NCGH

For us in the Ghost Hunting world, our evidence is everything, it shows where we’ve been and what we found. A story is fine but having a picture, or video is even better. But sometimes bad things happen, a hard drive crashes, or a few disks are lost and suddenly half your collection is gone. But it can be prevented!

The first tip to preserving your data is to collect it into one place. Assign a person to be in charge of the data. At the end of the hunt, after analysis, they get all the data and put it onto one computer or external hard drive. If the data includes audio tapes or VHS they put them into a collected area. Try to put as much data into digital as possible. This allows the group to know where all data is at any time, no calling everyone who could possibly have it trying to find an important bit of info. This also keeps the originals out of harm’s way, no one can edit an original, thus it should always be there.

Next is to ensure losing a hard drive, or a computer crash or losing a cd or dvd doesn’t lose an important file. Once everything is in one place, make a copy of everything. Usually this means putting it onto a few dvds or cds. However keeping these copies doesn’t help if something happens to the location, say a fire, or a flood, or the person really has an issue finding things. So the copy should be kept in another location, if your group has access to a storage shed or the like, this would be a good place to hold it as well.

Once you’ve managed that no single loss should destroy your evidence. However it is important to keep making copies of new data that comes in to ensure that data is kept safe as well.

It’s really that easy!