How do you backup your photos?

falconeye · 03-11-2008, 04:56 PM

4 TB RAID level 5 array (shared with other stuff).

With Blu-Ray's recent win, I plan to burn Blu-Ray disks (BD) for off site backup.

Unlike DVD, DVD recordables and HD-DVD, but like rare DVD-Ram, BD is said to last 30 years...

Crescent City · 03-12-2008, 11:13 AM

Does anyone print the good ones? No better archival medium. The question is, when you become old and feeeble who is going to maintain, keep current all those files? I think people are too attached to every last file, if its not a keeper its not a keeper. Save all those storage costs, get a pigment based printer and some archival paper. Instead of spending all that time burning and backing up, do some printing. ch

Geekybiker · 03-12-2008, 01:14 PM

Originally posted by Crescent City

Does anyone print the good ones? No better archival medium. The question is, when you become old and feeeble who is going to maintain, keep current all those files? I think people are too attached to every last file, if its not a keeper its not a keeper. Save all those storage costs, get a pigment based printer and some archival paper. Instead of spending all that time burning and backing up, do some printing. ch

While we're at it, lets just throw our film negatives away too! After all who need the originals, or those extra negatives you never printed.

falconeye · 03-12-2008, 05:25 PM

Originally posted by Crescent City

Save all those storage costs, get a pigment based printer and some archival paper. Instead of spending all that time burning and backing up, do some printing. ch

Yes, spend ten times the time and money to print'em all and still wonder why the ink isn't lasting... Of course, printing is much more fun than copying, I agree

clawhammer · 03-12-2008, 08:23 PM

I use Aperture, so after I shoot something I download it to my computer, do all my picks and minor edits, then export the new PEF+XMP sidecar files and burn to CD's using a program called Disco. I maintain a Vault on a seperate 250 gig hard drive, and when I upgrade my macbooks hard drive I plan on putting it in an inclosure and using it as a second hard drive to store at a different location. Only after I've updated the vault and burnt the CDs do I wipe the SD cards.

I now have three copies of each file: one on my mac harddrive, one on the Aperture Vault, and one on CDs. Now that I think about it, I should probably take all my CD's (which are purely for backup purposes anyway) and store them off-site.

**Canada_Rockies** · 03-12-2008, 08:31 PM

I use Lightroom, and the auto backup on import is set to a 40 Gb USB drive out of an IBM laptop that I fried by overheating it. I have an additional 20 Gb USB drive and enclosure. I am investigating on line backup storage, as I think this is the easiest and most economical way for me to do it.

Crescent City · 03-13-2008, 07:21 AM

Originally posted by Geekybiker

While we're at it, lets just throw our film negatives away too! After all who need the originals, or those extra negatives you never printed.

Might as well, a bad picture is a bad picture no matter how long its been in that shoe box. Unless you are Gary Winograd no one is going to print them. Do your kids a favor, leave them photo albums, not a digital mess, then they might actually look and enjoy some of those pictures. ch

Geekybiker · 03-13-2008, 09:58 AM

Originally posted by Crescent City

Might as well, a bad picture is a bad picture no matter how long its been in that shoe box. Unless you are Gary Winograd no one is going to print them. Do your kids a favor, leave them photo albums, not a digital mess, then they might actually look and enjoy some of those pictures. ch

Just curious as to how old you are? I'm 10x more likely to look at photos on digital media than on physical media. Plus digital files are easily searched and sorted by EXIF data and tags. Assuming you've kept up your library, finding every photo that contains a certain person is a simple matter in digital vs hours of searching on physical media. Not to mention I can hand someone every photo I've ever taken in digital format a a device smaller than a small photo album. Digital files are also easily backup up and copied to offsite locations cheaply so they aren't vulnerable to loss via fire etc. Whos leaving who a mess with digital files vs heaps of printed photos?

As for bad photos... there are tons of photos that I shoot that aren't worth displaying, but still are worth keeping for memories sake. I normally only delete out of focus, or other unsalvagable photos from a technical perspective.

Crescent City · 03-13-2008, 11:54 AM

As for my age, I guess you could say I am well past the half way point. Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with backing up digital files of photographs, and given the ephemeral nature of anything digital, it certainly is a good idea. I guess I live on an island, but I have always taken photographs in hopes that a might just get a few that are worth printing. And I far prefer the pleasure of examing a printed photograph in my hand or behind a frame than I do sitting behind a monitor. I certainly agree that digital files take up considerably less space than their old world counterparts. But if one's personal photography collection consists of two terra bites of digital files and four 8x10's, than I submit that there is a problem. As for one's leagacy, where talking archives here aren't we, I would rather leave behind a simple folder consisting of the pictures that meant the most to me than some ungodly number of digital files that no one will ever bother to look at, or that I would want them too. ch

mel · 03-13-2008, 02:11 PM

Originally posted by Crescent City

As for one's leagacy, where talking archives here aren't we, I would rather leave behind a simple folder consisting of the pictures that meant the most to me than some ungodly number of digital files that no one will ever bother to look at, or that I would want them too. ch

Wow this is opening up and entirely new can of worms here. In my professional life I am a Librarian, and one who has spent no small amount of time on preservation and archival issues. Usually with archives, the idea is to preserve it and park it away until it's needed, even if that is decades between uses.

One of the main problems facing digital preservation is the rapidity of technological change. An oft cited expample is the digitized version of the doomsday book (I forget the exact year this was done but I think it was sometime in the 80s - don't quote me). This is no longer readable. However, the originial from how many hundreds of years ago can be read just fine with human eyes.

Some papers and films (determined by testing for the film) has a life expectancy of 500 years give or take. Most digial media must be migrated every 10 years at minimum. Possibly even more frequently if you really want to insure continued readablility.

I know for me personally, I'm not going to want to be messing with all these files again and again and again. There will be a point in my life where I will just want to do as Cresent City say, just leave a folder or box or whatever of the images that meant the most. Chances are that future generations won't be able to read the digital media anyway. And they will be too busy with their own things to want to continue messing around with my files.

Mostly my opinion punctuated with a few morsels of actual knowledge.

deadzone · 03-14-2008, 07:24 AM

I have a nice little NAS device hooked up at home with a couple of humongous hard drives in a mirrored raid setup. I also tend to just throw anything that I shoot onto my Flickr account as well.

Works well enough for me and for the most part due to my lack of experience most of my pictures at this point are junk anyway and I wouldn't really be too, too, depressed if I lost some.

Unless of course it was some of my more cherished family pics of my wife and kid, then I would be sick with myself!

03-13-2008, 02:11 PM	#40
mel Veteran Member Join Date: Feb 2008 Location: Virginia Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 2,531	Originally posted by Crescent City As for one's leagacy, where talking archives here aren't we, I would rather leave behind a simple folder consisting of the pictures that meant the most to me than some ungodly number of digital files that no one will ever bother to look at, or that I would want them too. ch Wow this is opening up and entirely new can of worms here. In my professional life I am a Librarian, and one who has spent no small amount of time on preservation and archival issues. Usually with archives, the idea is to preserve it and park it away until it's needed, even if that is decades between uses. One of the main problems facing digital preservation is the rapidity of technological change. An oft cited expample is the digitized version of the doomsday book (I forget the exact year this was done but I think it was sometime in the 80s - don't quote me). This is no longer readable. However, the originial from how many hundreds of years ago can be read just fine with human eyes. Some papers and films (determined by testing for the film) has a life expectancy of 500 years give or take. Most digial media must be migrated every 10 years at minimum. Possibly even more frequently if you really want to insure continued readablility. I know for me personally, I'm not going to want to be messing with all these files again and again and again. There will be a point in my life where I will just want to do as Cresent City say, just leave a folder or box or whatever of the images that meant the most. Chances are that future generations won't be able to read the digital media anyway. And they will be too busy with their own things to want to continue messing around with my files. Mostly my opinion punctuated with a few morsels of actual knowledge. Last edited by mel; 03-13-2008 at 02:56 PM. Reason: wording, small errors

Similar Threads
Thread	Thread Starter	Forum	Replies	Last Post
K7 as backup for K5	djc737	Pentax K-5 & K-5 II	14	06-13-2011 02:37 PM
People Being the backup-backup photographer	Rory	Post Your Photos!	5	10-03-2010 08:43 PM
Backup camera choice to go with the K7?	Unruely	Pentax DSLR Discussion	23	03-04-2010 02:29 PM
k7 backup: k20d or kx	matoqui	Pentax DSLR Discussion	7	01-28-2010 10:06 AM
How do i backup photos between 2 ext drives	philbaum	Digital Processing, Software, and Printing	5	02-09-2009 06:04 PM

03-11-2008, 04:56 PM	#31
falconeye Veteran Member Join Date: Jan 2008 Location: Munich, Alps, Germany Photos: Gallery Posts: 6,871	4 TB RAID level 5 array (shared with other stuff). With Blu-Ray's recent win, I plan to burn Blu-Ray disks (BD) for off site backup. Unlike DVD, DVD recordables and HD-DVD, but like rare DVD-Ram, BD is said to last 30 years...

03-12-2008, 11:13 AM	#32
Crescent City Inactive Account Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: New Orleans, La Posts: 55	Does anyone print the good ones? No better archival medium. The question is, when you become old and feeeble who is going to maintain, keep current all those files? I think people are too attached to every last file, if its not a keeper its not a keeper. Save all those storage costs, get a pigment based printer and some archival paper. Instead of spending all that time burning and backing up, do some printing. ch

03-12-2008, 01:14 PM	#33
Geekybiker Veteran Member Join Date: Feb 2008 Location: Chicagoland Posts: 337	Originally posted by Crescent City Does anyone print the good ones? No better archival medium. The question is, when you become old and feeeble who is going to maintain, keep current all those files? I think people are too attached to every last file, if its not a keeper its not a keeper. Save all those storage costs, get a pigment based printer and some archival paper. Instead of spending all that time burning and backing up, do some printing. ch While we're at it, lets just throw our film negatives away too! After all who need the originals, or those extra negatives you never printed.

03-12-2008, 05:25 PM	#34
falconeye Veteran Member Join Date: Jan 2008 Location: Munich, Alps, Germany Photos: Gallery Posts: 6,871	Originally posted by Crescent City Save all those storage costs, get a pigment based printer and some archival paper. Instead of spending all that time burning and backing up, do some printing. ch Yes, spend ten times the time and money to print'em all and still wonder why the ink isn't lasting... Of course, printing is much more fun than copying, I agree

03-12-2008, 08:23 PM	#35
clawhammer Veteran Member Join Date: Sep 2007 Location: Logan, Utah Photos: Gallery Posts: 971	I use Aperture, so after I shoot something I download it to my computer, do all my picks and minor edits, then export the new PEF+XMP sidecar files and burn to CD's using a program called Disco. I maintain a Vault on a seperate 250 gig hard drive, and when I upgrade my macbooks hard drive I plan on putting it in an inclosure and using it as a second hard drive to store at a different location. Only after I've updated the vault and burnt the CDs do I wipe the SD cards. I now have three copies of each file: one on my mac harddrive, one on the Aperture Vault, and one on CDs. Now that I think about it, I should probably take all my CD's (which are purely for backup purposes anyway) and store them off-site.

03-12-2008, 08:31 PM	#36
Canada_Rockies Loyal Site Supporter Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Sparwood, BC, Canada Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 12,385	I use Lightroom, and the auto backup on import is set to a 40 Gb USB drive out of an IBM laptop that I fried by overheating it. I have an additional 20 Gb USB drive and enclosure. I am investigating on line backup storage, as I think this is the easiest and most economical way for me to do it.

03-13-2008, 07:21 AM	#37
Crescent City Inactive Account Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: New Orleans, La Posts: 55	Originally posted by Geekybiker While we're at it, lets just throw our film negatives away too! After all who need the originals, or those extra negatives you never printed. Might as well, a bad picture is a bad picture no matter how long its been in that shoe box. Unless you are Gary Winograd no one is going to print them. Do your kids a favor, leave them photo albums, not a digital mess, then they might actually look and enjoy some of those pictures. ch

03-13-2008, 09:58 AM	#38
Geekybiker Veteran Member Join Date: Feb 2008 Location: Chicagoland Posts: 337	Originally posted by Crescent City Might as well, a bad picture is a bad picture no matter how long its been in that shoe box. Unless you are Gary Winograd no one is going to print them. Do your kids a favor, leave them photo albums, not a digital mess, then they might actually look and enjoy some of those pictures. ch Just curious as to how old you are? I'm 10x more likely to look at photos on digital media than on physical media. Plus digital files are easily searched and sorted by EXIF data and tags. Assuming you've kept up your library, finding every photo that contains a certain person is a simple matter in digital vs hours of searching on physical media. Not to mention I can hand someone every photo I've ever taken in digital format a a device smaller than a small photo album. Digital files are also easily backup up and copied to offsite locations cheaply so they aren't vulnerable to loss via fire etc. Whos leaving who a mess with digital files vs heaps of printed photos? As for bad photos... there are tons of photos that I shoot that aren't worth displaying, but still are worth keeping for memories sake. I normally only delete out of focus, or other unsalvagable photos from a technical perspective.

03-13-2008, 11:54 AM	#39
Crescent City Inactive Account Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: New Orleans, La Posts: 55	As for my age, I guess you could say I am well past the half way point. Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with backing up digital files of photographs, and given the ephemeral nature of anything digital, it certainly is a good idea. I guess I live on an island, but I have always taken photographs in hopes that a might just get a few that are worth printing. And I far prefer the pleasure of examing a printed photograph in my hand or behind a frame than I do sitting behind a monitor. I certainly agree that digital files take up considerably less space than their old world counterparts. But if one's personal photography collection consists of two terra bites of digital files and four 8x10's, than I submit that there is a problem. As for one's leagacy, where talking archives here aren't we, I would rather leave behind a simple folder consisting of the pictures that meant the most to me than some ungodly number of digital files that no one will ever bother to look at, or that I would want them too. ch

03-14-2008, 07:24 AM	#41
deadzone New Member Join Date: Feb 2008 Location: Baton Rouge, LA. Photos: Gallery Posts: 12	I have a nice little NAS device hooked up at home with a couple of humongous hard drives in a mirrored raid setup. I also tend to just throw anything that I shoot onto my Flickr account as well. Works well enough for me and for the most part due to my lack of experience most of my pictures at this point are junk anyway and I wouldn't really be too, too, depressed if I lost some. Unless of course it was some of my more cherished family pics of my wife and kid, then I would be sick with myself!