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05-20-2008, 10:11 AM   #1
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where does everyone store their photos?

I cant keep all my pictures on my computer...theres just not enough room, where does everyone store their pictures? Online? flash drive? memory card?or do you store them on your comp, I cant decide what would be the best choice for me.

05-20-2008, 10:13 AM   #2
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I started to back them up on DVD, but the stack got too big. So I bought an Iomega external drive and back them up there. I don't know what I'll do when the Iomega fills up

And what I REALLY should do is go through them and delete the duds. Never seem to get around to it though.
05-20-2008, 10:15 AM   #3
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200 dollars

1 terabyte of storage,

Amazon.com: Western Digital My Book Essential Edition 1 TB External Hard Drive: Electronics

if this is "too expensive" for you then you can opt for a 500gb unit for half the price.

good luck filling all that memory up.
05-20-2008, 10:23 AM   #4
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My macbook pro only has a 120Gb disk and most that is spit up between itunes music, applications and photos :S so i just got a 1TB (1000GB) external disk for £120 which uses firewire 800 which is double the speed of usb2! The disk is too 500gb disks in on case so i use one as a back up of my laptop and the other disk to archive my photos when i'v finished with them on my laptop, i also burn them to dvds. in date order

so to simply all that I edit the photos on my laptop then burn them to a dvd and then archive them on an external hardisk. This doese mean i don't have access to all my photos on the road but i never really need to re edit photos on the road only the photos from shoots done on the road etc and if i did need to edit archived photos i'd just grab the dvd or take the external disk with me.

Hope that helps?

I wouldn't store photos online unless you have like a 100mb/s connection it'll take forever!

Are you shooting in raw? I do and recomend you do and get yourself a decent application that can edit and store you photos like adobe lightroom or apple's aperture or even iphoto or adobe elements maybe.

05-20-2008, 10:33 AM   #5
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2 mirrored Harddrives plus 2 copies of each DVD I fill up.
05-20-2008, 11:18 AM   #6
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QuoteOriginally posted by metalfab Quote
2 mirrored Harddrives plus 2 copies of each DVD I fill up.
Good start, but make sure you have off-site copies as well.
05-20-2008, 11:27 AM   #7
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QuoteOriginally posted by dopeytree Quote
My macbook pro only has a 120Gb disk and most that is spit up between itunes music, applications and photos :S so i just got a 1TB (1000GB) external disk for £120 which uses firewire 800 which is double the speed of usb2! The disk is too 500gb disks in on case so i use one as a back up of my laptop and the other disk to archive my photos when i'v finished with them on my laptop, i also burn them to dvds. in date order

so to simply all that I edit the photos on my laptop then burn them to a dvd and then archive them on an external hardisk. This doese mean i don't have access to all my photos on the road but i never really need to re edit photos on the road only the photos from shoots done on the road etc and if i did need to edit archived photos i'd just grab the dvd or take the external disk with me.

Hope that helps?

I wouldn't store photos online unless you have like a 100mb/s connection it'll take forever!

Are you shooting in raw? I do and recomend you do and get yourself a decent application that can edit and store you photos like adobe lightroom or apple's aperture or even iphoto or adobe elements maybe.
I have lightroom storing photos right now as well as my comp and a flash drive... I'm going to look into it more I've never heard of any of the stuff you guys are talking about

thanks everyone

05-20-2008, 12:46 PM   #8
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Hi momtographer

I'd like to endorse Matt's sentiments when he said:

QuoteQuote:
make sure you have off-site copies as well.
At the time you're doing this, I know it must obviously seem like a royal PITA to religiously back-up all your photographs using reliable media such as CD-R's or DVD's. Never forget that the acronym MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure - relating to the longevity of your hard-drive) lurks malevolently in the background every time you turn your computer on. The unwelcome prospect of irretrievably losing all those precious images which you've meticulously consigned to your computer's hard-disc
(when it eventually goes kaput !) really doesn't bear thinking about !
I'd like to relate a cautionary tale about a conversation I once had with a guy about a decade or so ago, who had run his whole business from home. Unfortunately, one day the main hard-drive suddenly went belly-up, taking his ENTIRE mail-order client list 'down the swanny' with it. Needless to say he hadn't bothered to take any precautions to back-up that vital data and regrettably some months down the road, the poor bloke subsequently went bankrupt !! Believe me, this kind of thing can actually happen........

Best regards
Richard

Last edited by Confused; 05-20-2008 at 03:13 PM.
05-20-2008, 01:50 PM   #9
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DVD-Rs are getting really cheap these days - perhaps the most reliable form of permanent storage (if stored correctly and not abused).

A pack of 100 quality DVD-Rs costs me around AUD$50, collectively giving me 470GB of storage memory. Then consider emptying your hard drive of those photos you've stored, which would speed up your computer's speed considerably. And DVDs are less likely to 'crash' too...

Also, think about what format you want to be storing your photos in. I love the versatility of RAW but also realise how much extra space they need compared with high quality JPEGs. If I have photos I definitely won't be doing great work on in the future, I adjust them to look the best they can when converting to JPEG and then I delete the RAW file. I don't fill up my DVDs too fast this way...

But if I relied on my photos as my source of income, backup media would be paramount and I'd have the images all in RAW saved at least in duplicate in different places...
05-20-2008, 01:56 PM   #10
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DVDs, PC, photobucket, my own website...
05-20-2008, 02:54 PM   #11
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I have fallen off the wagon on storing a copy off-site. I need to get back at it. What I do now is store all my original/master files on a 500GB FW800 drive. I use Super Duper (Mac) to make an exact duplicate of the contents of that drive to a second FW drive. I also have at least one copy of most of my photos on DVD, but I am not very good at keeping that up right now either. My plan is to get a third FW drive to use as a second duplicate of the main drive. The two dupe drives would then take turns going to my safe deposit box about once a week.
05-20-2008, 04:17 PM   #12
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wow thanks for all the info I think I'm going to go with dv-r's or dvds for right now and then when I get the money invest in an external hard drive...
05-20-2008, 05:12 PM   #13
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Item 1: do a google search for the differences between dvd+r and dvd-r. In a quick summary, there are differences in error correction, and reading/writing methods for higher reliablity with the nod going to dvd+r standard. I always buy my disks from Meritline.com and have always used prograde Tayo Yuden disks - I've never had a bad write in over 100 disks. The price difference is minimal between cheap disks and pro disks. Why chance your data to a poor quality disk.

Item 2: Check my posts on this thread, as it has my storage/archive/backup strategy:
https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/233231-post29.html

and

https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/233294-post32.html

Oh, yeah, the files are first stored, and primarily used on my main system on drive d, a data only 250 GB hard drive used for my documents, picture library, music library, etc. It is separate from my c drive (system) so if the system crashes, I just reinstall the system partition and go. I don't have to worry about my data.

The archiving, organization and long term storage and retrieval ability is getting ever more important as our digital domains are getting larger and larger. We have electronic forms of movies, music, pictures, financial and tax data, email correspondence and so on that is becoming of great important to us. In my mind, I don't worry about the hard drive crashing because of the cost in dollars of a new drive, but in the cost of data lost! Not only that, but I would rather spend a little time getting an efficient disaster recovery method laid out now, rather than have to figure out what to install and how to rebuild it when a tragety happens and my drives fail, the house gets hit by lightning, etc. You almost can't afford to NOT treat this like a small business would.
05-20-2008, 07:15 PM   #14
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QuoteOriginally posted by Ash Quote
Then consider emptying your hard drive of those photos you've stored, which would speed up your computer's speed considerably.
Okay, this is a myth. Unless you have your drive filled to capacity with photos, or you have some background process indexing all your photos, or maybe some other obscure scenario, moving data off your PC will have no impact on the perceived speed of your computer.
05-20-2008, 10:11 PM   #15
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momtographer - There have been several thread about backups on the forum - so if you are interested, here are a few, some quite long and convoluted, that may give you some insight.

https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/general-talk/2344-how-do-you-backup-your-photos.html
https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/everything-else/14182-dvd-backup.html
https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/everything-else/7216-backing-up-images.html
https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/pentax-dslr-discussion/11871-transfering-...rd-drivre.html

In essence, if you want to preserve your images, you must have them stored on more than one device. I use my primary PC's fault tollerant drives and DVD's to store images long term. Some people will, and have, suggested that you get a USB or external moble drive. All of these things will work - the important thing to remember is to get real copies on different hardware to assist in long term storage.

Digital images are much more fragile than film. With film all you need is a light source and your eyeball to see what you have (I shot mostly slide film). The media that we store our digital images on has varied in format and hardware compatibility from year to year. The most common form now is DVD - with new forms of disk (SATA, iSATA, ISCSI etc - if you do not understand what these mean - well that means you are not a hardware junkie like some of us). If you burn DVD's you must be sure that the quality of the media is high. Don't skimp on media or you just might find that your images are not recoverable. For the truely paranoid - make two copies, keep one at home - put the other in a SDB (Safe Deposit Box). When the technology changes (does Blu-Ray come to mind?) copy all the images from your old format to the new.

But what ever you do - make backups. Hard drives fail, even USB drives (they get stolen too) and once they are gone, it is very expensive and hard to get the information back. At the moment DVD's are a reasonable answer and in a pinch USB drives are too, and it is easy to burn over a DVD just as it is easy to format a hard drive -- by accident of course. You might want to check out the DAM (Digital Asset Management) book The DAM Book: Digital Asset Management for Photographers and see what they have to say. ( It is getting reasonably old - emphasis on CS3 - and I do not know the last time they updated it - still a good resource)

Just ask your self - what would I do if my hard drive caught on fire? If it does not burn down the house (in my case burning up all my DVD's) and such - just how would I get my collection of "Winners" back? Plan for the risk you are willing to take.

The Elitist - formerly known as PDL
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