[jbinpg]

From Wikipedia....


"The US LZW patent expired on June 20, 2003.[20] The counterpart patents in the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Italy expired on June 18, 2004, the Japanese counterpart patents expired on June 20, 2004 and the counterpart Canadian patent expired on July 7, 2004.[20] Consequently, while Unisys has further patents and patent applications relating to improvements to the LZW technique,[20] the GIF format may now be used freely."

[Aristophanes]

Dear all,

How should we organize the long term storage of our digital photography?

Neanderthalers from the film era like me were quite spoiled regarding archiving & storage: I still have my 30 years old negative films in perfect condition.

To me, archiving & storage poses a problem of a new magnitude in the digital age of photography for any kind of users, from P&S "sunday" amateurs, serious photographers, to professionals.

Strangely, I do not seem to find a lot of material regarding this subject in the usual forums.

Of course, we all would like nice criteria such as:
- long term resilience
- immediate availability
- searchability
- independance from external providers

In a first step I set up a straightforward procedure consisting of:

0. Naming
Each folder is named after date & thema, allowing easy searches.
1. copy all files to a portable USB hard disk
Limited to hard disk capacity (160 Gb). High risk due to failure possibility. Long term resilience low (magnetic signals "evaporate" in time). Half-time of disk formats limited in time.
2. make a second copy on DVDs, 4.7 Gb at a time
Good reputation of optical storage is contradicted by personal experience and variability of material (high "luck" factor). Dependability depends on burning speed (choose the lowest possible speed).

To me this is only a short-term solution depending on too many technological factors to be serious. However it will allow me to wait for a better long-term plan.

Now, what do you think? What is your procedure? Thank you very much for your kind input.

daniel

Easy.

1) High resolution JPEG. It's an international standard and will be viable for archival purposes for a very long time. Proprietary RAW, no. If they are your edited, final copy "keepers" JPEG 'em. Usually we prefer unaltered, lossless formats for archive, but not in this case, not at this stage of industry development.

2) Get them offsite. Phanfare, SmugMug, even Flickr. Get them offsite to a place that has redundant back to your own, personal backup.

3) Exact mirror personal backup.

[Wheatfield]

Easy.

1) High resolution JPEG.

Better still would be either tiff or bmp. Jpegs can be somewhat easily corrupted.

[Marc Sabatella]

Let me just add my vote for redundancy x4...!

Ditto. I also recommend (got this from Krogh too) diversifying at a way of managing risk. Not only do I have redundant copies in different locations, but also on different physical media, because different media have different risk factors.

For instance, as much maligned as DVD is as a long term storage medium, it does at least provide greater protection against theft than any drive (who'd steal a DVD?), and while failure rate may be pretty high, you aren't likely to lose *all* data on *all* disks at one. I don't expect them to last forever, but am happy to re-burning them every few years with whatever the latest and greatest is at the time.

PS: Marc - I've had "The DAM Book" on order for some time now, and Amazon are still giving a delivery date of sometime in September. Just in case others may be looking for it - it seems to be unavailable at the moment.

Bummer. FWIW, I saw a copy at a local B&N (or was it Borders?) just a week or two ago. And there are always libraries. First edition is substantially similar, although to be sure there are enough new developments such that I probably wouldn't *buy* the first edition at this point.

[Derridale]

Thanks Marc. But I'm in Australia, so no B & N here as far as I know. We do have a Borders, but I doubt they would carry the range you guys get over there.

I've had mine on order with Amazon for a while now, so I'll just let it ride and see when it arrives.

[Wheatfield]

FWIW, part of my storage solution is a Drobo, which to date has done exactly what it says it will do.
It isn't perfect, and I suspect that there is some proprietary stuff going on in there that will bother the computer purist.
For me, however, it is a good solution.
It is also not my only solution. I also have a 2 drive mirror in my desktop and a pair of external sata enclosers.
I have no off-site storage, but I have a Rottweiler.