Away to Me

A friend stopped by a day or two ago to ask for help putting together a scrapbook.  She explained that all the photos had to be removable since they were the only copies in existence.  There had been a hard-disk failure, the photos hadn’t been backed-up, and the few that had been printed periodically were the only ones she still had that documented a boy’s journey into becoming an Eagle Scout.

Backing-up photos does not have to involve fancy software or great expense.  The images can be burned onto CDs or DVDs, copied onto external hard drives, or stored in one of the on-line storage options.  Do it now and update it often.

The reason I bought Aperture initially was due to it’s “Vault” system that backs up the existing library.  The initial backup may take some time depending on the size of your library, but subsequent vault updates only save the changes to your library, so update very quickly.

It is easy to see if your vaults are up-to-date:

The red, circular arrows mean that I have either added new images or deleted some out of the library.  Or, it can mean that I have moved some images from one project to another and have not backed up the new changes.

If the arrows were yellow, it would indicate that I might have changed some metadata or made an image adjustment, but that the basic library hadn’t changed.

The vault panel indicates which vaults are available to be updated and how much space there is left on that drive.  I have one vault on a hard drive that is connected to my computer, one that is sitting on my desk, but unconnected except when I need to back up, and the others in a safe or off-site.

Click the red arrows at the bottom and Aperture will update all connected vaults:

The arrows will turn black when the vaults reflect the current library.

What are your pictures worth to you?  Hard disks can fail.  Fires, tornadoes, etc. can happen.  Back up your pictures today.