Everyone knows that backing up data is important, yet many either put it off, or worse, put blind faith into the integrity and durability of their drives and don’t even consider backups. As pro or serious photographers in the digital age, backing up our images isn’t just smart, it’s critical.

But, we’re all busy, and finding the time to do this isn’t always easy. So we let it slip by for a little longer until that day arrives that the computer can’t read the disc containing thousands of images.

New operating systems,such as OS X 10.5 on the Mac,and Vista for PC users offer backup systems. I do most of my work on a Mac and appreciate the automatic backups provided by Time Machine. I have a 2TB OWC Guardian Maximus external drive dedicated to backups that is handled by Time Machine, and a second 2TB drive, this one a Western Digital My Studio II, which is used to backup the backup.

Why two backups? Call me paranoid, but it’s my feeling that having one copy isn’t good enough. Keeping my data in three places seems much more disaster proof and allows me to keep a copy offsite if I wish. Most of the drives come with bundled backup software, and for the Vista or XP user, I would recommend using something like Retrospect or NTI Shadow over the program included with Windows since you have more options such as scheduling, and better recovery options.

While you can make a full backup of your system, I only backup my data files and images. I also have these on a separate drive from my applications to further compartmentalize my system and make organizing a bit easier.Time Machine runs every hour and also does a daily and weekly backup. However, one problem that I’ve found is that it will fail to backup any file that is open when the process runs. So, if you have Adobe Photoshop Lightroom or Bridge running, the files in use will not be backed up. So I still need to remember to shut down applications at the end of the day. Other programs may not have this problem, but I don’t have firsthand experience to verify this.

For the second backup, I run NTI Shadow and do a full backup of my OWC drive onto the Western Digital drive. This is also scheduled, so I don’t have to rely on my increasingly faulty memory.

To be completely safe, I probably should be using yet a third drive, and storing one drive offsite to keep my files safe in the event of theft or fire.

Regardless of what configuration works for you, the critical point is that you have some sort of regular backup plan. The more automated it is, the more likely you will be to actually use it, and be safe when the bad day arrives. Nothing is worse than seeing a “Disc can’t be read” message when you have no backup!