Sunday morning, a stack of cards and a nagging doubt
Four cards from yesterday's wedding, two from your second shooter's camera that you collected at the end of the night, and three still in the wallet from the Thursday wedding. You import to your working drive and copy to your backup drive. The cloud upload starts but will take a while on your home connection.
On Wednesday you need cards for the next wedding. Were all of Thursday's cards copied twice? Did the cloud upload finish, or did the laptop go to sleep? You format a card because you are fairly sure, and fairly sure is uncomfortable.
The routine is sound, the checking is not
Most photographers follow a sensible pattern of multiple copies in more than one place. What is missing is a check that the pattern actually happened for each card, especially when several weddings overlap.
- Imports and copies run at different times and are not compared.
- Cloud uploads can stop part way and not say so clearly.
- Cards from different weddings and cameras sit together in a wallet.
- File counts are rarely checked against the card itself.
- Old drives are reused without knowing what is still only on them.
What an unverified backup costs
The risk is rare but severe: a wedding, or part of one, lost because the only copy was on a card that was formatted or a drive that failed. That is not something that can be fixed with an apology.
The everyday cost is doubt. Not being sure means checking folders by hand, keeping cards longer than necessary and buying more cards to avoid formatting.
How we build a backup log that checks every card
- When a card is imported, a small program on your computer records the card, camera, wedding and a list of every file with its size and a checksum.
- The same list is checked against each backup destination you use, such as a second drive, a NAS at home and your cloud storage.
- Each card shows as safe to format only when every file is present, the same size and matching, in every destination you require.
- Cloud uploads that stalled are flagged rather than silently assumed complete.
- A card wallet view shows which physical cards are safe, which are waiting on a copy and which wedding each belongs to.
- Over time, the log also shows which weddings exist on which drives, which helps when a drive is retired.
| Card | Working drive | Backup drive | Cloud | Safe to format |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Card A, Saturday wedding | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Card B, Saturday wedding | Yes | Yes | Uploading | Not yet |
| Card C, second shooter | Yes | No | No | No |
| Card D, Thursday wedding | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
How many copies you keep and where is your decision. The log checks your own rule rather than setting one.
Cards and drives, with the log in place
After each wedding you import as usual. By the time you need cards again, you look at the wallet view and format only those marked safe. If a cloud upload stalled overnight, you see it the next morning rather than weeks later.
When a drive gets old, the log tells you which weddings on it are also safely elsewhere, and which need copying before you retire it.
Second shooters' cards appear in the same wallet view once they are imported, so their files follow exactly the same rule as yours. The doubt that made you keep cards for weeks goes away, because the answer is on the screen.
Do you recognise this doubt?
- You have formatted a card while not quite sure it was copied everywhere.
- You check backup folders by hand before reusing cards.
- Cloud uploads sometimes stop part way without you noticing.
- Cards from different weddings get mixed in your card wallet.
- You are unsure which weddings exist only on an older drive.