Digital Asset Management

Everybody knows how important it is to backup digital files. As a photographer, it's foremost on my mind. So I have an assortment of hard drive arrays trying to manage an ever growing database of files.

I recently invested in a huge hard drive system with four drives which somehow rotate all the files so that if one of the drives fails it doesn't matter since the info is repeated on another drive. You just pop out the old drive and put in a new one. At least in theory.

The new book on "DAM" is overwhelming me. I've been reading it all week in preparation for transferring and renaming my files onto my new drives in a very organized system. Everything was falling into place to set up my library of image files. Then my main drive failed. I noticed it this morning. It just wouldn't power up. And it's only three months old. So I was caught between backups.

This has happened to me before, so I'm not panicking this time. I just packed off the drive, and sent it off to be analyzed. Just takes a couple days and I'll know what went wrong and if it can be recovered. I do have many DVD backups -- but not of anything I've done in the past two weeks.

I'm taking the time to get back in the studio. I have some commissions to paint. Also talked to my giclee publisher at Metroartworks and he's really wanting some new work from me. So that's a good incentive to develop something new.

Yes, still in the back of my mind is that fear -- are my files gone?