Your wedding images are meant to be enjoyed for a lifetime, or even longer.
You must look after your digital images and make sure that you have a backup.
No matter what media type you use for storage they all are susceptible to physical damage or hardware failures.
There are an endless amount of options for backup so it can be confusing at first, At the very least I recommend a 3-2-1 backup strategy.
THREE copies of your images (The original PLUS two backups).
TWO different media types (USB Drive | Online Gallery | Hard Drive | CD/DVD/Blu-Ray | Cloud Storage are all different media types).
ONE copy should always be stored “off-site” in another location (say perhaps with a family member, online or on a cloud storage system, or in a safety deposit box).
Your wedding photography package includes some hosting of the images in an online gallery for you to enjoy and share with friends & family. if you wish to extend this it can certainly be arranged and by doing this you effectively have a copy online which is “off-site” and you can if you wish use this as one part of your backup solutions, currently this costs £60 per year for ongoing storage and gallery access (this can change with inflation and other costs), if you wish to arrange this please get in touch to discuss.
If the worst does happen and you lose your original files AND your backups then please do get in touch, we do keep a copy of your digital media (unless specifically agreed otherwise). This should not be considered part of your backup as there is no guarantee that we still have your images saved. There is a cost to re-deliver your media if available as they will have been archived.
To give you an example of my backup strategy for your images I always do the following immediately after your wedding.
Your images are initially copied onto a portable drive (the 1st copy), this becomes the source I use to edit and deliver your images.
This drive is also backed up to another larger drive (a 2nd copy) and is kept in sync with the main source to keep any edits backed-up, this drive is then also backed up to a secure cloud backup system (a 3rd copy), including any edits made.
Then, to be even more careful, another full set of your original images are copied to another hard drive (a FOURTH copy) which is not touched unless something drastic has happened (“touchwood” I’ve never, ever needed this, but wouldn’t feel right if I didn’t have an extra layer to protect some of your most important memories).
It’s only after these four different copies are ready that I wipe the original memory cards for re-use.
Remember it’s really important to backup your images, if you wish to discuss ongoing gallery access and storage as a “part” of your backup please get in touch.