12 Terabytes of Fast File Storage for less than $2000

In my previous article, A Strategy for Data Backup, I committed to outlining what I think is a solid, cost-effective, and reliable solution for wedding and portrait photographers.

Now as a little up-front disclaimer I would like to say that the equipment and software recommendations I list in this article are my own and I am not compensated in any way, shape, or form by any of the manufacturers or sellers of these products and services. I also offer this advice without an guarantees that they will work perfectly for anyone else. This particular setup is basically an updated version of the one we have been using the past three years.

About the system
This system is designed to offer the best compromise between access speed, raw storage space, backup automation, flexibility for rotating backups, and accommodating future growth for file storage needs. It's a bit of a DIY solution, but in my opinion it's preferable to a Drobo, which is essentially a proprietary RAID system.

System components
The basic components of the system are:
• A port multiplier-capable box, used for housing the hard drives
• Eight hard drives
• An eSATA card, for accessing the box at faster-than-USB/Firewire speeds
• Anti-static hard drive cases, for the offsite drives
• Chronosync, automated and configurable backup software

Recommended Components
Burly Port-Multiplier box ($500)
Mac Pro eSATA card ($200) OR MacBook Pro eSATA card ($200)
1.5 TB Hard Drives ($115)
Weibetech protective cases (10 for $55)
Extra Burly drive tray ($30)
Chronosync (Backup software for $40)

Putting it all together
1 x Burly Box @ $500
8 x 1.5 TB drives @ $125 = $920
1 x eSATA card @ $200
10 pack of protective cases = $55
2 x Burly drive tray @ $30 = $60
1 x Chronosync software @ $40
Total = ~$1755

Using the system
Since duplication is key, it's important to note here that this system is not designed to be the only backup. Ideally this system would be one of three total copies that exist of the work a photographer is attempting to back up -- and have it readily available for taking off site as well as restoration (if necessary).

Four of the drives will be in use regularly, the other four drives will be for offsite/emergency purposes, so the idea is to split data across the drives in a way that makes sense.

Storage system drives
• Drive A: 2010 RAW Files
• Drive B: Work In-Progress
• Drive C: Archived Work
• Drive D: More Archived Work + Business Files

Offsite/clone drives
• Drive E: 2010 RAW Files Clone
• Drive F: Work In-Progress Clone
• Drive G: Archived Work Clone
• Drive H: More Archived Work + Business Files Clone

These silos will allow a photographer to separate the work-in-progress files from RAWs and business files. Separating the work also allows for pairing up these backup drives with the other four drives, giving each drive a same-sized clone.

Chronosync, or a similar smart automated backup program, can run on a set schedule to manage the process of backing up to specific drives. Setting the backup program to do nightly dumps of a local work folder to a Work In-Progress drive is a great way to ensure that a drive failure will only mean one day of lost productivity after restoring.

Sample workflow
Here is a sample workflow for using this system to back up work and incorporate an off-site strategy as well:

1. Shoot a job
2. Download the images to the internal drive of the main editing workstation
3. Copy the RAW images to the 2010 RAW Files drive
4. Burn a DVD of the RAW images (optional but recommended)
5. Process the RAWs in Lightroom and export the corrected Jpegs to a working folder on the main editing workstation
6. Make additional adjustments to the work-in-progress images at the main editing workstation
7. Nightly backup process (Chronosync) store the work folder in the Work In-Progress drive automatically (set up folders & schedules for this up beforehand)
8. Insert the clone drives one by one and sync the contents from the storage system drive to the offsite/clone drive (on a regular basis; weekly, monthly, or after each job)
9. Take the clone drives (in the Weibetech boxes) to another location

What about the cloud?
As of February 2010, the cost of storing data legitimately* with a cloud-based service is still a little high for the average photographer to handle, especially as data grows. I have linked a spreadsheet that estimates the cost of cloud storage for a year.

*After some research I found that, unfortunately, webhosts offering "unlimited" storage only mean unlimited for files that are actually there in support of the website. For example, Dreamhost's terms of service say: "The customer agrees to make use of DreamHost servers primarily for the purpose of hosting a website. Data uploaded must be primarily for this purpose. DreamHost Apps servers are not intended as a data backup or archiving service." Go Daddy's hosting agreement says more plainly: "Go Daddy's shared hosting servers are not an archive"

Backup System and Cloud Storage Calculator

Please feel free to comment and leave your thoughts on this system and alternatives. I'd love to hear/see them!

Damon is the technical (and bag-carrying) assistant to Agnes Lopez, a commercial and wedding photographer who works primarily in Ponte Vedra Beach and Amelia Island, Florida. When he isn't standing still as a lighting test dummy, setting up a c-stand, or holding a reflector, Damon works as an IT Business Analyst, where he gets to solve technical problems on a daily basis.

Haiti Donations & Tax Relief

I received this informational email from Grazier Photography and their accountant today about deducting donations for Haiti relief and thought the info was so good it needed to be shared on PhotoLovecat!

This month Congress passed a law that the President signed, giving taxpayers the choice of deducting donations for Haiti relief on their 2009 tax returns – even though the donation actually happened in 2010.  If you made Haiti relief donations and wish to deduct them on your 2009 returns, be sure to let [your accountant] know!

Here are 10 important facts the Internal Revenue Service wants you to know about this special provision.

1. A new law allows you to claim donations for Haitian relief on your 2009 tax return, which you will be filing this year.
2. The contributions must be made specifically for the relief of victims in areas affected by the Jan. 12 earthquake in Haiti.
3. To be eligible for a deduction on the 2009 tax return, donations must be made after Jan. 11, 2010 and before March 1, 2010.
4. In order to be deductible, contributions must be made to qualified charities and can not be designated for the benefit of specific individuals or families.
5. The new law applies only to cash contributions.
6. Cash contributions made by text message, check, credit card or debit card may be claimed on your federal tax return.
7. You must itemize your deductions in order to claim these donations on your tax return.
8. You have the option of deducting these contributions on either your 2009 or 2010 tax return, but not both.
9. Contributions made to foreign organizations generally are not deductible. You can find out more about organizations helping Haitian earthquake victims from agencies such as the U.S. Agency for International Development ( http://www.irs.gov/app/scripts/exit.jsp?dest=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.usaid.gov ).
10. Federal law requires that you keep a record of any deductible donations you make. For donations by text message, a telephone bill will meet the record-keeping requirement if it shows the name of the organization receiving your donation, the date of the contribution, and the amount given. For cash contributions made by other means, be sure to keep a bank record, such as a cancelled check or a receipt from the charity. Receipts should show the name of the charity, the date and amount of the contribution.

For more information see IRS Publication 526 , Charitable Contributions and Publication 3833 , Disaster Relief: Providing Assistance through Charitable Organizations . To determine if an organization is a qualified charity visit IRS.gov, keyword “Search for Charities”. Note that some organizations, such as churches or governments, may be qualified even though they are not listed on IRS.gov.

 Thank you Matt & Enna for sharing!

WPPI 2010: Finding Cheap Airfare

After you score a great deal for the hotel stay, your next greatest expense is going to probably be the flight to get to Vegas. Airfare can be al over the place and often it is hard to make sense of why some flights are certain rates. Here are some tips to get you to and from Las Vegas cheaply!

Things to Know

Each site and airline has their own way of presenting things and it’s good to know the game before getting really excited about a deal that really isn’t a deal. Each site has it’s own method of showing price, some show the full price after surcharges, taxes and fees and others do not and choose to tack them on at the end. Often the cost can change in upwards of $75. Also keep in mind that if you are checking any luggage, there is going to be a fee to check it both ways - often an additional $60 or so dollars per bag (unless you are using Southwest). Finally you want to find out if the airline charges for EVERYTHING on board or just food. The $5 waters add up when in air for 3+ hours.

Days Are Important

One thing that will change your prices dramatically is what days of the week you choose to fly in/out , how many days in advance you book your ticket and what days of the week you book on. If you are not set to a schedule, it is best to always choose the option to see days before and after you selected dates so that you can see the best prices. Typically Monday - Thursday are going to be your best rate days to fly in but each airline, location and sale will vary. Always remember that even if it’s a ‘steal’ to fly in 2 days before that’s an additional 2 days you will be paying for lodging and food. You also need to consider the days of the week you book for getting the best discount. Typically fares reduce about 45 days out, 30 days out, 14 days out and then sometimes 7 days out. It isn’t a hard rule but something to keep in mind when keeping an eye on fares. Finally, booking Tuesday - Thursday will provide you with the best prices typically.

Choosing Your Airport

While there is only one airport to fly into Las Vegas, there is usually a selection of locations you can choose to fly out of to get there. Often, different local airports can vary by a hundred dollars or more. When searching make sure to choose the option that allows the search of nearby airports as well as your preferred airport. You may be surprised.

WPPI Discounts

WPPI has negotiated discounts of 5-10% with certain airlines. Go here to find the discount code and book directly with the selected line for the best deals.

Surf the Web

The first site I always hit when booking airfare is Kayak. It does all of the searches for you and saves you a LOT of headaches. Just be prepared that there is going to be a lot of pages opening. It is however the quickest way to get an idea of what fares are and where to find them. Trip.com also offers a similar service in searching many sites at once.

Find a flight that suits your needs but want to get your best deal on it? Go to Yapta and sign up for their alerts so that you can find out when the fare drops. Yapta doesn’t allow you to purchase the flight through their site, but allows you to find the fares and purchase through the airline directly.

Orbitz also has a great deal by promising that if someone books your same flight for the same dates you get the difference back if the fare is cheaper.

Keep in mind that one of the cheaper airlines, Southwest, does not participate in any of the deal websites. Their fares are often very reasonable so make sure to hit up their site when surfing the web for the best deal. They also have an alert system that will tell you when a flight that you enter is on sale.

Finally if you are not picky about the times of day that you arrive and leave, always hit up Priceline and Hotwire and try to name your price. I always suggest finding what the lowest airfare is and then making educated guesses from there. Often $25 below is the sweet spot but sometimes it can go far below that.

Hopefully this helps you navigate the friendly skies a bit easier and the end result is a cheaper flight!

Corey Ann is a wedding & lifestyle photographer from North Canton, OH. She is a mix of everything - fashionista, travel guru, deal hound and geek rolled into one. She's had a website online since 1997 and a blog since 1999. When not plotting world domination or her next trip, she can be found reading one of the 100+ books she reads a year. Follow her on Twitter.

A Strategy for Data Backup

Backing up your data is a must. Since image files are the lifeblood of any photographer's business it only makes sense to invest in a backup solution that protects the business' most important assets.

Q: What kind of solution is the best?

A: It depends!

For a commercial photographer who maintains a library of images that can be sold for stock, licensed, etc., a backup solution has to be about as bulletproof as possible. On the other hand, a wedding or portrait photographer is unlikely to do any work on a finished session from two years ago and would only need to keep the finished jpegs and album design files from a client job. If they want to be a little more thorough they could keep the RAW files and Lightroom catalogs.

Keep in mind that the cost of any solution increases exponentially with the amount of complexity involved. So if you want a mirrored system that includes offsite backup, RAID servers (never just one), and the ability to restore in a few hours -- you're talking serious dough.

Over this post and a follow up I'll outline what I think is a solid, cost-effective, and reliable solution for wedding and portrait photographers.

First I'd like to offer the tenets of my backup strategy:

• Figure out what you need
• Redundancy is not a bad word
• Storage is cheap.
• Duplication is key.
• Complexity is the enemy.
• Keep your data moving.
• Take it off site.
• It's cheaper to buy a lot of drives than to recover one
• Test your backups

Figure out what you need

Answering some basic questions about your business will shape your backup strategy and help you prioritize your efforts:

What kind of photographer are you?

How likely are you to use the images again for licensing or sale?

What is the data retention policy for your business?

What is the retention policy in your contract?

What is your shooting format (RAW, Jpeg, DNG)?

What is your output format (Jpeg, PSD, Tiff)?

Redundancy is not a bad word

The desire of any good backup system is to be redundant. You want to have your data in a pristine state in multiple locations, preferably on site and some off site.

Storage is cheap

Hard drives are ridiculously large, very reliable, and incredibly cheap. There is no excuse that you can make for not having backups. Hard drives and physical media (DVD, Blu-ray, Flash drives) are getting cheaper, smaller, and more dense all the time. As of January 2010 it's possible to get a 2 terabyte (2 x 1000 gigabytes) drive for less than $200. Blu-ray discs are about $30 for a 50 GB per disc, which is easily enough space to back up a single job or RAW files. This low cost leads to my next tenet...

Duplication is key

I don't think I know anyone who hasn't had a hard drive fail or accidentally deleted an important file, so having a *relatively current* backup of important things is a must. These aren't the old days, where you tucked the film negatives into protective sleeves and put them in a file cabinet. In the digital age there is no quality loss from making copies of your files, so buy multiple hard drives and make copies of those important files! It's a great way to guard against catastrophic data loss. Adding in Blu-ray discs or traditional DVDs is a great way to diversify the duplication process for even more redundancy.

Complexity is the enemy

You may or may not have heard the phrase "RAID is NOT a backup" (It's worth a Google search) That argument about RAID notwithstanding, the important point is that most photographers are not IT people with years of experience working in data centers, troubleshooting hardware issues, and restoring mission-critical data from failures. In general,dealing with proprietary RAID controller cards, striping, configurations, and the like is almost guaranteed to end badly. Software RAID is also a bad idea from a performance and reliability standpoint.

If you're a wedding or portrait photographer it's unlikely that you're dealing with large databases or massive single files. Image files just need to be catalogued decently (so you can find the images you're looking for if you have to restore) and stored in multiple places (redundancy). Keeping it simple may mean having more drives but it also means you'll have a much better chance of having the files you need when that day comes.

Keep your data moving

When new technology comes out and hits a reasonable price, like the newer hard drives or Blu-ray discs, it's a good idea to move your old backup data into the new format. That way you've moved your data to a newer location, effectively increasing redundancy and the life expectancy of that data.

Take it off site

Off site backup just means not in one physical location. It doesn't need to be at some data center or in "the cloud" necessarily. If you can afford to do the Enterprise-class off site backup and your needs are heavy duty, then by all means go for it. At the same time the combination of large RAW file sizes and the bandwidth limitations of even broadband internet limit the effectiveness of going off site over the Internet.

If you have a studio separate from your home then it can be as simple as just having copies of your data at your home. If you run a home-based studio then simply storing a stack of hard drives in a safe location, say your in-laws or a friend's house, can be an effective solution. There's also the option of safe deposit boxes at your bank as well.

It's cheaper to buy a lot of drives than to recover one

The question is: Pay now or pay later?

If you don't have a backup strategy it's likely you'll pay quite a bit at one time when things do go wrong. The high cost of data recovery services is a reality you should be able to avoid (most of the time) with a good backup strategy. I've seen the cost of restoring one drive of client files be over $2,000 -- and that was for a drive that the company couldn't fully restore.

And then there's the awful possibility of litigation for losing important client files if they haven't yet been delivered.

For $2,000 a photographer could easily purchase a bunch of large hard drives, protective cases, a Blu-ray burner, a stack of Blu-ray discs, and DVDs. Considering the value of your data it's foolish to trust a single hard drive or single disc when there is no downside to having additional copies of your work saved in multiple locations.

Test your backups

A backup is only good if it can actually be used. Even though it's a boring exercise it's absolutely crucial to test your backups to make sure they actually work.

It's worth it to simulate a disaster scenario every few months (or at least once a year) to ensure all that backing up is actually effective.

Damon is the technical (and bag-carrying) assistant to Agnes Lopez, a commercial and wedding photographer who works primarily in Ponte Vedra Beach and Amelia Island, Florida. When he isn't standing still as a lighting test dummy, setting up a c-stand, or holding a reflector, Damon works as an IT Business Analyst, where he gets to solve technical problems on a daily basis.

WPPI 2010: Hotel Deals

WPPI is always a great time - lots of learning, lots of networking but also spending lots of money! I'm all about saving where you can and here are some tips and deals for saving a few extra bucks for your hotel stay.

MGM Grand

The MGM Grand is where everything happens and is where 80% of the people going to WPPI stay. I highly recommend staying on site as by the time you are done going to classes and/or the tradeshow, you are barely going to have enough time to change before needing to be somewhere for an event, dinner or party. Having your room, shower and bed in the same hotel is a value within itself and there is also the savings to be had by not taking cabs, renting a car or taking the monorail. There is also the added perk of the networking that you will be able to do in the elevator lobby and when roaming the hotel.

The WPPI rate is $149/night + taxes for a standard room (click here to book at that rate) in the grand tower which is a decent deal but keep your eyes out on deal sites, particularly Smarter Vegas and Easy Click Travel, for up to the minute deals on rooms. Sometimes you won’t be able to find cheaper room rates but will be able to utilize promotions such as free buffets, dining credits and more. Currently using code INB307 on the MGM website will get you the same $149/night rate but you will also get 2-for1 daily buffets at the Grand Buffet, $25 credit at the Grand Spa and 2 free passes to the Fitness Center. Lately it seems that about a month out is when the rates tend to start drop and the deals are available for the rooms so keep that in mind when booking. Also sign up for the MGM emails and follow them on Twitter for special sales that don’t make it to the public.

The Signature at MGM Grand

The Signature is the 'elite' hotel of the MGM Grand, much like THEhotel is to Mandalay Bay. The rooms are all suites, set up like condos and are individually owned. The hotel is non-smoking and non-gambling so it is a quieter resort like stay. It also offers its own Starbucks (the ones at the MGM are PACKED during WPPI), lounge, fitness center and pool so you'll always have a quiet place to retreat to that isn't packed with people. They are located just behind the MGM with the entrance into MGM Grand by the spa - closer to the convention area than the main hotel bank. Here’s where the deal comes in. I have negotiated a discount rate for Photo Lovecat readers with Blue Chip Vegas (a condo management company for The Signature). Use code WPPI as the Rate/Corp code for 25-30% off the MGM website rate (which takes you currently to $103.55/night). ** The discount code is now invalid as all the rooms they had available booked up, they may reopen closer to the show if rooms reopen. Until then, check out VRBO.com for other condo deals for The Signature**

Offsite Hotels

You can find ridiculously cheap hotels in Vegas ($30/night for some of the lesser known hotels on The Strip, sometimes even cheaper with hotels off The Strip) but make sure that you take into planning that you will be renting a car, walking, taking a taxi or using the tram to get to/from the convention. Often it doesn’t pay to save the few bucks a night when you have to shuttle back and forth and spend a lot on transportation. If you want to stay close, check out NYNY, Tropicana and Hooters for the closest hotels to MGM. They are within walking distance (MGM has an elevated bridge that connects to NYNY) and typically have reasonable rates (currently NYNY is $84/night, Tropicana $59/night). Otherwise you may want to try and stay at hotels that are along the monorail route for quicker access to the MGM (Bally's, Paris, Flamingo, Harrah's, Hilton).

Rent a House

Got a lot of friends but don’t want to sleep like sardines? Think about renting a house through VRBO. The housing prices can run the gamut from cheap to expensive but when you consider that everyone will be splitting the cost it can turn out to be cheaper than staying in a hotel and with many perks that hotels do not offer such as kitchens and private pools.

Hopefully this helps you navigate finding a better deal for booking your stay for WPPI.

Corey Ann is a wedding & lifestyle photographer from North Canton, OH. She is a mix of everything - fashionista, travel guru, deal hound and geek rolled into one. She's had a website online since 1997 and a blog since 1999. When not plotting world domination or her next trip, she can be found reading one of the 100+ books she reads a year. Follow her on Twitter.