I have been backing up years of digital data the past few weeks. It led me to reflect on the documents I generate, which ones are the most important to me, and how they can be saved safely and accessed efficiently. Lately I have become especially concerned about my photo and design files, as they are crucial to me as an artist, and they also take up a huge amount of storage space.
I thought about how I name, organize, and save my files. I did some research on different types of data backup, including paying for online mass storage. For example, I tried to sign up with “Xdrive” that was offering 5GB of storage space but after filling out a signup screen 6 times and getting repeated error messages, I gave up. And then I came across something called “idrive” which seemed perfect, offering 2 GB of free storage. The signup process was really easy but they required that I download and install a piece of software. I declined because I was concerned it might contain spyware. It seemed like too big a chance to take. Then I came across a site called “mediamax”. It looked too good to be true – 25GB free storage, no strings attached. The signup was easy and I quickly uploaded a large (20GB file) I wanted to share with someone, because I know that it is not advisable to send files that big through e-mail. Before sending the URL to my friend, I went to my file manager page and tried to download the file and I was informed that because the file was larger than 10MB, I would have to upgrade to a paying account to download it. It felt like a cheap scam to me. That information should have been supplied before I wasted a lot of time and giving out my email address.
I settled on DVD backups, as this seemed the least expensive and easiest way of saving my data. I was surprised that ten years of data could be saved on a small stack of DVDs. Finally, I began thinking about how digitization will inevitably affect the art world. As images are increasingly digitized, and as they find their way onto the internet, this has wide ranging implications for all visual artists and designers.
