Backups, have them! Whether you be a photographer, videographer, graphic designer, web designer, web dev, web master who ever! Just have them. There are many methods and options to choose when setting up a backup process, here is how I see it.

Production (Server, system, computer, database, project): This is where you do your work from, never overwrite a file that hasn’t been sent to a

Backup 1 (Hard drive, cloud, storage server): This is the backup number one, it’s better than none but adding on an extra

Backup 2 (Hard drive, cloud, storage server): Replicate of Backup1. Have this on another device/server/cloud then Backup 1. Ideally this will also be used as a cold storage that shall you ever need to transfer data from a backup you always use backup 1 source.

This system can be done on the cheap and is simple with a very low chance of losing data, almost impossible. Depending on your budget will be the extend of your backup process, Big corporations will spend big dollars to have their data secured and guaranteed to be accessible when needed. Individuals or small businesses will follow a process similar to what I laid out.

Portable 3TB hard drives can be had for around $100, you can also get dedicated servers for $10 per month that come with a 2TB disk. The process should be simple for a photographer or videographer who would just transfer the source footage 3 ways (SSD for editing, hard drive 1 and hard drive 2). Once you have finished editing the footage can then be removed from the SSD and you have 2 separate backups.

Web masters and developers have it easy in a way, they can use automated scripts and processes to transfer data at certain times. There is also GitHub which not only is a type of backup it’s also a version backup.

Not having backups is dumb, make sure whatever you’re doing you have at least one. It will come to save you eventually.