Legendary combat photographer Robert Capa, was quoted for saying, "If your pictures aren't good enough, you aren't close enough."

His work documented historic battles in Europe and Asia during the mid 20th Century. During World War II, he fled to America to escape the Nazi invasion of France where he lived. He then joined the staff of Life and went on assignment back to Europe.

On June 6th 1944, D-Day, Robert Capa landed with allied forces on Omaha Beach in Normandy. Amidst the death all around him, while others were shooting bullets, he was shooting photographs. He risked everything to take 106 pictures that no doubt captured the moments that history would never forget. When the photos were being developed back in New York, a 15 year old lab assistant ruined the negatives and destroyed all but 11 frames.

The moral of this story is to BACKUP your files. You may never storm the beaches of Normandy, but you can be sure that your pictures will have meaning to you and your clients. Take the necessarry precautions to backup your data.

There are a number of solutions. I suggest you purchase a stand alone hard drive that is double the space that you think you will need. Most high capcity external drives are actually two drives built into one. They also have a feature that operates one of the two drives as a mirror. That means anything you save will be copied automatically into two places.

Obviously film is much different, but digital is so much easier for you to backup.  And, not just your files, you should always have a backup prepared... backup camera body, shoot location, bulbs, lights, etc.  Nobody will ever know the siginificance of Capa's photographs.  They are lost forever.