THE LOWDOWN ON THE GNARBOX 2.0

Dubbed As The Most Rugged And Reliable Backup Device On The Planet

Do you back up your pictures? If I had to guess, I’d say that, based on what I know or can intuit about the kind of person who reads Photography Masterclass Magazine, the majority of you probably answered, “Yes,” or even, “Yes, of course!”

And that’s great—you should back up your photos. If you’re already doing it, I don’t have to sell you on the virtues of having an extra copy of everything, just in case something goes wrong.

While you may already understand the value of backing up your precious work, you may not have heard about the Gnarbox 2.0, a cool device that could make it easier for you to do your backups.

If you don’t back up your pictures, then don’t worry, I’m not going to get on your case. It’s probably something that you know you should do, but maybe you’ve just never gotten around to it.

Or maybe it seemed too cumbersome or complicated, and you weren’t sure where or how to start. If you’re in this group, then the good news is that the Gnarbox 2.0 could be an easy way for you to finally start backing up your pictures.

For most of my life, or at least the part that involved computers, I’ve always tried to have at least one extra copy of each of my files. I cemented that mindset when my friend and photography mentor, Brad, shot my wedding pictures. It was right at the dawn of digital photography, and I remembered how impressed I was that he made multiple copies of the untouched images on the same night of the wedding.

He even gave me an external hard drive to hold onto until he’d had a chance to process the pictures, just in case something happened in the meantime to his memory cards or his computer. It almost seemed like overkill at the time, but I now understand he was just doing a top-notch job of backing up his hard work—and my memories.

Once I started with digital photography myself, part of that of course included making backup copies of all my pictures. That used to involve burning a bunch of CDs, and eventually I migrated to flash drives and external hard drives.

A few years after that, my house was broken into when I was out of the country, so I got even more diligent (and paranoid) about backing up everything I could.

I added an additional copy on an extra hard drive, which I left at a family member’s house. I also bought a yearly subscription to the backup service Backblaze, which I still use.

At this point, I’ve got about three or four copies of all my pictures, spread over several devices and drives, including my computer, the cloud, and multiple external hard drives, one of which is in a different country.

That’s all fine and good, but I wouldn’t call it seamless, and it’s not exactly the easiest thing to update. In fact, it’s kind of a pain in the butt, and it’s probably made me at once both more complacent and less thorough, which has led me to update everything less frequently than I should. Plus, I’d also not really considered whether a better backup option had come along in the meantime. That’s why I’m interested in at least the concept of the Gnarbox 2.0, and it might be something you should consider if you’re in a similar position as I am.

To put it simply, the Gnarbox is a lot like those external hard drives that I (and possibly you) have been futzing around with, but it’s much easier to work with when it comes to actually backing up your photos, and then accessing, processing, or transferring them later.

Up till now, when I wanted to back up or view my pictures, the first step has been to remove my SD card from my camera. That’s still the same first step with the Gnarbox, but the big difference is what you do next.

In my case, I need to put that card into the card reader on my computer, and then I use my computer to open the folder and copy the files onto my hard drive or an external drive. That involves going into multiple folders and it can take a significant amount of time and back-and-forth.

Again, that’s a fine system that works OK for me, but I have to actually use that system, and I’ve gotten a bit lax and lazy of late. Plus, it means that I always need to have my computer nearby if I want to back up my pictures.

However, the Gnarbox 2.0 eliminates the need to use a laptop or tablet. You can get those involved in the mix if you’d like, but you don’t have to. Instead, the first step with the Gnarbox is to put the SD card directly into the card slot. The Gnarbox has a simple LCD screen with a menu that lets you quickly and intuitively back up your pictures. The menu option you’d want is literally “Back Up Now,” just a few button taps away. The Gnarbox then makes a copy of all the pictures from your card directly onto its own internal SSD. And since it’s an SSD and there’s no moving parts, it’s much quicker than an HDD.

The Gnarbox also has two ports for USB-C connectors. Besides letting you connect the device to your computer, the ports also let you connect an additional drive directly to the Gnarbox. Then you can select the option to copy the pictures to multiple destinations, i.e. your second drive. In that case, you’d essentially be simultaneously making a backup of a backup, and the other external drive would then be ready to rock when it came time to connect the drive to your computer for post-processing.

By the way, if your camera uses some kind of card format other than SD, you could also use those USB-C ports to connect a card reader, which would let you copy photos onto the Gnarbox from other, non-SD cards.

If you want to post-process and share your images right in the field, the Gnarbox also has WiFi and can integrate with many different apps for editing, sharing, or archiving. This means that you could use your tablet or phone to wirelessly access the images you have on the Gnarbox.

You can edit, annotate, and/or share them directly from your phone, while still saving the copies on your Gnarbox. Depending on the kind of photography you’re doing, this could be an amazing advantage that could really boost your workflow and turnaround times.

Speaking of workflow, the video that follows this article has an excellent, concise explanation of what they call their “3-2-1 Data Management Workflow.” It basically involves making 3 copies of all source images, 2 backup copies to local drives, and 1 copy to a remote site or cloud storage service. The video also shows how you can integrate the Gnarbox into this backup workflow, and gives suggestions on how to use the Gnarbox while on the go.

By the way, if you do shoot lots of pictures remotely - like if you shoot weddings or go out for longer nature photography trips - then you’ll be glad to know that the Gnarbox is quite durable and is weather-proof.

I wouldn’t recommend kicking it down the street or dropping it into a lake, but if you do happen to accidentally do either of those things, it’ll have a better chance of surviving than your laptop or external drive would.

What’s stopping us all from going out and getting a Gnarbox or two, then?

Well, the price may make you think twice if you only view it as an external SSD drive. The 256 GB version is $499, the $256 GB costs $599, and the 1 TB will set you back $899.

However, this isn’t just a dumb, run-ofthe-mill external drive. It’s essentially a computer and an SSD all in one, with a simplified interface that’s geared towards photographers—especially professional photographers.

Since I’m not a photographer who needs to make on-site backups, and I don’t have to be accountable to paying clients, I can probably afford to use my old, cumbersome system involving multiple steps and multiple backups. I might consider picking up a Gnarbox if I come across a sale or if I feel like treating myself to something nice and fancy.

But if you’re higher up in the photography pecking order, like a wedding photographer or someone who shoots professional portraits, or if you could simply have major problems if you lose a copy of your pictures, then you should definitely take a closer look at the Gnarbox.