I lost five years of photos in 2019. A hard drive failure. No backup. I had told myself repeatedly that I should set one up. I never did. The drive clicked, the technician quoted ₩800,000 for data recovery with no guarantees, and I made a decision I should have made years earlier: to actually start a backup system.
I’ve spent a lot of time researching this topic, and here’s what I found.
The 3-2-1 rule is the standard that every IT professional, archivist, and security researcher agrees on. It’s simple, cheap, and it would have saved my photos.
Ever noticed this pattern in your own life?
What Is the 3-2-1 Rule?
The 3-2-1 backup strategy was formalized by photographer Peter Krogh in his 2005 book The DAM Book: Digital Asset Management for Photographers.[1] The rule:
I believe this deserves more attention than it gets.
Related: digital note-taking guide
References
Sources cited inline throughout this article.
