You're Making Me Nervous...

About a week ago, I corrupted Lightroom's catalog. I was in the middle of importing over 1,000 pictures and then I shut down the computer. In my defense, I could not tell if the import was running anymore because the Macbook (2.4 GHz) would not respond. How was I supposed to know it was still running. Using my handy Windows experience, I reset the computer by pushing the power button. Upon restarting, I realized that the import hadn't finished because Lightroom wouldn't start up. Unfortunately, my last backup of the catalog was over a week old. Fortunately, I hadn't done much importing and work on the catalog since (or so I thought), so I restored an older catalog, reimported some batches of pictures and went on my merry way.

By the way, this Macbook has the only copy of all my photoshoots for the past 2 months.

Does that make me nervous? Hell yeah that makes me nervous! It travels with me, which means every time I put it onto the conveyor belt for the x-ray machine, I've got to be extra careful with it. Anytime I set it down, I'm always doing so gently. Having it kept in the trunk of the rental car also makes me nervous especially when it's sitting next to my D3, 24-70mm f/2.8G, etc.

Smart? No. Time to backup my files? Yes.

After a little research I decided to get something small yet rugged in the event I want to pack this bad boy with me on the road. Ultimately I purchased a Transcend Storejet 25 500GB.

CNET said "The Transcend StoreJet 25 Mobile stomps the competition and lives to fight another day, thanks to its rugged military-grade exterior." I think I saw these in Taiwan when I was shopping around for portable hard disks. I should have just bought one but I wasn't ready and I didn't see anything with the form factor that I was looking for. In hindsight, the Transcend StoreJet 25 is not the smallest enclosed hard drives that I have ever laid eyes on. In fact, this originally didn't make the cut because of the size. However due to the fast transfer rates, the warranty, and the rugged exterior (drop tested), I decided to use this for my Time Machine (regularly scheduled Mac backups).

I know of a lot of photographers that have secondary and tertiary and even quaternary backup solutions for their not only their computers but also their CompactFlash drives. I don't. Yet. Just for my computer, which is for me already one big step forward. I suppose I could say that I have backups of all my CompactFlash drives because the D3 writes RAW onto disk1 and JPEGs onto disk2. So I always have a RAW disk and a JPEG disk. I always delete/format the CF cards after a week or so though to make space for the next shoot.

I'm backing up now onto the Transcend StoreJet 25 Mobile. Looks like its going to take a good hour or two to complete the task of backing up all 112GB from my hard disk. Oh and the good thing about these little puppies is that they don't require their own power (AC adapter), they get it straight from the USB 2.0 jack.