Simple Automatic Image Backup Protocol for Photographers

How to backup your photos to prevent loss of your precious photos

Over the years I have seen so many photographers post in forums and on social media, looking for help on how to retrieve their valuable images from their failed hard drives, that it still STUNS me that they are NOT using a simple and automated backup system that ensures their images are safe.

Bikini Calendar Photography - Behind the Scenes
Bikini Calendar Photography – Behind the Scenes

For those of you that think that automatic backup of your images is unnecessary, then you obviously do not understand that every single hard drive WILL FAIL. That’s right, 100% of all hard drives and SSD’s will fail. HDD’s and SSD’ all have a finite life, some shorter than others, and unless you are a clairvoyant, they will fail before you can take action.

ALL Hard Drives WILL Fail
ALL Hard Drives WILL Fail

So you have NO OPTION but to employ a redundant backup system.

At our photography studio, we have been backing up our images automatically since 2002, and we have never lost a single image so I thought I would show you a simple backup protocol that has never let us down.

Danny Steyn Photography Studios - Natural Light Studio
Danny Steyn Photography Studios – Natural Light Studio

Please note that since we shoot several Terabytes of images for our studio each year, and since cloud storage services are priced based on the size of storage needed, and since uploading large quantities of huge image files uses significant bandwidth, we currently do NOT use cloud storage for our image backup. As prices for both storage and bandwidth continue to drop, this is something that we might consider in the future

But before we start, here are a few terms that you need to understand

  • NAS – network attached storage
  • RAID – random array of independent drives
  • NAS Enterprise Drive – a more durable hard drive certified for NAS enclosures
  • SYNCTOY – simple Free Microsoft Backup utility that creates the backups
  • Scheduled Task – something that happens automatically at a given time

So this is our Simple Photo Backup Protocol

All of our data, photographic images, and video are stored on NAS’s.

Danny Steyn Image Storage NAS devices - 3 Versions
Danny Steyn Image Storage NAS devices – 3 Versions

We use three NAS devices. Our primary NAS storage device is called “STORAGE”.

As you can see from the image above, we have tried many different brands and models of NAS devices, but we have now standardized on the Synology DS15+ and more recent Synology DS17+. These are 5 bay NAS enclosures and they can take any size of hard drive, but they all need to be the same size.

Synology DS1515+ 5-Bay drives with 5 x 8TB NAS Enterprise HDD's Striped in RAID 5
Synology DS1515+ 5-Bay drives with 5 x 8TB NAS Enterprise HDD’s Striped in RAID 5

We currently populate the bays with 8TB WD Enterprise NAS Hard drives, and then in the Synology Control Manager, we stripe them in a RAID 5 configuration (a very simple procedure).

Note that hard drives certified for NAS usage are significantly more durable than the standard consumer hard drives and most of them have last us several years of continuous usage. Remember that ALL hard drives will fail over time. You should read this paper discussing Enterprise vs Consumer drives

Striping the NAS in RAID 5 means that even though we have 5 x 8TB drives with 40TB of overall storage, we only end up with around 30TB of usable storage as part of the drives are used as the parity portion of the RAID. This means that when one drive fails you do NOT LOSE ANY DATA, you simple pull out the failed drive and replace it with a new identical drive and the RAID will automatically rebuild the RAID and all data will be saved and accessible.

So now you understand what our primary STORAGE NAS looks like.

Now we have two more identical Synology NAS’s, all populated with the same 5 x 8TB NAS hard drives and also striped in RAID 5.

These additional NAS’s are called “BACKUP” and “OFFSITE

The STORAGE and BACKUP NAS’s live at our studio. Our OFFSITE NAS lives at our home.  If you keep all your images in one place, you are still totally exposed and vulnerable to a break in and theft or a total loss due to a fire / flood. By having an entire backup offsite at another location, you are ensuring that you are not exposed to this vulnerability.

Avoid Catastrophic Loss due to Fire
Avoid Catastrophic Loss due to Fire

For our automatic backup, we use the free Microsoft  SYNCTOY software that comes with Windows. This is a powerful backup utility that can easily be configured in many ways. It is way easier to use than its predecessor ROBOCOPY.

Microsoft SyncToy Backup Utility
Microsoft SyncToy Backup Utility

We set up SYNCTOY to write one-way only. That is we only write from STORAGE to BACKUP, never the other way. It examines the data on our STORAGE drive and compares it to what is on our BACKUP drive and if there are images on our STORAGE drive that are not on our BACKUP drive, it copies from STORAGE to BACKUP. That way we are only adding images to BACKUP.  We are never syncing both ways.

In the Windows Task Scheduler we set SyncToy to run every evening at 5pm. We are always at the studio at this time but we typically wrapping up the day. So we are there to confirm the backup is running automatically, but it is not slowing our system down when we are doing the bulk of our editing work.

And then once a week we physically take in our OFFSITE NAS to the studio, backup from STORAGE to  OFFSITE and bring it home the same day.

We also make note, on a form taped to the OFFSITE NAS, of the day that we backed the data, as sometimes you forget when last you backed it up.

Synology-NAS-OFFSITE for offsite backup redundancy
Synology-NAS-OFFSITE for offsite backup redundancy

This way if our studio was a total loss in a fire, at the worst case scenario we would potentially only lose the images for the week that we did not back up to the OFFSITE drive.

There are also some tremendous benefits to using the Synology drives. They have so many cool apps, and offer so many functions that I will only discuss a few below.

  • You can set up your NAS to give you access to your entire image library from anywhere in the world so that if you are traveling and you need to access a specific image for a client or magazine, you just log into a secure portal, provided by Synology, that then allows you to access your NAS and you can download, or upload, any image you need.
  • I also use a SYnology NAS at home as my media server for our TV’s and blue tooth speakers, so that every TV in our house can stream the movies and music that I have saved on the NAS.
  • And there are many more useful APPS

As I mentioned before we have learned a lot of things regarding image backup

  • All hard drives fail, even the NAS certified drives and especially consumer hard drives. We have lost close to 30 drives in 16 years but we are spinning about 72 drives across all our NAS’s continuously 24 hours a day
  • When we buy a new Synology NAS enclosure and the 5-drives we need for the NAS, we always buy at least another 2-3 spare identical drives. This is to ensure that when we inevitably have to replace a drive, we have the exact same size and type of drive.
  • NAS devices can also fail, just like PC’s. When we lost NAS’s before Synology, the hard drives still had the data, but the replacement NAS enclosures would not rebuild the data. But we had redundant backups so we were OK. We have only had one Synology NAS fail to date, and when we installed the drives in the NAS, the drives automatically rebuilt and were functioning perfectly within a day.
  • Multiple NAS’s will add additional noise and heat to your environment, so we created our NAS area just outside our offices in the studio to reduce the noise Make sure you have enough A/C as multiple 5-drive enclosures will generate heat. We routed an additional cooling duct from our A/C system to vent directly above the NAS enclosure shelves, and this ensures the cool operation of the NAS’s.
  • And remember, if you do not have your backup scheduled AUTOMATICALLY, you will forget to do it and you will end up losing data. Trust me on this, I have seen this happen with one of my hired photographers that was backing up his personal images manually and he thought he was up to date, and yet he was almost 4 months behind when his drive crashed, losing 4 months’ worth of  own images.

Anyway, this simple set-it-and-forget-it approach has helped us avoid the inevitable drama that comes from losing precious and irreplaceable images, and the potential lawsuits from angry customers.

I hope this helps

Danny Steyn

 

Behind the Scenes of 2016 Oceanette Calendar Shoot

We had the distinct pleasure of shooting the 2016 Oceanette Calendar once again, this time for the 10th Anniversary of the Calendar.  This calendar has become so popular all over the world and has featured many beautiful girls throughout the years.  This year was especially fantastic as we had one of our original girls, Wendy, from the very first calendar shoot with us again after 10 years!  The photographers, crew and everyone had such a great time and we are all very excited to see the final results and the Behind the Scenes video when it is realeased later this year.

Make Up Artists hard at work, making all the girls look stunning!

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Prepping for the cover shot!calendar-photography-fort-lauderdale-0006 calendar-photography-fort-lauderdale-0007 calendar-photography-fort-lauderdale-0008 calendar-photography-fort-lauderdale-0009 calendar-photography-fort-lauderdale-0010 calendar-photography-fort-lauderdale-0011 Shooting some ariel inside with a drone!calendar photography fort lauderdale calendar-photography-fort-lauderdale-0013 calendar-photography-fort-lauderdale-0014

If you have a calendar that you would like shot for your company, give us a call at the studio to inquire at 954-351-8884.

 

Welcome to our new Photography Studio – Construction is Complete!

Sorry for the long delay in updating our Photography Studio Construction Project thread, but I am happy to report that our studio is finally finished (well as complete as anything can ever be!)

When we moved into our previous studio we had the privilege of getting it complete prior to move in, but with this build project we had to move in and start shooting while we were still involved in the construction, so we have had to balance our construction schedule with our shooting schedule, which fortunately is up significantly on last year.

We have been shooting in our new photography studio for the past 6 months. It is an exquisite studio and it provides us with many benefits over our previous location, but of course owning our own building allows us to modify and tailor it specifically to our needs, and we hope to see some capital appreciation over the years.

Danny Steyn Photography Studios Fort Lauderdale
Danny Steyn Photography Studios Fort Lauderdale

Kim did a tremendous job with landscaping and improving the exterior look of the studio and we have had many people, including the City, compliment us on the new appearance. The existing signage was easily changed out. We will install signage on the front of the building when the time is right.

Danny Steyn Photography Studios Fort Lauderdale
Danny Steyn Photography Studios Fort Lauderdale

The Lobby is where we meet with our clients and hopefully it creates the right first impression. It is light, and roomy and provides a comfortable seating area with a large 60 inch TV which runs our photographic images in a slide show. The display is easily customizable depending on the clientele we are servicing that day.

Danny Steyn Photography Studios - Front Lobby
Danny Steyn Photography Studios – Front Lobby

 

From the LOBBY you enter the GALLERY. We use the GALLERY to showcase our work and to transition from the two shooting studios to the prop room and bathrooms. Currently we just have customer images on the wall while we are busy framing images and hanging lights. Once this area is complete I will update with new images.

Danny Steyn Photography Studios - Gallery
Danny Steyn Photography Studios – Gallery

 

The EDITING OFFICE is where we spend most of their lives and it has four dual monitor work stations, and place for several more. It is served from our Servers and NAS Storage and Backup Servers located on rack server in the Prop Room.

Danny Steyn Photography Studios - Editing Offices
Danny Steyn Photography Studios – Editing Offices

 

The PROP ROOM is always the hardest place to keep organized. The more props, lights, softboxes etc. you have, the harder it is to find space to store them other than having them clutter up your shooting space. And we typically shoot till we are too exhausted to pack things away before heading home at night. Fortunately we learned many lessons at our previous studio and made several organizational changes for our new studio. As you can see there is a place for everything and everything is in its place. We employ a custom designed pulley and rail system to get the heavy and bulky props off the floor and onto the shelving space above. This keeps the floor clean and work bench easily accessible for building more props!!!

Danny Steyn Photography Studios - Prop Room
Danny Steyn Photography Studios – Prop Room
Danny Steyn Photography Studios - Prop Room
Danny Steyn Photography Studios – Prop Room

 

The KITCHEN and MAKEUP STATION area is smaller than we would have liked but we had to make do with the space we had. You will recognize the kitchen cabinets from our previous studio which we were fortunately able to reuse. This space is very organized, and we now have separate 20A electrical outlets through the mirror at each of the 4 MUA stations, allowing 4 models to be styled simultaneously using heavy amp curling tongs, dryers etc. We also upgraded the electrical circuits in the Prop Room where we do all the ironing and steaming of our client’s wardrobe.

Danny Steyn Photography Studios - Makeup Stations and Kitchen
Danny Steyn Photography Studios – Makeup Stations and Kitchen

 

And finally we come to the twin hearts of our studio – the shooting areas.

The wonderful light that we have in our NATURAL LIGHT STUDIO is a great addition to our studio. This is something that we did not have in the past, and the ability to shape natural light has given us a totally new shooting dimension. We also installed window blinds, roll down backdrops against the far wall as well as a pulley system that provides the ability to easily hang several layers of curtains or props to create depth and interest, which combined with the length of the studio makes it perfect for building our elaborate boudoir photography sets.

Danny Steyn Photography Studios - Natural Light Studio
Danny Steyn Photography Studios – Natural Light Studio
Danny Steyn Photography Studios - Natural Light Studio
Danny Steyn Photography Studios – Natural Light Studio

 

Our PRODUCT and PORTRAIT STUDIO was the last phase to be completed as it has been serving as our storage area while we have been shooting and working on the other rooms. It features a full size seamless cyclorama wall as well as motorized back-drop rolls and pull out sliding backdrops for fast background changes. And of course it has a drive through roller shutter door that allows vehicles into the studio, either for shooting or for offloading location equipment.

Danny Steyn Photography Studios - Product and Portrait Studio
Danny Steyn Photography Studios – Product and Portrait Studio

Hope this thread gives you ideas on what do in your own shooting spaces.

Great Product Photography Sells!

Our motto is “Compromise Elsewhere”!  If you are looking to sell your product on the open market these days you need to be ahead of your competition. And one of those ways is with making your product look the best it can be.  Time after time we have had clients come to us after they have tried shooting their own images and after they get the finished product from us, they call to let us know that the images are doing the sales for them!  So stop wasting you time and come to the best!.

Call us today at the studio to discuss your product photography needs, big or small!

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Commercial Photography Photoshoot

Recently finished a commercial photography project with one of our most fun and favorite clients, shot here in the studio and on location.  The models, Dave, Shannon, Sally and David were great to work with as well!  Thanks Brittany Lammon for the great make up job!

Some behind the scenes shots!