No one ever wants to face the possibility of losing their images before getting them into the processing workflow. Professionals losing irreplaceable images due to card corruption does happen, but by implementing ‘best practices’ to combat data loss you can minimize the possibility that it happens to you. I’ve been working professionally with computers for over 15 years and I’m a fanatic about data security. Follow along for a few minutes though some light reading and if your livelihood depends on your images, I hope I can convince you to implement these practices.
I’m not going to discuss choice of card brands as there is no magazine or blog doing memory reliability testing, but there are always the same considerations aside from the brand you choose. The first major choice that most of us make is the size of card we’re going to pack. Now, for some, I’m sure that consideration comes down to price and whatever is on sale that day at Costco. If price is your first consideration, the rest of this article probably isn’t for you as data security isn’t something you can skimp on if your images must come back each and every time. Most photographers likely choose their card size based on the size of their camera files, how long they typically shoot, and how often they want to change cards. The right reason to choose is based on failure rate.
Rule #1: Plan out your storage solutions with data integrity in mind.
I am a LARGE card advocate. As large as you can afford. I don’t suggest sitting on the bleeding edge of card size (currently 128 gigabytes in CF format). I’d say sit one or two below, so right now the sweet spot would be 32 or 64GB. Why do I say to go with such large cards? Isn’t that keeping “all of your eggs in one basket”? For a long wedding day and with today’s file sizes, some shooters will still fill up a few of those, but many are still using 8 GB cards. All this is doing is spreading around the risk of data loss and increasing your failure rate! If you use smaller cards, statistically you are more likely to have a failure at some point in time and you will lose data. You may not lose the entire day but you have a greater chance of losing something.
If you use 8 GB cards instead of 64 GB, you have 7 more cards that can fail on you! And also 7 more chances to misplace, drop, or damage them. Relate it to hard drives, something most of us have more experience with and have always had notoriously bad failure rates. We’ve probably all had a hard drive fail at one time — so do you now keep your images on lots of small hard drives to reduce the risk of losing things? Or do use the largest backup drives available because you have a proper data security routine in place?
Rule #2: BACKUP, BACKUP, BACKUP.
And I mean backup immediately. On an important shoot, if you have 15 minutes for a break, take that time to backup your card and stash it away. The best backup in the field is a portable storage device like this:
They are available in a wide range of sizes and some brands sell them empty so you can add your own hard drive. One tip is to pick up an older model that can be upgraded. I often see them for sale on places like the Fred Miranda sales forum; I think hobbyists must pick them up for big holidays and then sell them afterwards.
Actually, the best backup in the field is dual card slots; recording the image simultaneously while in the camera. Unfortunately Canon has decided to leave that feature on only the 1-series so the wildly popular wedding camera, the 5D Mark II, only has one place to save your images. Good job, Nikon, on giving your D700/D300 cameras two slots. With dual card slots and careful card management, you’ve almost eliminated the possibility of coming back empty-handed.
Rule #3: Handle your media like your life depends on it.
And this goes back to Rule #1 of using large media — if you use smaller cards, the more you handle them, the more chance you have of loss. Have a system in place for card storage using secure holders like these:
Use one colour for blank cards and another colour for used cards. While Compact Flash cards are certainly more durable than Secure Digital, the less you handle them, the better, and giving them proper protection is important. Never chuck a card in your bag or jacket pocket. Never format a card in the field to free up space even if you’ve backed it up. Never delete an image, either. It might be tempting to delete some obvious junk and save import time later but don’t do it.
Rule #4: Stress-test your cards before you trust them.
This simple procedure will take a few minutes of computer time but would likely prevent a lot of failed cards in the field. Before you put any newly purchased cards in your camera, put them in your computer’s reader. Copy a full load of images from your computer to the card and then back again. Check through the images to make sure they’re uncorrupted. That is it. This basic test won’t stop a future physical failure in the memory card but now you’ve tested that it initially works as required. I’d bet most professionals skip this and go straight from package to camera without knowing that lurking on that card might be a bad chip just waiting for data to trash.
Rule #5: Follow your best practices every time.
Simple steps, really, but unless you’ve been burned by image loss already, you probably skip on a few or all of them. If you depend on your images, take a few extra minutes to give them the security required. If you like this article, please feel free to share it on twitter – http://tr.im/stoploss or your blog.
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Good article Alex. I’ve always stress tested before use but I have become lazy with storage so thanks for the reminder. Happy New Year to you and the Family.
Thanks for the tips Alex! I have never stress tested before. Never even crossed my mind!
Some of this advice is good, some is…not entirely valid.
Rule #1: Alex is right that small cards have relatively little reliability advantage, though his reasoning about probability is a bit off. Small cards will be a tiny bit better than the medium ones, but not significantly. But it’s best to avoid the newest technology (currently 64/128 GB). When the manufacturers are pushing the envelope, that’s when they’re still figuring out how to make things work every time. There’s nothing WRONG with small cards, but every time you swap cards you’re increasing the chances of some kind of mistake. So get a medium-sized card (by this year’s standards) and avoid swapping.
Rule #2: If you pay attention to anything on this blog post, pay attention to that one. And don’t just back up your cards during the shoot; back up your disks. Back them up off-site, too, so that a fire–or a burglar–can’t ruin everything.
Rule #3: Back pockets are probably a bad idea. But memory cards are WAY tougher than, for example, CDs. You don’t need to treat them like fine china. Just don’t do something that’s going to bend them–or snap them in half. And, like Alex says, be sure to keep track of which ones have been used!
Rule #4: This is the weakest of the recommendations. In the first place, copying a full load of images is time-consuming; in the second, looking at them is tedius and doesn’t really verify their integrity. For that reason, the manufacturers already test them before they go into the package. If you insist on testing cards yourself, it’s easy to do it with a program that will do bit-by-bit comparisons without human intervention. I’m sure you can find one somewhere on the Web (don’t ask me; I don’t use either Mac or Windows). But because of the way cards work, this kind of test isn’t going to reveal any but the grossest problems. It would be just as effective to take about 10 test shots and review them on-camera; if you don’t get error messages, the card is highly unlikely to fail at tomorrow’s wedding. (I can’t make any promises about six months from now, though. Cards can go bad unpredictably. See Rule #6.)
Rule #5: Nobody can argue.
And I’ll add rule #6: stuff happens. No matter how hard you try, sometimes things are going to go wrong. That was just as true in the film days as it is now. So when they do go wrong, relax and deal with it. Sometimes a recovery program can get stuff back. If not, well, you’ll have to make the best of it, just as if your clumsy lab assistant had managed to fog the most important roll you shot this week.
D300 has only 1 CF slot
I agree, but just make sure you have a bout 20 cards, then you cant go wrong.
Interesting article, but I’ve heard otherwise in terms of the size of cards you should use.
If your 64gb fails, then 100% your files are gone, but if one of your 8gb fails or is lost, then 1/8 of your files are gone. I don’t think someone would carry 8 x 8gb cards anyways.
And if you backup all the time with those portable devices, then you can always format and use a smaller card.
Does anyone ever shoot 128gb worth of pics per event? That’s a lot of large RAWs and long HD videos.