This isn’t the typical Live Seasoned post, but since so many of us deal with digital photo files, I thought some readers might find it useful (just bookmark this for that rainy day when you come home to a “missing” external hard drive).
"You would need to contact a data recovery company" LaCie Website
The Backstory
I’m sharing this information because maybe this will be useful for others thinking about photo storage. Or maybe you’ll have a suggestion for my photo storage and backup situation?
I’ve been using digital cameras since 2003, and have built up an archive of thousands and thousands of photos. I’ve always tried to be careful about storage, but if this experience taught me anything, it’s that I still don’t have a perfect system. A few things to know : I’ve always used and loved Apple computers, and don’t see that changing anytime in the future. I’ve also always used the iPhoto software that comes with the operating system for sorting, viewing, and sometimes editing my photos. So, original copies of all of my photos are imported from my camera to iPhoto, I then export specific photos that I want to share with people (either through the blog, email, or for printing). I don’t really see this changing in the near future because I don’t have time to learn anything else right now, but I do assume that there may be a day when I move away from iPhoto.
For years I kept my iPhoto libraries and exported photos on my computer and would use a relatively small (always less than 1 TB) external hard drive as a backup. Eventually, I bought a MacBook Air and at that point decided that the computer didn’t have the storage space I needed, so I would store all photo files on an external hard drive and plug it in whenever I wanted to access them. At that point, I realized that I would need to decide how to backup the hard drive. Enter a RAID drive.
