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03-20-2017, 06:04 AM   #1
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The best way to save photo archives in tiff?

I know it has been discussed a million times before, but mostly for the whole workflow. My question will be only for scanned tiff files. Every file will be around 99MB, and it will be many of them.
I still have 430GB free out of 914GB on my computer, but I don't want to keep all the tiff files there.

Initially I planned to store them on external hard drive, but my son told it's not reliable way, and I need a backup in my comp (he does not want to do it on his comp however ) He told the external drive is not reliable solution. I planned to keep the original tiff-s there, and edited jpeg-s in my comp (and on external drive as well)

I can also store online, but what happens if I can't pay for the storage (lets imagine the situation, I can get sick, or die), then what?
Another disk installed in comp? It can crash also. Memory cards? Not reliable as well.

I don't know what is the most reliable way to store scans like film for long years ahead? Lets say, for 10-15 years at least.

03-20-2017, 06:31 AM   #2
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I store my backups on 2 external hard drives (mirror copies of the same data).

If one of the two fails, replace it immediately and copy the good one onto the new.

In your case - as you are not keeping the originals on your PC, you might want three external drive (just to be really sure).
03-20-2017, 07:12 AM   #3
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I have just backed up all my jpegs that I have sent to Flickr onto a blu ray disk. Whilst they are about 25G capacity and would not be enough to back all my DNG files at least I have a permanent copy of my best images
03-20-2017, 07:18 AM   #4
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All hard drives can fail; I've had two fail on me, one in a desktop and one in a laptop. I'm not sure that external drives are any more prone to failure - if anything it might be less as they are not used to the extent that built-in drives are. Storage online is a possibility as long as you have an unlimited data contract with your ISP, as given the size and number of files for storage, you'll likely spend a lot of time uploading. Storing on your computer, at 10 TIFFs per gigabyte, you'd wear through your 430GB pretty quickly.

All my RAWs are stored, mirrored on two external drives, as Robin noted above.

EDIT: I'm not sure how long BluRay discs will last - DVDs that I burned files and music to in the early 2000s are unreadable now.

03-20-2017, 07:24 AM   #5
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Internal drives are more apt to fail than external. I have two 1TB external drives that house all my dngs, and jpgs. Best option I've found as they, as has already been said, are not used as often as internal drives are, less failure and it sometimes depends on the brand of the drive. Though that's not predictable either as all drives can fail at any time and without warning, I've had only one drive fail me and it was a Seagate, now I stay away from that brand. My drives are Western Digital.

I've also backup to DVDs. And every couple of years, I burn those backups to new DVDs.
03-20-2017, 08:05 AM   #6
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QuoteOriginally posted by photolady95 Quote
Internal drives are more apt to fail than external. I have two 1TB external drives that house all my dngs, and jpgs. Best option I've found as they, as has already been said, are not used as often as internal drives are, less failure and it sometimes depends on the brand of the drive. Though that's not predictable either as all drives can fail at any time and without warning, I've had only one drive fail me and it was a Seagate, now I stay away from that brand. My drives are Western Digital.

I've also backup to DVDs. And every couple of years, I burn those backups to new DVDs.
The Most (and Least) Reliable Hard Drive Brands

EDIT: I use HDs since about 1986 (an extremely loud whining 10MB HD on an extension card for my Armstrad IBM PC clone), and since 1984 always owned more than 1 computer. During all this time, only one hard disk failed, many years ago - and this indeed was a Seagate.

Last edited by RKKS08; 03-20-2017 at 08:13 AM. Reason: Comment added
03-20-2017, 08:32 AM   #7
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Well, that's good info and verifies that my WDs are safer than most drives in the failure department.

Thanks for posting that info. I don't believe I've ever had any experience with Hitachi drives. Though maybe the old IBM computer I upgraded after getting it for free did have that brand drive. I don't remember because that was many years ago.

03-20-2017, 08:53 AM   #8
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Thank you, guys.
So far I see that film is a winner. Although my positive and some negative films have some discoloration after 30 years, but still, it's 30 years. Even in next 10 years we have no idea what will be next in digital world. Film is forever

I probably will buy one or two extra external drives today, dedicated to all scans only, probably 1TB, or 2TB, and set of archival DVDs
03-20-2017, 08:58 AM   #9
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QuoteOriginally posted by micromacro Quote
So far I see that film is a winner.
Yeah. Just ordered Intrepid 4x5 last week to see if I can switch all landscape shooting (except night photos) to film. My RAW archive is hitting 3 TB limit soon and it is time to double the capacity which will not be cheap due to backup drives.
03-20-2017, 09:26 AM   #10
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QuoteOriginally posted by micromacro Quote
Thank you, guys.
So far I see that film is a winner. Although my positive and some negative films have some discoloration after 30 years, but still, it's 30 years. Even in next 10 years we have no idea what will be next in digital world. Film is forever

I probably will buy one or two extra external drives today, dedicated to all scans only, probably 1TB, or 2TB, and set of archival DVDs
Hi Lana,

I'd recommend you look at a Network Attached Storage (NAS) solution. These will be more flexible than just buying a couple of external hard drives.

The two best sources for NAS are Synology and QNAP. For your use a two bay unit might be all you need to keep costs down, however the two links below are examples from each that are expandable should you want to add to them:

DS716+II - Products | Synology Inc.

TS-251+ :: QNAP

They're easy to set up and with two drives you can have a back up built right into the one unit. When you use an NAS solution you also use HDD designed for NAS like the WD Reds. They're designed to be operated more regularly than a HDD installed in a computer so a more reliable for storage use. Both of these units integrate with cloud solutions to give you a hard copy locally, with a back-up locally and an offsite back-up as well if you wish.

Tas

Last edited by Tas; 03-20-2017 at 09:43 AM. Reason: Added info on type of HDD and cloud sync
03-20-2017, 10:00 AM   #11
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NAS is a failure in a way that you cannot keep backup drives in separate locations (in case of thievery or fire etc.). Fire would waste films on the other hand
03-20-2017, 10:16 AM   #12
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I bought my drives separate from their cases. I just purchased a bare internal drive and then purchased an external case, rather than spend a bunch of money on an already encased external drive.
03-20-2017, 10:17 AM   #13
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QuoteOriginally posted by micromacro Quote
So far I see that film is a winner.
As soon as you scan a piece of film, you have invested time and money into digitizing it. The question for me is how do you get a good return on your investment? For starters, you need to make relatively quick use of a digitized image, because long-term storage requires additional investment of time and money. If you delay digitizing your film until you have a high value need for it, you get a better return on your investment.

The value of any image, digital or film, goes down over time; its value is related to the importance of what is recorded in the image and past events are less important than current events. The value of an image is also dependent on the quality of that image, but the value of image quality also goes down over time, so you can only slow down the declining value of images over time by investing time and money in preserving the quality of the image, not prevent that decline. Old pictures have value because they are the only record left of what something or someone looked like, as long as the current quality of that image is sufficient to be decipherable the picture is worth something. Digital images have a sudden decline in quality, one day they are indistinguishable (for the most part) from their original condition and the next day they are indecipherable. The most faded image on film is worth more than an indecipherable digital image.

If preserving film requires less of an investment than preserving digital images, it is better to hold off digitizing unless you have an immediate need for a digital version of that image. Images also go down in value when they are transferred to a different medium, so transferring an image from a piece of film to a digital file will reduce the value of that image. Only if the quality of the image on film is going to deteriorate over time at such a fast rate that its value will decline faster from loss of quality than loss of importance, should you consider digitizing that image solely for the purpose of preserving it. So, in conclusion, if your dilemma is how to preserve your film images, the winner indeed is film.

By the way, I'm all for preserving digital images on external hard drives, I have 20 year old scans on CD's, but copying files to a hard drive over a USB cable is faster and easier than copying them to an optical disk. For me, the time investment required to copy a terabyte of digital files to DVDs or Blu-ray disks is greater than the cost of a 1TB external hard drive and if I don't need to open those files during the lifetime of that external hard drive (with the opportunity to transfer them to another digital device without any significant additional time investment), maybe they aren't that valuable to begin with.

Last edited by RGlasel; 03-20-2017 at 10:30 AM.
03-20-2017, 10:42 AM   #14
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There is dire need for modern large capacity media such as DVD but in TB class instead of GB. Investing in 6TB backed up drive capacity is noy fun anymore.
03-20-2017, 11:16 AM   #15
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QuoteOriginally posted by RGlasel Quote
As soon as you scan a piece of film, you have invested time and money into digitizing it. The question for me is how do you get a good return on your investment? For starters, you need to make relatively quick use of a digitized image, because long-term storage requires additional investment of time and money. If you delay digitizing your film until you have a high value need for it, you get a better return on your investment.
I did not think that way as an investment. If talking about price, all those scans are family memories, and therefore priceless. I can talk only about the purpose, actually two:
1. To select the best images, edit, and print a few books.
2. To save all archive for my son. I mean, I will pass all unedited and edited tiffs to him after I'm done with them, and it will be his headache since that.

---------- Post added 03-20-17 at 11:19 AM ----------

QuoteOriginally posted by photolady95 Quote
I bought my drives separate from their cases. I just purchased a bare internal drive and then purchased an external case, rather than spend a bunch of money on an already encased external drive.
It's a great idea, but I feel like I'm not ready for it. Another study
First, DSLR, then editing, then workflow, printing, then saving.... it is endless to learn!

---------- Post added 03-20-17 at 11:20 AM ----------

QuoteOriginally posted by MJKoski Quote
There is dire need for modern large capacity media such as DVD but in TB class instead of GB. Investing in 6TB backed up drive capacity is noy fun anymore.
Yep. I ended up buying 50 DVDs archival quality, but only 4.7GB. One disk will fit only 47 scans.
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