somewhere else.

Is there a good windows equivalent to Chronosync?

What's your opinion on 'clouds'?

3-2-1 Rule? Where is your offsite copy?

Stalman I would like to know how do you manage the photos you take with your phone, do you use google photos or apple photos or you just pass them to a hard drive?

What program is similar to chronosync for Windows?

User's comment: "Great video! Backup power is so important, especially when you're out camping or spending quality time with family. Can you recommend any specific brands or models for outdoor gear and home backup power products?"Reply: Absolutely! When it comes to outdoor gear and home backup power, I highly recommend the Segway Portable PowerStation Cube Series. It offers a massive capacity, powerful output, fast recharging, and comprehensive protections. Plus, its waterproof design ensures it's ready for any adventure, rain or shine. Check it out for reliable backup power during your camping trips or quality family time!

where did you get that shirt?!!!!

Regarding your problem at the end - how often do you access your several years old archives? Instead of spending scary amounts of money on giant HDDs and raid setups, you could give AWS Glacier a try. It seems to be decently affordable for crazy amounts of cloud storage, but the downside is you don’t get immediate access to the files if you need to download something. Personally, since I’m going back to school, I’m just milking the free OneDrive storage I get from the UofC so I can have an offsite backup of my RAW files... but I don’t generate anywhere near as much as you do.

I typically stick to the advice that recommends the 3-2-1 approach: 3 backups on 2 different media types -- 1 of those media should be offline (hence 3,2,1).

Who makes that card reader?

Can you explain why it's not ok to use or edit off of your backup drive? What potential problems could arise?

Very informative video 👍🏻😄

Carbon Copy Cloner can create archives of deleted files, and those archives can be deleted automatically after a specific amount of time. That would help with accidental deletions. Anyway I have a system similar to you yours. Although It is nice to have the whole photo collection on a single huge drive for archive search. I think I want to cull my archive to 50% of files, at least for jobs. Also considering converting to DNG stuff I am not passionate about as that halves the file size of Sony ARW raw files.

Just curious as to what brand card reader you use to transfer files. They all seem so cheaply made these days and I've heard that people have lost data on the actual transfer due to poor design.

I saw some videos on KZfaq, youtubers taking help from LinusTech for backup solutions. You can do that too

I had 5 back ups in HDDs and SSDs then my house burn down I didn’t but can you imagine

One of the key reasons why Photo Digi Techs / Photographer’s preferred Capture One for years was their use of ‘Sessions’ instead of ‘Catalogues’. What that means is, each job you shoot is in a self contained folder hierarchy that can be moved and copied and opened independent of a home ‘Catalogue’. Whilst Lightroom may for the most part, work for a lot of your workflow- it obviously gets confusing and messy when you start talking about multiple computers, multiple drives, and multiple users. A Capture1 Session can easily be moved from for eg a ‘on location’ shoot laptop, to 2 hardrives, to a home computer, to an art director’s drive, then on to a Retoucher... with all users able to open and make changes along the way...

I appreciate how serious you are about data security but if I was working with that many hard drives I would no question build a raid. Solves all the problems you are talking about + internal drives are much cheaper and often faster

Super duper is actually a pretty nice app. I use it to manually sync files between computers in the network.

Very helpful. Did you rethink your choice of deleting immediately as you mentioned or are you still sticking to that choice? Also, what does synchronize deletion mean? Feel free to do more ChronoSync videos for those of us needing a little more help.😊

I dropped my HDD as I was talking about getting a back up for my back up. Bow its I either send it to a lab and pay 1000 bucks or not access any of the data

The only thing I do that drastically speeds up my workflow was infest in Photomachanic. It processes the RAW files light years faster than Lightroom. I cull through all the photos then I import only the keepers into Lightroom. So much faster than downloading with Lightroom. Cheers

Is this still your workflow for backing up?

Thanks

This guy is a savage! HAhaha I love it, great video.

Hi Tyler, something for you to consider: I'm a photographer and had the unfortunate experience of burglars breaking in and stealing my desktop computer AND backup hard drives (among many other things). What saved the day for me was a third OFFSITE backup. This was a duplicate backup of my entire computer hard drive, plus all important project files from the last 15 years of my working career. Without that offsite backup I would've been up the creek without a paddle.

I can understand if you travel a lot, you move towards external drives, but a NAS has always made way more sense to me.

This turned from a video on backup strategy for professional photographers to one of Help Me, Obi Wan. So, maybe not great video for those looking for the perfect backup strategy, more one of how even professional photographers who are on the road a lot struggle with this stuff. There's a few good videos on KZfaq about backup solutions for photographers, for instance one of the first I watched was "My Complete Photography Data Workflow" by Travis Harris -> kzfaq.info/get/bejne/rqt3o71e1NO5c4E.html there are others. I'm not a travelling photographers, I always come home and download to my desktop computer; I have a series of RAID 1 boxes with 2Tb drives, I keep it small because too many eggs in one basket, etc. Also drives become less reliable the more data you cram in (more platters, more potential fail points, all you need is one drive head to fail, and the entire drive is at risk) A drive head is a fraction of a millimetre, hovering on a cushion of air a few nanometers above the surface of the platter with the aid of a slider acting as a wing as the platter spins at 7,200rpm. Bump the drive while on (i.e. a standing drive falls over or knocked off a desk), and it may impact the surface and scratch it, and from there may rip off the slider, resulting in a head crash and the entire surface getting scratched and that platter becoming unrecoverable. With conventional spinning platter drives, I try not to move them around more than necessary, and especially not if on, just in case. That includes any laptop with a spinning drive. In the case of my RAID boxes, they stay fixed. I use Capture One, which can use Sessions for on-the-road catalogs and imported into the main catalog once back in the studio, but I would think you could use a travelling Lightroom catalog and import it into the main catalog when back home, and once integrated, the travelling catalog can be disposed of, and a new one created for the next trip. That way there is only one master, along with temporary travelling catalogs. Certainly my current setup is anywhere from ideal, it is matter of cost. Before anything else, my computer and drives are connected to a UPS with surge protection to protect against power surges and brief outages, it has come in good use a few times. If you have a power outage while using a drive, firstly the data being driven would be corrupted, secondly, the drive head won't be able to park before it spins down,possibly resulting in stuck heads. Obviously not a concern for a laptop with a connected USB-powered SSD drive. I use RAID 1 as it is easier for me to maintain individual drives rather than large RAID sets, and I don't do video, so don't need extra speed. I have gone over to using SoftRaid Lite so I can use cheaper 4-bay drive boxes (Sainsonic) without Raid controllers, so far works perfectly. SoftRaid is owned by OWC now, so naturally they offer some nice drive enclosures that rely on the included SoftRaid. I have a bunch of drive drawers from OWC (NewerTech StoraDrive) for old drives, backups and clones, but where my setup is not complete is that beyond RAID 1, a disaster contingency, I don't have a 3rd unconnected drive backup of most of the photo drives in a 2nd location, nor do I have cloud backup. So if there was a Ransomware attack which encrypted everything connected, I'd be screwed. Similar if there was a fire.

What about small NAS driver

Hey Tyler, looking good. Who did your hair? lol jk. Wow you're a mess on this backup thing. Haha You have a WAY better handle on this than most of this and this is one of the greatest vids on I have seen on the subject. Love the channel, Keep it up.

You should recommend Amazon prime storage as a cloud solution. Its free with amazon prime and it uploads photos pretty fast too.