Section 1.5. Backing Up Originals

1.5. Backing Up Originals

This is the time to copy all the files you've named and ranked to external media so that you have the means to recover if something should happen to your original file. For the sake of speed and efficiency, I suggest you purchase and install an external hard drive and make your first copy to that drive. You should also have a second drive stored someplace away from your main property. At regular intervals (say twice a week), bring in the second drive and copy the contents of the first drive to it so that you end up with two identical hard drives full of data.

For the sake of portability, I also suggest that you immediately copy your originals to optical media. Not only do you have the added insurance of yet another backup, but you can take images with you if you want to work on a laptop on the road or need to make copies of files to send elsewhereespecially if you want to send your advanced processing to an outside facility.