where does everyone store their photos?

KrisK10D · 05-21-2008, 05:12 AM

I read an article at DPreview a while back about storing images on CD's and DVD's. They're not 100% safe file storage for all time. Depending upon what brand disk you use and how you burn your files you might find in 6 months you can't access any pics.

I will try to find the article.

davek · 05-21-2008, 05:56 AM

Originally posted by KrisK10D

I read an article at DPreview a while back about storing images on CD's and DVD's. They're not 100% safe file storage for all time. Depending upon what brand disk you use and how you burn your files you might find in 6 months you can't access any pics.

I will try to find the article.

I have a stack of DVD+R and DVD-R by different reputable brands. One copy on each type (when I accumulate 4G of pics), as well as a free version of Syncback copies my image directories to a network drive (home network 3 computers) nightly.

reeftool · 05-21-2008, 09:22 AM

Both my computers have 2 hard drives and I back my photos up to the second drive. I also back up to DVD. So far it has worked for me. I replaced a drive recently and copied to the new drive without problems. Many of my "keepers" I also print. I guess thats old fashioned today but I still prefer printed out pictures. Digital frames are tacky in my opinion and my good stuff hangs on the wall. I have a friend who is a pro and he backs up everything to external drives and also keeps all his memory cards intact, never reusing them. That can get expensive over time but is another option.

**Ahab** · 05-21-2008, 11:01 AM

Originally posted by KrisK10D

I read an article at DPreview a while back about storing images on CD's and DVD's. They're not 100% safe file storage for all time. Depending upon what brand disk you use and how you burn your files you might find in 6 months you can't access any pics.

I will try to find the article.

I have CD's with images from my first digital camera from about seven years ago and they are still fine today. I now transfer to DVD's.

rfortson · 05-21-2008, 02:24 PM

Originally posted by momtographer

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.

500 GB hard drives are under $100 now. That will hold a lot of photos!

pentkon52 · 05-21-2008, 02:38 PM

Originally posted by momtographer

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.

CD's and or DVD's and a Maxtor external HD.

The ones i really want to keep, i make a print of.

Dave

WMBP · 05-21-2008, 03:31 PM

This is a constant problem. We had analogous problems back in the days of film, but I don't remember stressing out about them so much.

Right now, I have a 750 GB drive storing my masters. Before 2007, those are all jpegs and relatively small. Since about January 2007, I've been shooting raw 99% of the time, and the files are much bigger. These files are all managed (organized, metadata edited) in Lightroom 1.4. They are mostly processed in Lightroom 1.4 as well, although occasionally I've used Light Crafts LightZone. Files edited in LightZone are still managed in Adobe Lightroom; the LightZone jpeg that stores the editing info is part of the Lightroom library and it's tagged with a "Lightzone" label that helps me remember what I used.

I'm pretty ruthless about deleting bad images permanently. I've reached the point where I have so many files that I regard every deletion as a small triumph. I also archive to DVD many galleries that are, realistically speaking, of little or no permanent value - mainly school sports photos. I keep the teeny handful of memorable photos in the Lightroom library, but I archive the rest to DVD and then delete 'em from Lightroom's library. And if I lose the DVDs, it's no big deal.

All new shoots that are important - wedding photo, portraits, anything for paying clients - are backed up immediately to another hard drive AND to DVD. Eventually the bride gets a DVD of high-res processed jpegs and the responsibility for keeping these files to the next century is hers rather than mine. Processed images also end up on a remote web server. With the exception of the shoots I've done in the last 10 days and haven't finished processing, nearly every digital photo I've taken since 1999 is on the Web somewhere (Flickr, Picasa, or my william-porter.net site hosted by SmugMug). I've always uploaded pretty high-res files to the Web. If my house were hit by a tornado and everything in it lost for good, I would lose the ability to make 11x17 prints of some photos, but it wouldn't be the catastrophe it would be if I did NOT have everything on the Web.

I use Carbonite to back up my laptop to a remote server, but unfortunately it only backs up the internal drive, not external drives. I take DVDs over to my mother's house from time to time and deposit them in a box over there. But I really need to come up with a better long-term solution for a secondary offsite backup.

Processed images get exported from Lightroom (i.e. from the 750 GB external drive) to my computer's internal drive where I review them in Picasa before uploading. But all these files are on my internal drive only briefly - perhaps a month - before I delete them. Once they're uploaded to the Web, I don't really need to keep 'em on my internal drive.

By the way, I'm using a 750 GB LaCie drive that cost under $200. I remember my first hard drive, a 20 MB DataFrame. I think it cost about $1000....

One last point: I've started to print out a lot more of my photos. I get a 4"x6" of nearly everything worthwhile now. Prints are cheap, relatively easy to store, and provide some small degree of additional protection against loss.

Will

KrisK10D · 05-21-2008, 10:42 PM

Here's that thread I read Be Careful Using CDs And DVDs For Backup: Nikon D3/D2/D1 Forum: Digital Photography Review

Ben_Edict · 05-22-2008, 01:11 AM

I store my live data on a 4 TB RAID6 networked storage drive. In addition I make 3 backup DVDs of each image to store in different locations.

As all digital storage is limited in terms of live expecancy and compatibility, the RAID makes it at least easier to migrate to new media later.

Ben

fula6 · 05-22-2008, 04:42 AM

I have a 500Gig Western Digital external harddrive and I also put all work photographs on DVD as a back up for the back up

WMBP · 05-22-2008, 06:19 AM

Originally posted by KrisK10D

Here's that thread I read Be Careful Using CDs And DVDs For Backup: Nikon D3/D2/D1 Forum: Digital Photography Review

Actually, the basic and inescapable truth is, you cannot rely too heavily on any single medium or any single backup. You could use the world's most reliable hard drive, but if your house is burglarized or burns down, it's gone. I've had computers and hard drives stolen, and I can report that this is not a hypothetical worry, and when it happens, it's always a complete surprise. And even if you don't get robbed, even if your house doesn't burn down or get hit by a tornado, anything mechanical can fail. Nearly all electrical media are vulnerable to extreme heat, dropping, and a host of other threats. And sometimes hard drives fail for no discernible reason.

The only strategy that can be called highly reliable is one that combines media, creates multiple backups, and stores them in different places.

I want to add that the original post seems to be interested in knowing how people store the master copies of their photos. That's a separate problem from backup.

Will

bikee4 · 05-22-2008, 06:20 AM

I have a Windows Home server with about a TB of storage and I back that up on Amazon S3 with Jungle Disk

WMBP · 05-22-2008, 06:28 AM

Originally posted by bikee4

I have a Windows Home server with about a TB of storage and I back that up on Amazon S3 with Jungle Disk

Hey, thanks for mentioning Amazon S3. I looked into it again just now and realized - I'm using it too and I didn't even realize it! How could that be? Well, my pro site is hosted by SmugMug. And SmugMug apparently uses S3 now to store its customers' photos.

Will

**rparmar** · 05-22-2008, 07:13 AM

Originally posted by Ben_Edict

I store my live data on a 4 TB RAID6 networked storage drive. In addition I make 3 backup DVDs of each image to store in different locations.

Wow, that's hardcore.

After filling up my 500GB external drive I am now looking at the next stage of evolution. This will involve a NAS with RAID 1. I like this idea as it is far more environmentally friendly than keeping a computer on all day as a server. Family can share music files etc. across our network. Oh yeah, I'm soon putting in CAT5 so we'll have three rooms directly attached to the LAN. Wireless is crap, basically.

I am looking at the Netgear ReadyNAS Duo with 750GB plus a second 750GB disk. This is not terribly cheap (here in Europe) but having a good redundant file storage is worth it. I think maybe I'll use this for my "live work" folders and then manually backup a copy to an external drive on a scheduled basis.

Backing up to DVD gets old fast. I have a couple hundred of them. I create music as well as photos -- multi-channel audio eats space quickly. Thank goodness I am not into video!

Any experience with NAS setups?

Entropy · 05-22-2008, 07:44 AM

Never, ever use a single hard drive for photo storage. You need at least two for redundancy.

Either poor man's RAID (copy the files to each drive), or real RAID. Poor Man's RAID is less convenient but lets you physically separate the drives, and is more immune to operating system/operator errors that might cause data loss.

Of course, the best is a combination of poor man's RAID using multiple RAID arrays.

Right now I'm using a relatively old RAID-5 array of 5x 250GB drives (giving 1TB usable storage since one drive is parity). I need to add a secondary backup mechanism to this, I have been lax in that regard.

I am considering Blu-Ray when the prices drop, but DVD-R in the meantime.

05-22-2008, 06:20 AM	#27
bikee4 Inactive Account Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: Spokane,WA Photos: Gallery Posts: 25	Window Home server and Amazon S3 I have a Windows Home server with about a TB of storage and I back that up on Amazon S3 with Jungle Disk

Similar Threads
Thread	Thread Starter	Forum	Replies	Last Post
Black & White The ok Store	cb750r	Photo Critique	12	03-14-2010 06:59 AM
Where do you store your photos?	Glarus	Troubleshooting and Beginner Help	12	02-09-2010 08:02 PM
At a Store Near You	res3567	Photographic Technique	6	06-02-2009 10:58 AM
How Do You Store Your Photos?	poochie99	Photographic Technique	66	09-30-2008 02:15 AM
How do you store your photos when traveling w/o computer	pastorbbc	Pentax DSLR Discussion	51	03-23-2008 10:14 AM

05-21-2008, 05:12 AM	#16
KrisK10D Veteran Member Join Date: Feb 2008 Location: Sydney, Australia Photos: Gallery Posts: 1,274	I read an article at DPreview a while back about storing images on CD's and DVD's. They're not 100% safe file storage for all time. Depending upon what brand disk you use and how you burn your files you might find in 6 months you can't access any pics. I will try to find the article.

05-21-2008, 05:56 AM	#17
davek Veteran Member Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: Elmira, On, Canada Posts: 461	Originally posted by KrisK10D I read an article at DPreview a while back about storing images on CD's and DVD's. They're not 100% safe file storage for all time. Depending upon what brand disk you use and how you burn your files you might find in 6 months you can't access any pics. I will try to find the article. I have a stack of DVD+R and DVD-R by different reputable brands. One copy on each type (when I accumulate 4G of pics), as well as a free version of Syncback copies my image directories to a network drive (home network 3 computers) nightly.

05-21-2008, 09:22 AM	#18
reeftool Pentaxian Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Upstate New York Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 9,555	Both my computers have 2 hard drives and I back my photos up to the second drive. I also back up to DVD. So far it has worked for me. I replaced a drive recently and copied to the new drive without problems. Many of my "keepers" I also print. I guess thats old fashioned today but I still prefer printed out pictures. Digital frames are tacky in my opinion and my good stuff hangs on the wall. I have a friend who is a pro and he backs up everything to external drives and also keeps all his memory cards intact, never reusing them. That can get expensive over time but is another option.

05-21-2008, 11:01 AM	#19
Ahab Site Supporter Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: Arnold, Md. Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 762	Originally posted by KrisK10D I read an article at DPreview a while back about storing images on CD's and DVD's. They're not 100% safe file storage for all time. Depending upon what brand disk you use and how you burn your files you might find in 6 months you can't access any pics. I will try to find the article. I have CD's with images from my first digital camera from about seven years ago and they are still fine today. I now transfer to DVD's.

05-21-2008, 02:24 PM	#20
rfortson Veteran Member Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: Houston TX Photos: Gallery Posts: 2,129	Originally posted by momtographer 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. 500 GB hard drives are under $100 now. That will hold a lot of photos!

05-21-2008, 02:38 PM	#21
pentkon52 Veteran Member Join Date: May 2007 Location: York Region Canada Posts: 641	Originally posted by momtographer 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. CD's and or DVD's and a Maxtor external HD. The ones i really want to keep, i make a print of. Dave

05-21-2008, 03:31 PM	#22
WMBP Veteran Member Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Dallas, Texas Photos: Gallery Posts: 2,482	This is a constant problem. We had analogous problems back in the days of film, but I don't remember stressing out about them so much. Right now, I have a 750 GB drive storing my masters. Before 2007, those are all jpegs and relatively small. Since about January 2007, I've been shooting raw 99% of the time, and the files are much bigger. These files are all managed (organized, metadata edited) in Lightroom 1.4. They are mostly processed in Lightroom 1.4 as well, although occasionally I've used Light Crafts LightZone. Files edited in LightZone are still managed in Adobe Lightroom; the LightZone jpeg that stores the editing info is part of the Lightroom library and it's tagged with a "Lightzone" label that helps me remember what I used. I'm pretty ruthless about deleting bad images permanently. I've reached the point where I have so many files that I regard every deletion as a small triumph. I also archive to DVD many galleries that are, realistically speaking, of little or no permanent value - mainly school sports photos. I keep the teeny handful of memorable photos in the Lightroom library, but I archive the rest to DVD and then delete 'em from Lightroom's library. And if I lose the DVDs, it's no big deal. All new shoots that are important - wedding photo, portraits, anything for paying clients - are backed up immediately to another hard drive AND to DVD. Eventually the bride gets a DVD of high-res processed jpegs and the responsibility for keeping these files to the next century is hers rather than mine. Processed images also end up on a remote web server. With the exception of the shoots I've done in the last 10 days and haven't finished processing, nearly every digital photo I've taken since 1999 is on the Web somewhere (Flickr, Picasa, or my william-porter.net site hosted by SmugMug). I've always uploaded pretty high-res files to the Web. If my house were hit by a tornado and everything in it lost for good, I would lose the ability to make 11x17 prints of some photos, but it wouldn't be the catastrophe it would be if I did NOT have everything on the Web. I use Carbonite to back up my laptop to a remote server, but unfortunately it only backs up the internal drive, not external drives. I take DVDs over to my mother's house from time to time and deposit them in a box over there. But I really need to come up with a better long-term solution for a secondary offsite backup. Processed images get exported from Lightroom (i.e. from the 750 GB external drive) to my computer's internal drive where I review them in Picasa before uploading. But all these files are on my internal drive only briefly - perhaps a month - before I delete them. Once they're uploaded to the Web, I don't really need to keep 'em on my internal drive. By the way, I'm using a 750 GB LaCie drive that cost under $200. I remember my first hard drive, a 20 MB DataFrame. I think it cost about $1000.... One last point: I've started to print out a lot more of my photos. I get a 4"x6" of nearly everything worthwhile now. Prints are cheap, relatively easy to store, and provide some small degree of additional protection against loss. Will

05-21-2008, 10:42 PM	#23
KrisK10D Veteran Member Join Date: Feb 2008 Location: Sydney, Australia Photos: Gallery Posts: 1,274	Here's that thread I read Be Careful Using CDs And DVDs For Backup: Nikon D3/D2/D1 Forum: Digital Photography Review

05-22-2008, 01:11 AM	#24
Ben_Edict Veteran Member Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: SouthWest "Regio" Photos: Albums Posts: 3,309	I store my live data on a 4 TB RAID6 networked storage drive. In addition I make 3 backup DVDs of each image to store in different locations. As all digital storage is limited in terms of live expecancy and compatibility, the RAID makes it at least easier to migrate to new media later. Ben

05-22-2008, 04:42 AM	#25
fula6 Inactive Account Join Date: Jan 2008 Location: Brisbane, Queensland Australia Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 210	I have a 500Gig Western Digital external harddrive and I also put all work photographs on DVD as a back up for the back up

05-22-2008, 06:19 AM	#26
WMBP Veteran Member Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Dallas, Texas Photos: Gallery Posts: 2,482	Originally posted by KrisK10D Here's that thread I read Be Careful Using CDs And DVDs For Backup: Nikon D3/D2/D1 Forum: Digital Photography Review Actually, the basic and inescapable truth is, you cannot rely too heavily on any single medium or any single backup. You could use the world's most reliable hard drive, but if your house is burglarized or burns down, it's gone. I've had computers and hard drives stolen, and I can report that this is not a hypothetical worry, and when it happens, it's always a complete surprise. And even if you don't get robbed, even if your house doesn't burn down or get hit by a tornado, anything mechanical can fail. Nearly all electrical media are vulnerable to extreme heat, dropping, and a host of other threats. And sometimes hard drives fail for no discernible reason. The only strategy that can be called highly reliable is one that combines media, creates multiple backups, and stores them in different places. I want to add that the original post seems to be interested in knowing how people store the master copies of their photos. That's a separate problem from backup. Will

05-22-2008, 06:28 AM	#28
WMBP Veteran Member Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Dallas, Texas Photos: Gallery Posts: 2,482	Originally posted by bikee4 I have a Windows Home server with about a TB of storage and I back that up on Amazon S3 with Jungle Disk Hey, thanks for mentioning Amazon S3. I looked into it again just now and realized - I'm using it too and I didn't even realize it! How could that be? Well, my pro site is hosted by SmugMug. And SmugMug apparently uses S3 now to store its customers' photos. Will

05-22-2008, 07:13 AM	#29
rparmar Site Supporter Join Date: Jan 2008 Photos: Gallery Posts: 8,823	Originally posted by Ben_Edict I store my live data on a 4 TB RAID6 networked storage drive. In addition I make 3 backup DVDs of each image to store in different locations. Wow, that's hardcore. After filling up my 500GB external drive I am now looking at the next stage of evolution. This will involve a NAS with RAID 1. I like this idea as it is far more environmentally friendly than keeping a computer on all day as a server. Family can share music files etc. across our network. Oh yeah, I'm soon putting in CAT5 so we'll have three rooms directly attached to the LAN. Wireless is crap, basically. I am looking at the Netgear ReadyNAS Duo with 750GB plus a second 750GB disk. This is not terribly cheap (here in Europe) but having a good redundant file storage is worth it. I think maybe I'll use this for my "live work" folders and then manually backup a copy to an external drive on a scheduled basis. Backing up to DVD gets old fast. I have a couple hundred of them. I create music as well as photos -- multi-channel audio eats space quickly. Thank goodness I am not into video! Any experience with NAS setups?

05-22-2008, 07:44 AM	#30
Entropy Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2007 Location: Owego, NY Posts: 976	Never, ever use a single hard drive for photo storage. You need at least two for redundancy. Either poor man's RAID (copy the files to each drive), or real RAID. Poor Man's RAID is less convenient but lets you physically separate the drives, and is more immune to operating system/operator errors that might cause data loss. Of course, the best is a combination of poor man's RAID using multiple RAID arrays. Right now I'm using a relatively old RAID-5 array of 5x 250GB drives (giving 1TB usable storage since one drive is parity). I need to add a secondary backup mechanism to this, I have been lax in that regard. I am considering Blu-Ray when the prices drop, but DVD-R in the meantime.