reach » reaching out to vibrant photographers!

Did you get a Drobo? If not, what are you waiting for? Get one - it’s one of the best purchases you can make! And while you do, you may also want to check into ioSafe: a new breed of data storage systems that are designed to protect digital files against fire and water damage. The ioSafe Solo can survive 30mins in 1550° heat (the average house fire is around 800°) and 3 days submerged in 10ft deep water. That’s pretty impressive.

Jayse and I are unimpressed with Mozy as of recent. It’s just too slow for the large amount of data that we typically use it for. So having solved one of the main issues of keeping your files on-location, we may be getting a couple of these to use along with Time Machine to back up our computers. And of course, I’ll still be using Pictage for an extra safe off-site back-up of all my client files.

I got my new Drobo!!! And of course I had to share my excitement. So Jayse and I made a quick video while opening it up that I’ll post at the end of this! Should be the first of many of my goofy video blogs.

This also inspired me to share my experience and thoughts on storage solutions. Jayse does video work and I photograph all in RAW so this is something that we are constantly battling and exploring to find the best options out there. SO if you’re looking for tips this should be a good help getting started!

When storing and backing up your files, images, and all that important stuff that you’d hate to loose there’s a couple different types that you should have in mind. First there’s your local storage. These are drives that you can access at anytime in your network. This way if one hard-drive crashes (which will inevitably happen at some point in time) you can quickly and easily access your backup. It always seems that drive failures happen at the worst possible timing (not like it would ever be convenient) so why not make it easy on yourself by making it painless to get your system back up and going as quick as possible.

• Mirrored-Raid System - There’s many positives to this type of system. In theory, every time you write a file, it’s actually being written twice - if one hard drive fails you have a duplicated on the ‘mirrored’ drive. I say in theory because - what they don’t tell you is that with most of the consumer raids that you get you can’t just switch out a new drive when one fails. Instead, you have to pay the manufacturer a recovery fee starting around $700. Also, there is a chance of them failing around the same time since most of the time the installed drives were manufactured at the same time - in the same batch.
• Time Machine - Anything Apple ROCKS! Need I say more? Definitely worth checking out if you aren’t using this already.
  
• Drobo - This is the ultimate. The Drobo is similar to a raid system, however your files are copied across 4 drives offering a higher level of protection. And if one (or two) drive fails the Drobo will inform you and all you will have to do is switch it out. It will then immediately back everything up again to the new drive. All this with no down time! Even with 2 hard drive crashes all your files are still safe and accessible.

In addition, the Drobo utilizes a special way of maximizing the drive space. For example, with a typical mirrored-raid you would loose half of the space (for a 2TB raid, you’d have 1TB of storage). With the drobo you would get up to 1.4TBs of storage out of that same 2TBs worth of drives.

Another bonus: Drobo is 100% compatible with Time Machine!

Next you’ll need an off site storage option. As much as I hope we never have to face the problem of a fire or burglary where all our equipment (and yes, backups too) somehow get destroyed, deleted or stolen… as they say, it’s better to be safe than sorry. These things happen. So it’s important to be ready and prepared for whatever life throws at us. And this is especially important as photographers since we’re dealing with precious irreplaceable memories. So here’s a few different off site storage solutions that I think are awesome investments - all of which can be accessed anywhere you happen to be:

• Mac Account - For a limited amount of storage
• Mozy Online Backup - I love Mozy! This offers unlimited online backup for only $4.95 a month
  

• Pictage - Every image uploaded to Pictage is stored on their server for the life of your membership. You may access your images from anywhere any time. And you can easily FTP images back to yourself from any of your live Pictage events. To learn more on retrieving images you can click here.
  

Other options:

• Backing up to CD/DVD - While this isn’t an option I’m particularity fond of since it doesn’t fit in with my work-flow quite as seamlessly, I know a lot of people that this solution works for. This is a relatively inexpensive option, however if this is your preferred method of backing up you should look into getting a data protected water & fire proof safe.

Hope that helps!!

And without furthur ado, meet Drobo… the world’s first data robot:
(once you press play - hit the little HQ button to see it in good quality)

**Update to the video: Now with the 2TB drives you can have up to 5.5TBs of storage space!! Pretty sweet!! Check out the spiffy “Drobolator Capacity Calculator” to see how to make the best use of your drives, or the product demo here.

The Let’s Invent it Now Experiment!!!

By Chels (www.chelsea-nicole.com) and Jayse (www.jayse.us)

If you haven’t reached your goals before… chances are they’re just not exciting enough. Make something up that sounds bad ass and a little crazy!
They say… sometimes just putting it all on paper is enough to set you in the right direction without much further effort. Who knows if that’s true, but re-read this once a week, modify it, think about a few things you can do towards it and… well we’ll see…

The idea: It’s five years from now - the economy is back in swing - especially for YOU because you’ve
learned to cope with down times.

The Goal: In your most so totally awesome future you are living the following answers:

1. What kind of fantastic relationship do you have with your lover, immediate family?

b: What kind of time is needed for that?

2. What are you known most for? (in words - or a sentence)

Personally:
(compassionate? giving? loving? responsible? a leader? ALIVE? Adventurous?)

Professionally:
(a Leader? Uniquely different? A photographer that cares more than the rest? Reliable?)

b: Name 4 or more places you, or your name and image need to appear to get them known
professionally.

3. What super-fun and practical things do you have enough money for?

(Simply enough to live comfortably? Or enough to travel twice a year to exotic locations?
Enough to take expensive workshops and amp your training? Enough to buy your family _____?
Enough to contribute to causes you care about? Enough for a bigger house?)

b: What is your guess to a yearly income range needed to for those ideals? (20k - 50k? 100k -
150k? 250k+?)

4. Who have you helped along the way?

(Other photographers? Employing others? Helping children in need? Parents? Friends? Family?)

b: How do you need to take care of yourself to be able to help others?
(Health? Finances? Time?)

5. What are two things you can do this minute (not tomorrow) towards your most awesome 5 years from now?

Make a phone call? Schedule an appointment? Buy ad space? Draft in pencil a rough ad idea for a magazine?

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**CLICK HERE for a printable version of this! Print it out! Fill it up! And keep it close to check up on yo-self!!