Spencer Boerup Photography | Arizona Wedding Photography Tucson Phoenix Scottsdale Portrait Photographer

Diane Stredicke - Spencer,
Thank you for such a valuable write up. I am fairly new to the complexities of backing up as a photographer. It’s a very intense process because of the overwhelming amount of space that raw files, tiffs and full size jpegs take. I use my iMac hard drive as my operating and applications hard drive, I have a Drobo filled with 4 1TB drives that I use as a working drive (all images). I have a single 1tb drive that I run Time Machine on for my applications/system drive. I have another 1tb drive that I backup image files to from the Drobo. Once that is full, I move on to another 1tb drive as a backup.

I know this system won’t work forever. I am really interested in the Sans Digital setup you mention.

I have already bookmarked this and am sure I will return to your article many times.

Sam Hassas - I am but a mere mortal in the face of you Specer in understanding all this stuff. Thanks for the dope write-up my friend. I will refer all that ask about storage here. I’ve copied this exact set-up

I want Spencer’s babies! I’m sure a firm hand shake will do however.

dannyROD - Spencer, great write up! Very informative, in-depth explanation of technical details that many folks don’t have the time to learn on their own. One suggestion / request I have is for you to consider covering a few more bits and pieces that were left out.

How do you organize the files on your personal / business drives as far as folder hierarchy goes (personal documents, contracts, invoices, RAW / edited jpg / blog-sized photo organization, music, etc.)?
How long do you keep client images for, and, if longer than the life of your drives, what do you do with them afterward for archiving?
Where do you designate your scratch disk for Photoshop / Lightroom catalog and cache? How do you organize / maintain / backup your LR catalogs?

I’ve got a system that works well for me, this is just info that I think a lot of people could benefit from on top of this well-versed article. Also being a hands on do-it-yourselfer, I’m also curious to hear about other folks’ workflows and systems to find out if there’s a better or more efficient way to do something =). Thanks for the write up!