I'm new to shooting MFDB tethered to my laptop, but loving it. I'm a little concerned though about writing everything to one portable hard drive. I'd feel better about it if my Aptus 22 would write to the CF card in addition to hard drive, but that doesn't seem to be possible. The risk of losing an entire shoot due to hard drive failure is too real and too scary. How do folks deal with this?
Juanito, you don't shoot directly to a portable drive, do you? If so, you should break this practice for a few reasons.
1.) The internal hard drive is faster at getting the data to begin with.
2.) Since you've already made yourself aware that failure happens, you could lose a shot or an entire shoot very easily.
Some have mentioned in this thread some very simple and some very convoluted ways of backing up for a shoot. And others have mentioned that way too much thought is put into this to begin with. Backup should be a very simple thing, but it can also be the result of a F-up to begin with. My method is simple and I don't mind sharing.
1.) Shoot to the drive
2.) Backup after every shot using a synchronization program (Chronosync is my fav)
3.) Always have the shoot in two places - so if you delete it off the laptop (which you should do after every shoot) back it up to another drive.
4.) Use dependable drives - G-Drive, Wiebetech, Firelite drives work for me. Stay far, far away from Lacie's and I've recently had an issue with Western Digital drives that left kind of a sour taste in my mouth about that one. read
death of a hard drive hereAnd as an added note, if you use chronosync, you should use the "backup deletions/move to archive" option as it will keep you from deleting something that you may have accidently trashed or misplaced. I've seen this happen with techs and photographers often.
While I will agree that some get a little crazy anal about backups and stuff, I do stick to the above rules for on-set backup and have a separate system for files that I archive for myself and for photographers that I work with and that system does involve off-site storage. For me, it's a matter of liability. I am entrusted with a high level of responsibility for quite a few people. If my studio burns down or someone breaks, how do I calculate the value of what I have just lost if I don't have it elsewhere.
hope that helps.
