Image storage

[Toby1knobe]

Where do you store all your images (memory cards, burnt to cd, computer or on-line)?

I seem to mainly have mine on my laptop or a cd, but then I was reading a book which suggested buying 512Mb or 1Gb SD cards .Suggesting using lots of smaller cards so all your photos are not in one place.

What does everyone else do?

Toby1

[senu]

Several External Hard drives 500Gb ... £80
and Burn to high quality DVDs well stored for additional Backup

[Yandros]

Hot topic for me, as I'm knee deep in files at the moment, having a clear out session (taking days!!)

As I work in IT, I take backup seriously (I'd never live it down if I lost any vital files ).

I shoot on just two cards, a 2GB and 8GB CF. In an ideal world, I suppose I should be shooting on all 2GB cards, but I get through them so fast (NEF+jpg fine = 20MB per pic!!!), it's a pain having to change them all the time.

I then transfer them to hard disk as soon as I get home. My data partition is also backed up periodically to a dedicated backup PC. I don't delete files from a card until this has happened, so I've always got files in more than one place. As I'm running out of space, I've invested in a pair of external 500Gb drives (mirrored contents of course), and I'll be using them for my 'B' grade stuff that I'm not going to access very often. Ultimately I burn 3 CDs/DVDs for long term storage, but so far I've been able to retain a copy on hard disk of everything too.

Just out of interest, has anyone had a card go bad and not been able to retreive most of the contents?

[jenufa]

External Hard drive & flickr

[senu]

Originally Posted by Yandros

Just out of interest, has anyone had a card go bad and not been able to retrieve most of the contents?

Not yet ....the recovery software seems to work a treat

I have a Pal who went out on a Photo shoot and decided to use his Fuji ( 5600) to grab some ( extrapolated 12Mp images) )
He soon ran out on his 256Mb card . deleted a fair few , then carried on shooting
Next day he came to me to help recover the deleted images
Talk about penny pinching .. Some Guys just dont get it..Really

[Liquid101]

Originally Posted by Yandros

I then transfer them to hard disk as soon as I get home. My data partition is also backed up periodically to a dedicated backup PC. I don't delete files from a card until this has happened, so I've always got files in more than one place. As I'm running out of space, I've invested in a pair of external 500Gb drives (mirrored contents of course), and I'll be using them for my 'B' grade stuff that I'm not going to access very often. Ultimately I burn 3 CDs/DVDs for long term storage, but so far I've been able to retain a copy on hard disk of everything too.

Blimey - next you'll be building a faraday cage under the stairs.

[Yandros]

Originally Posted by Liquid101

Blimey - next you'll be building a faraday cage under the stairs.

The sad thing is, that the longer you work with technology, the less you trust it. HDD failure rate is about 5% chance per year, and I have to replace the ones in my care with monotonous regularity The biggest problem is actually long term storage. You have to keep changing media, or you're toast
I have cupboards at work full of data...

5.25" floppy (nothing to read them with)
3.5" floppy (some in norton backup format, now unreadable)
Magneto-optic drive (now unreadable)
Mainframe mag tape (now unreadable)
CDs (some 10+ years old and getting cranky)
DVDs
DAT tape (no drives installed in a PC anymore)

All those RAW/NEF files you're collecting - fine until the format becomes obsolete, then the software that reads it is not compatible with your OS. In all seriousness, I'd lay money on most RAW files being unreadable within 10-15 years (hence why I keep jpg versions as well).

The funniest story I heard about long term storage came from the Houses of Parliament. The archivists were approached by IT consultants who were suggesting more high tech methods of archiving the acts of parliament. The discussion went something like this...

IT consultant: "we'd recommend you switch to high quality CDs"
Archivist: "Sounds good. What lifespan can you guarantee"
IT consultant: "We estimate that they should have a lifespan of at least 50years, possibly longer"
Archivist:"err, no...what can you GUARANTEE?"
IT consultant: "well CDs have only been around for 20 years, so we can't say for sure but..."
Archivist:"Well our current system is vellum, and we KNOW that it has a lifespan in excess of 1000 years"
IT consultant: "I'll get my coat"

[Liquid101]

Originally Posted by Yandros

The sad thing is, that the longer you work with technology, the less you trust it. HDD failure rate is about 5% chance per year, and I have to replace the ones in my care with monotonous regularity The biggest problem is actually long term storage. You have to keep changing media, or you're toast
I have cupboards at work full of data...

5.25" floppy (nothing to read them with)
3.5" floppy (some in norton backup format, now unreadable)
Magneto-optic drive (now unreadable)
Mainframe mag tape (now unreadable)
CDs (some 10+ years old and getting cranky)
DVDs
DAT tape (no drives installed in a PC anymore)

All those RAW/NEF files you're collecting - fine until the format becomes obsolete, then the software that reads it is not compatible with your OS. In all seriousness, I'd lay money on most RAW files being unreadable within 10-15 years (hence why I keep jpg versions as well).

The funniest story I heard about long term storage came from the Houses of Parliament. The archivists were approached by IT consultants who were suggesting more high tech methods of archiving the acts of parliament. The discussion went something like this...

IT consultant: "we'd recommend you switch to high quality CDs"
Archivist: "Sounds good. What lifespan can you guarantee"
IT consultant: "We estimate that they should have a lifespan of at least 50years, possibly longer"
Archivist:"err, no...what can you GUARANTEE?"
IT consultant: "well CDs have only been around for 20 years, so we can't say for sure but..."
Archivist:"Well our current system is vellum, and we KNOW that it has a lifespan in excess of 1000 years"
IT consultant: "I'll get my coat"

You're absolutely right - RAW files are a completely unsafe format for archival storage, but I'm not so sure jpg is the best either - any compression just builds in complication. I would go with TIFF for real long term storage safety. Joking aside - having 3 copies of important data is perfectly sensible. A working copy - and 2 backups.

I work with material on vellum on a virtually daily basis. I'm amazed that some of the manuscripts I see are nearly 1000 years old, yet the colour in the illuminations is unbelievably vivid.

For our data storage at work we have an optical and magnetic tape based digital library. It has capacity of around 100TB, all of which is backed up 3 times, including a bomb proof, copper lined cell. Even with these 'fool proof' storage systems data has been lost, or corrupted during retrieval.

It does concern me slightly that the whoel world is shooting millions of digital photographs with no proper back up soloution. In the past a wooden drawer could safely archive negatives for a hundred years, you all you have to do to view it is hold it up to the light.

Perhaps instead of the endless pursuit of megapixels, Image stabalisation and lens coatings, some of the large companies should look at 'affordable' archive solutions. I quite like the idea of commiting my most treasured images to 10x8 transparency - possible, but expensive. I am already exploring the creation of microfilm as a long term storage option for digitsed material.

Looks like we could go full circle.

[inkinoo]

Any hard drive based system that isn't RAIDed somehow is worthless IMHO.

External 500gb drive ... £85+vat. Get two of those, stick all your photos on it and just leave them in the cupboard. £170+vat per year to back up your files.

[inkinoo]

Originally Posted by Yandros

All those RAW/NEF files you're collecting - fine until the format becomes obsolete, then the software that reads it is not compatible with your OS. In all seriousness, I'd lay money on most RAW files being unreadable within 10-15 years (hence why I keep jpg versions as well).

Unreadable is a strong word. Given I can run Windows 3.1 in a virtual machine now, and that was released in 1992, I am fairly confident I could run Vista the same way in 15 years time. So if I have a copy of Photoshop that will read my RAW files now, I am not worried in 15 years time needing to access the same files.

Christ, Photoshop can still read PICT files!

[RobDickinson]

Originally Posted by inkinoo

Any hard drive based system that isn't RAIDed somehow is worthless IMHO.

RAID is pretty useless in the home enviroment, and in some doubt in the commercial sector, true!

RAID is only good for one thing, uptime. You want reliability have the data on multiple drives and/or backed up.

[Liquid101]

Originally Posted by inkinoo

Unreadable is a strong word. Given I can run Windows 3.1 in a virtual machine now, and that was released in 1992, I am fairly confident I could run Vista the same way in 15 years time. So if I have a copy of Photoshop that will read my RAW files now, I am not worried in 15 years time needing to access the same files.

I have no doubt you'll be able to run whatever OS you want, and indeed any software for years to come. Laying your hands on the correct Camera RAW plugin might be more of a challenge - What happens when you change camera and have to update your Photoshop plug in or Raw editor - I hope you have a little database on the go to track these changes. Do you really want to be fiddling around with old bits of software on emulated OS's though - surely just converting to a standard format would save you a lot of hassle.

I seem to remeber spending hours trying to get an Amiga emulator to run a Copy of Deluxe Paint 2 just so I could resave some old images into IFF format - I didn't work, and now I only have a handful of my first digital images which I'd saved in the correct format when I realised the problems I might face. I don't really want to go through the same thing in 15 years time.

[Yandros]

Originally Posted by inkinoo

Unreadable is a strong word. Given I can run Windows 3.1 in a virtual machine now, and that was released in 1992, I am fairly confident I could run Vista the same way in 15 years time. So if I have a copy of Photoshop that will read my RAW files now, I am not worried in 15 years time needing to access the same files.

Christ, Photoshop can still read PICT files!

The difference is that things like NEF files are camera specific, making them far more likely to get marginalised. I don't trust the likes of Microsoft to not make a commercial decision that'll totally mess things up. For example, what about the lastest scandal - environmental audio and surround sound from 3rd party sound cards isn't supported by Vista, and Creative Labs are only providing a workaround for the latest X-fi card. All a fallout from the DRM fiasco of course.

[Yandros]

Originally Posted by inkinoo

Any hard drive based system that isn't RAIDed somehow is worthless IMHO.

External 500gb drive ... £85+vat. Get two of those, stick all your photos on it and just leave them in the cupboard. £170+vat per year to back up your files.

Worthless is the wrong word. It's perfectly fine right up to to point where it fails and you lose all your files
I don't use RAID at home, but I do put stuff on duplicate HDDs - RAID 1 the manual way! I use RAID5 at work, as I need 24/7 uptime.

I've even started using USB HDDs for weekly office backups, as proprietory DAT tape solutions are a pain in the backside when you need to get access to archive data in a hurry. I'm moving away from CD/DVD based long term backup, as it's just too slow when you need to move your archive to the next format (I had a team working for weeks a few years ago migrating our 5.25" and 3.5" floppy archive to CD!)

[inkinoo]

Originally Posted by RobDickinson

RAID is pretty useless in the home enviroment, and in some doubt in the commercial sector, true!

RAID is only good for one thing, uptime. You want reliability have the data on multiple drives and/or backed up.

Why on earth is it useless? Hard drives are cheap enough that you can easily implement RAID1 at home. If you think having a second copy of a drive is useless then, well, that's your opinion.