FreeFoto.com Out and about with Ian Britton, Principal Photographer for FreeFoto.com

Once you start taking digital photographs you soon realise storing them on your computer is an issue.

What happens if the hard drive fails or a family member accidentally deletes them?

Will the CD or DVD you copied them too still be readable in five years time?

Will you be forgiven if your computer is stolen and along with it all the wedding / holiday / family photographs?

When your business’s very life is totally reliant on digital images then you need a robust archival system.

So what do we do here at FreeFoto.com?

Well as soon as an image is exposed it has a value which we need to protect.

So the same day we make a copy of all the images onto 2 compact discs, one of which is stored of site.

The original files are also copied onto a number of Network Attached Storage (NAS) units, both on and off site.

Originally we started by building our own NAS units using 7 x 120 gig drives in a server case. They do the job but take up a lot of space and generate plenty of noise and heat.

We have two of these NAS units on site and one off site but remotely accessible.

These are now all full so we are now going down a new route using the Buffalo’s TeraStation which is a stand alone, of the shelf NAS, at a great price point.

The unit is configured as a Raid 5 and is compact with sleek, aesthetic design and ultra-silent operation.

Accessing the files is fast using our Gigabit Ethernet network.

Also at about a fourth the size of our previous NAS units it takes up a lot let space and is also runs nice and cool.

So all our images are archived three times using three different NAS units in the office.

And on two different machines off site, in two different locations, on two different continents.

Plus CD copies of everything on and off site

This might all seem a little over the top but in seven years we have had three hard disk failures and a number of CD’s that would not read.

But because of our strategy we have not lost any images because we always have a backup to go to.

So having taken the time to click, take the time to backup.