A busy commercial photography and video studio in Portland, Oregon, Polara Studio relies on CRU® hard drive enclosures at each point in their workflow to provide dependable backup and storage.

Michael Shay, co-founder and photographer at Polara, recently gave me a tour of their facility. They have a large, open space inside, ringed with a few studio rooms. They have a flexible setup to accommodate all kinds of indoor shoots.

“We have five photographers, and we each have a ToughTech® Duo that we use on every shoot. We’re not afraid to take those things anywhere we go,” Michael said. “That way we know that our images are copied during the shoot.”

The Duos mean more to them than realtime image duplication. “We put our Lightroom and catalog files on the ToughTech Duos, and even edit on them as well. They’re faster than using the laptop,” Michael said.

In addition to the Duos, Polara utilizes CRU RTX® towers for archiving and additional storage. They follow the 3-2-1 backup rule to the letter, and use static-free CRU DriveBoxes™ to store their bare hard drives when full.

How tough is a Toughtech Duo?

“This is where our tech dropped the Duo,” Michael said, indicating a tall, winding staircase in the middle of their building. “It fell out of his hands, landed on a metal power supply, bounced, and then hit the floor.” Michael showed me the power supply, along with the dent left by the Duo. “The data on the Duo survived the fall, luckily.”

Michael contacted CRU customer support to see if the damaged Duo was still usable after the more than ten foot drop, and after replacing the removable sleds that hold the drives, it was and the important thing is that the data survived. “We swear by the ToughTech Duos and we put them through a lot,” Michael said with a smile.