A Photographer’s Nightmare: Hard Drive Failure Is Not a Joke, Back Up Your Photos
By Jim Bask
From fstoppers.com
The day I’ve been preparing for arrived unexpectedly this past Saturday as I went to my Mac to export photos for a client, just like it was any other day. But I quickly found out it wasn’t going to be like other days when I found my photo and video files had disappeared from my Lightroom catalog.
I calmly checked my drive to see why my catalog claimed that there were missing images, and Lightroom was not lying. Five terabytes of my hard work had disappeared. I’d like to believe that I take great caution and care when dealing with my drives and files. I still don’t know why — it may have been a terrible glitch — but that’s not the point of this article.
PSA: Back Up Your Work
This article is simply a four-word PSA reminder: back up your work. It is not a joke and it can happen to anyone at any time. The reasons are endless on how you can lose your work: formatting errors, improper connectivity, read/write crash, file corruption, physical damage, bad sectors, glitches, and even unknown causes.
The Good News
Fortunately enough, I prepared for this very day to come. I visited my off-site drive location that I backup to periodically. I successfully avoided losing all of my hard work by taking the necessary measures. Even with a successful backup and avoiding potential disaster, I found out there is room for improvement… read more