We all have our own story of why we started using a backup. Mine began in 2015, when I started my own photography company. I had just captured one of my first weddings for the business, and then copied and edited the images to an external hard drive. While I was finalizing my upload my worst nightmare happened, the hard drive crashed.

In the years after this wedding experience, I have invested a lot of time and energy on my finding a good backup. When I was using external hard drives, I found that the more data I had, the more worried I became. I couldn’t remember which parts I had already backed up and which parts I had forgotten.

As a photographer you create a lot of data, especially saving all the RAWs, creating PSD, PSB & TIF which can easily lead to 5GB or more. Before I started working with Drobo, I tested and tried a lot of other systems and cloud storage. I’ve never been a technical nut or PC-professional and was suddenly confronted with the problem of having to create a NAS-system or working with just any server for a backup. All of this always gave me the feeling of missing something.

Two years ago, I started using the Amazon cloud backup. The drawback was the speed of my internet connection at that time and the feeling that it may not be fully protected. In 2018, I adapted my workflow to a mix of Drobo as the allocated backup and Amazon Cloud as an online backup on top.

Finding Drobo helped me to relax again. It is easy to use in that no programming or other knowledge is needed to set it up. It combines my entire storage contraption into just one single unit and allows for increased storage by simply switching out the hard drives. It even backs up my backup so if a hard drive should default for any reason, my data is safe. For me it’s important to have ALL my files and data summarized and backed up in one place.

I have been using the Drobo 5D3 direct attached storage (DAS) as working drive and primary backup and the Drobo 5N network attached storage (NAS) solution for remote access. With that, I save every new session/shoot on my Drobo and synchronize it to my Amazon Cloud.

All in all, don’t wait till it’s too late. Many people think about getting a backup when their data is already gone. Being a professional photographer includes having a dependable backup in your daily or weekly workflow. I am again and again surprised, that many people don’t know how easy it can be to set up an efficient backup workflow. This might due to the fear of handling a complex system or not seeing the importance.

Jean Noir