Well, it finally happened.  That dreaded moment that every photographer hopes will never happen--I lost all of my images!  Worse yet, it was my very own fault and was caused by something I did.  I had to reinstall the operating system on my computer last week and during the process I accidentally formatted the data storage drive on my computer rather than the drive I normally use for the operating system.  For those of you who aren't very familiar with computers, formatting the hard drive automatically erases any data currently on the drive.  Now I'm fully aware that there are software programs and companies out there that will attempt to retrieve data off of a formatted drive, but I unfortunately didn't have any software for this at the time (I am currently researching the different software titles out there to see which ones will meet my needs) and sending the drive away for data retrieval is prohibitively expensive for me.  So, my only recourse is to start fresh from a clean slate which leads me to my reason for writing this article: always backup your images and do it often!!!  I am going to outline the system I've devised for backing up my images in the paragraphs that follow.

In order to implement my backup strategy I redesigned the folder structure for my images.  The primary reason for this is because I've chosen to backup to DVDs so I need a way to group my images together into 4.7 GB chunks.  Before, I sorted images into folders based on the date they were taken with one top-level folder for the year and one folder for each of the months inside this folder.  Inside these folders I had my images which were named with the date they were taken followed by a four digit date-based sequence number that reset itself whenever the date changed.  So for example if I happened to take 50 images on May 1 the images would be named 05012009_0001 through 05012009_0050.  Then on the following day the sequence number would reset itself back to 0001.  I did this using a handy little downloading utility called Downloader Pro from Breeze Software.  Now that I'm backing up to DVDs I've made one small change to this structure.  I have a new top level folder named BSTEINAGEL_DVD_#### in which the afformentioned file structure is placed.  The hash marks in the DVD name represent a sequential number for DVD identification purposes.  

Once the BSTEINAGEL_DVD_#### folder nears a capacity of 4.7 GB the contents are burned to a DVD.  I am using Taiyo Yuden DVD media because of it's superior quality and stability which leads to longer life than other brands of media.  It is probably the most expensive media also, but the quality is worth it.  I don't suggest using dual layer DVD media for archivability because the format is still relatively new and untried.  I would also go with DVD+R media over DVD-Rs because it's more archival.  If you're of the technical sort, take a look at this article from Ad Terras Per Aspera that explains why.  Taiyo Yuden media can be purchased from Super Media Store.  There is some bogus media out there claiming to be Taiyo Yuden but it isn't.  If you decide to go with Taiyo Yuden media purchase it from Super Media Store because they guarantee all of their media is genuine.  Another high quality brand is Verbatim's line of DataLife Plus media which can also be purchased from Super Media Store or elsewhere online.  My newly created discs then get labeled and placed into archival DVD storage sleeves and boxes which I get from Light Impressions. 

I've learned a valuable lesson from all of this and my hope is that you'll use this information to implement some sort of backup strategy for your images.  Because it's not a matter of if you lose your images but when.  With a proper backup system in place, you can at least restore your images to your hard drive.