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Question from Becky: “What is your process for filing photos post edit? Do you save all “negatives” on an external drive? Only save edited photos? Do you save to external and disk? Also, how long do you keep the photos on file, so to speak?”
David: Double back up originals. To 2 external HDD. Important shoots get DVD or originals and processed. It’s my process but it doesn’t protect from fire, flood etc
Michele: I use 2 externals and put the processed ones on a disk. I’ve started to delete the unedited ones, not because of drive space (because I have 3 terabytes), but just to keep it cleaned up and more organized.
Cortney: I save all RAW files and edited photos on an external HD. Then once a year (probably should do it more… I would if I had a ton more sessions/weddings) burn to disks. And I let my clients have access to their photos for 3 months to order prints or other products. After that there is a fee to re-upload.
Andrea: We keep raw for 6 months in an external hd. We keep best edited
Damian: If you can afford a third external hard drive, get one and keep it somewhere off site – either a family members house or a storage unit or something. Then grab it and back up maybe every 2 months or so. Unless you are using a cloud based online backup solution…
Damian: And going back to the actual question, I burn a DVD or 2 straight away of ALL the unedited shots from the shoot, even if it’s thousands of photos. Then once I’ve edited down to selects, I delete the rest from the computer and back up the selects on my 2 external drives and burn a cd or DVD with just the edited selects. I usually have enough space to have the selects sit in an album in Lightroom too, for easy reference.
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