Managing expectations. Thats really what its all about. We want to know what it is you are interested in and hope we can provide relevant information geared toward the photographic community. We will listen to what you have to say and then post some other tidbit that we think you really need to hear. As Apple specialists, we have an obvious bias, so forgive if we slant our posts toward Cupertino. We will try to offer insight into that place where technology meets photography whether it is data management, problem solving or general practices that allow you to spend more time being what you want and less being what we are.
If you’re not a photographer or a Mac user (Full Disclosure: I am not a photographer, I barely know how to use my PowerShot SD900.), fear not; we will cover important cross platform issues like, um, lets see: backups (Thanks Stephen). Do you have a back up and recovery plan? How current is this so-called backup you make? (I know youre not really doing it) Leopard + OWC hard drive = Time Machine Backup = peace out. I just today recovered an important file. In under a minute I had gone back to yesterday’s backup and restored the missing files (I had trashed off the desktop but not uploaded to the share: BAD). I suppose one of the problems with Time Machine, or any other successful backup is the tendency to get lazy and assume its all backed up. ALSO BAD.
Ok, to be fair, we would NEVER recommend this as the only backup solution for anyone that ran their business off their Mac. This is bare minimum. This is what I have set up for my mom. But it works. Best practice would be to have a backup and an archive. For example, you would backup your data to one location and then send that data to another staged system (tape drive, hard drive, etc) and then take that archive to an off site and secure location. The benefit here is the ability to have quick access to recent items in the backup (TM) and then an incremental data set that can be accessed in the event your other backup crashes, burns or otherwise becomes inaccessible. Yes, I do know how much data photographers create. The system becomes more expensive and complex the greater the storage needs but the theory is the same. Just don’t gamble with your data, you worked hard to create or steal it and recovering it will cost a lot more than any backup you put in place.
Geof Bowie www.thinkfixed.com
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