With all the New Year resolutions I see posted on social media today, how about add one more resolution. Back up those family photo memories.
External hard drives are very reasonably priced these days. I picked up a 3TB drive for $119 and have spent the day decluttering physical and virtual stuff. And moving forward in the new year, how about develop a strategy for your most important images and documents.
The method you choose will depend upon your personal preference. I back up by a date and description method. For my business I'll create a folder named "2015" and within that folder will create a few sub folders. So the structure looks like this:
- 2015
- Portrait
- Commercial
- School
- Wedding
And within each folder will be the clients name and a bunch of metadata that my camera creates.
For you the file structure could look like:
- 2015
- Photos
- Banking
- Receipts/Warranty
- Email <<incredibly useful when you run into "issues" down the road>>
- Contacts <<ever upgrade a phone or operating system and lose all of your contacts?>>
How often should you do this? Why not monthly. When you sit down to pay your bills and reconcile your bank accounts (you are reconciling aren't you?) why not back up this important data. It WILL NOT get easier months from now.
One last thought. DO NOT create 100's of subfolders. Remember KISS (keep it simple stupid)
It's not IF it will fail... it's when.