[RioRico]

I put mine on a DVD which goes into a fireproof safe.

DVD's and CD's are too volatile. I wouldn't trust any that I've burnt after 5 years. I've had some deteriorate after less than 1 year. And will disc readers be available in a decade? Have you tried finding a 3.5" stiffy drive lately, let alone a 5.25" floppy? And forget about 12"! Anyone here remember MiniDiscs and ZIP and JAZ? Read any lately?

Note: AFAIK the mechanically-copyable storage media that were produced for the longest time were the Hollerith punch card and the 78rpm disc. Where will DVDs, CDs, ZIPs, MDs, floppies, flippies, mag.tapes, etc be in a century?

Hard drives are reasonably reliable and have the advantage of usually showing signs of failure before failing completely.

I had a disastrous unannounced failure of my photos HD. Recovery took very much money, time, effort, pain. That's what drove me to RAID systems. See below.

does *anyone* reading this have a working hard drive from the 1990's?

Just one, but I don't use it very much. The only reason I keep its host Win95 computer is, that's my only MIDI controller. And I'm too cheap to replace it.

Secure cloud storage account with a mainstream provider.

Remember Google Video? Providers may decide to stop providing. Remember China, and virii? Some govt or criminal or other malicious group(s) may *force* providers to stop providing. All sorts of bad sh!t could happen. EMP could wipe server farms. Yow. I would not entrust my recorded existence to a vapor.

A good one for digital is to buy an external RAID 1 Hard drive. what we, geeks, called RAID 1 it is when you have 2 hard drive, seen as one by the computer, on wich every copy/ delete are done exactly at the same place on the hard drive. And if one of the two hard drive stop working, you can replace it by a new one, and it will recopy everything on it.

IMHO this is the best solution. I have had two RAID-1 systems. I returned the first for non-technical reasons -- like, Alienware/Dell customer service sucks big-time. Anyway, one drive failed, yet all was saved. Were I more paranoid, I would use two RAID-1 setups, one local and one remote, with automagickal constant mirroring.

Got more pictures? Buy more RAIDs! Storage is becoming ludicrously cheap. [Showing my age: my first disc system stored 270k on 3 single-side floppy drives and cost US$1200 in 1980. A 5-meg HD would have cost about US$10k then. Adjust for inflation, eh?]

[markdesmarais]

On my main computer, automatically backed up to a local unraid box, and fairly regularly uploaded to Fotki, in case the house burns down.

[boriscleto]

DVD's and CD's are too volatile. I wouldn't trust any that I've burnt after 5 years. I've had some deteriorate after less than 1 year. And will disc readers be available in a decade? Have you tried finding a 3.5" stiffy drive lately, let alone a 5.25" floppy? And forget about 12"! Anyone here remember MiniDiscs and ZIP and JAZ? Read any lately?

A quick Google search for USB Floppy Drive got 1,800,000 results in .09 seconds. I have several ZIP 100s and a ZIP 250 and still use them on occasion with my legacy systems. The best way to deal with data stored on old media is to seek out a Users Group. Chances are good that some freak like me will have an old hardware fetish.

IMHO this is the best solution. I have had two RAID-1 systems. I returned the first for non-technical reasons -- like, Alienware/Dell customer service sucks big-time. Anyway, one drive failed, yet all was saved. Were I more paranoid, I would use two RAID-1 setups, one local and one remote, with automagickal constant mirroring.

Got more pictures? Buy more RAIDs! Storage is becoming ludicrously cheap. [Showing my age: my first disc system stored 270k on 3 single-side floppy drives and cost US$1200 in 1980. A 5-meg HD would have cost about US$10k then. Adjust for inflation, eh?]

RAID is too complicated for most users. A better solution is a Drobo. A Drobo is a self-contained Linux computer with 4, 5, 8, or 12 hot-swapable drive bays. You just put 2 or more drives in and it does the rest. A 4 bay Drobo with 4 2TB hard drives provides 5.5TB of protected storage and would cost about $620.

Drobo - Drobo 4-bay

[reeftool]

The safest and best is multiple backups. Any media can fail whether hard drives, CD's, DVD's. The easiest is to extra hard drives, whether internal or external, especially when your photo collection gets large. We have 2 full time working computers in the house and all my photos are uploaded to each. I also have an external HD where everything is backed up on. A lot of my older shots are also on DVD's. I stopped with the DVD's because the pile kept growing and growing.It's been 4 years since I made the switch to digital and already I have a pretty massive collection. Fortunately, hard drives are getting bigger and bigger with capacity which is good because in a few years most of us are going to have huge photo collections.

[wombat2go]

1. Raid 1 is good for uptime , but no good, and not intended, as a long term back up.
When something goes wrong -human /software/hardware/malware/ram/controller error-,
rather than Raid 1 being a cure, it can duplicate the complaint.
Long term storage needs to be physically remote and not in the activity loop.

There's lots of chatter about people mistaking Raid 1 for backup.

2. In early 1990's I put my best, such as they were, on Kodak photocds.
After several moves - I have lost them, just can't remember where I put them.

[epqwerty]

Storing on the hard drive with a DVD backup. Eventually the DVD will be reburned onto newer media. That's my method. Also DVDR used are not low end media. I reserve top tier media for photos and personal data.

[rhodopsin]

No digital storage method is truely 'archival', thus, store multiple copies, each on different physical devices, separate geographic locations.

Using old hard drives for backup/storage is not recommended, for (hopeful) obvious reasons.

DVD/CD can degrade in a few months or last for many years -- the medium is undependable, unreliable, recommend for file sharing only, aka. 'sneaker net', never ever for backup or archive.

For those serious about digital archiving, please refer to "Digital Asset Management" material -- some people have been thinking about this and doing it professionally for a long time -- take advantage of well-established industry principles and methods. An introduction directed at photographers in particular is The DAM Book: Digital Asset Management for Photographers.

MFM ring a bell anybody? How about MIDS?

Have any aschi art on fan-fold paper tape?

Thoroughly tongue-in-cheek, an ultimate universal archival storage system (UASS, ) may be to post all photos online copyright free in full resolution, the thinking being the best photos will be copied more, for more copies in the 'archive', more redundancy, a better chance at least one of the multiple copies will be usable than to depend on any medium to be 100% dependable, reliable, & error-free.

[Wheatfield]

RAID is too complicated for most users. A better solution is a Drobo. A Drobo is a self-contained Linux computer with 4, 5, 8, or 12 hot-swapable drive bays. You just put 2 or more drives in and it does the rest. A 4 bay Drobo with 4 2TB hard drives provides 5.5TB of protected storage and would cost about $620.

Drobo - Drobo 4-bay

I've been using a Drobo for several years now. Mine is the original 4 bay USB device. Transfer to mine are on the slow side (fixed with later units and firewire), but the unit is dead easy to use and so far has given me no complaints at all.

[Marc Sabatella]

DVD/CD can degrade in a few months or last for many years -- the medium is undependable, unreliable, recommend for file sharing only, aka. 'sneaker net', never ever for backup or archive.

For those serious about digital archiving, please refer to "Digital Asset Management" material -- some people have been thinking about this and doing it professionally for a long time -- take advantage of well-established industry principles and methods. An introduction directed at photographers in particular is The DAM Book: Digital Asset Management for Photographers.

I recommend this too, but note Krogh specifically does recommend DVD / Blur-ray as *one* of the multiple backup strategies everyone should implement. He even organizes his whole folder hierarchy scheme around this assumption. I agree, it's not reliable as an *only* backup. Redundancy is the key, but better still if the different systems have different risk factors.

[sgtkashim]

1. Raid 1 is good for uptime , but no good, and not intended, as a long term back up.
When something goes wrong -human /software/hardware/malware/ram/controller error-,
rather than Raid 1 being a cure, it can duplicate the complaint.
Long term storage needs to be physically remote and not in the activity loop.

There's lots of chatter about people mistaking Raid 1 for backup.

2. In early 1990's I put my best, such as they were, on Kodak photocds.
After several moves - I have lost them, just can't remember where I put them.

Ayup.
We spent the better part of last week recovering data from a medical office that thought that...
We have em on a tape drive system now.

[RioRico]

I recommend this too, but note Krogh specifically does recommend DVD / Blur-ray as *one* of the multiple backup strategies everyone should implement... Redundancy is the key, but better still if the different systems have different risk factors.

One great negative of DVD/BluRay is limited storage capacity per disc. I use a 16GB SD card in my K20D. So just one cardfull requires multiple discs even BEFORE development and processing. That's one reason I gave up on CD's back when I was using only 5mpx P&S's. I ended up with many 3-ring binders filled with hundreds of discs each, of original images and processed versions. At this stage of evolution, removable non-volatile media in the 1TB range are needed, as part of a redundant storage scheme. Lacking such media, multiple mirrored RAID systems seem best. I'm not familiar with Drobo -- more research, eh?

[Marc Sabatella]

The viability of DVD as a second backup depends on your shooting habits, true. For me, I only need a new DVD every 3-4 weeks or so. I can handle 20 or so DVD's a year, and of course, within a few years, we'll all be using Blu-ray.

But note, I only use this form of backup for my originals, so processing doesn't change the storage requirements. And again, this is backup only; obviously,"live" storage is essential for primary storage, and ideal for a first backup as well.

[mmphilip]

My photographs are my most important possession (of course, I'm not including my famiiy as a "possession"). Everything else is just stuff that can be replaced or forgotten about. In fact, I'd be happy if most of it just disappeared. For this reason I have a multi-tier backup system. One set on the computer, one set on an external drive at home, one set on an external drive away from home, and one set in the "cloud" (I use Smugmug). I guess I'm paranoid.

- Mike

[Ubuntu_user]

Doesn't Drobo use RAID??? Not RAID 1, but RAID 5 or something like that?

[thorwb]

I was considering online storage, but ended up with a cheaper solution;
-external hdd for my laptop as the everyday library
-backup to multimedia-pc/server in living room (gigabit ethernet)
-backup to my old pc at my parents house (slow internet - I only do this once in a while)

I use CrashPlan for automatic backup to both locations, because it sends stuff encrypted over the internet, and is free as long as I use my own storage. Having two locations was what I really wanted in case of a fire/burglary. This may sound paranoid, but photos are invaluable. Also, I had all the necessary equipment anyways so it was free