Do you backup your images on storage.

[Shafique]

I have been maintaining my images on my hard drive for last 6 months, and now when my pc hangs once in a while, I do get worried about my data.

Do you use CD drives or any other storage for backing up the images, what are the options, online uploading does not really fascinate me ..for the fact that most of the free sites are going bust( sooner or later for the storage space is costly).

Cheers,

[octathlon]

I think the safest way is to back them up on CDs. I first copy them to the hard drive of another computer that I have networked. Then when I have enough for a "batch" I copy them to a CD.

[ken-w]

shafique wrote:
I have been maintaining my images on my hard drive for last 6 months, and now when my pc hangs once in a while, I do get worried about my data.


The best thing to do is to establish a standard workflow that will ensure the proper archiving of your photos (for when your hard drive crashes). My own goes like this:

1) Dump from camera to computer.

2) Back-up these photos right away on a CDRW before deleting the photos from the camera's card.

3) When I have a "themed" grouping (i.e. my summer vacation 2002, Katie's 5th birthday party, etc.) I then cut two CDs with these photos. One CD stays by the computer, the other is stored offsite.

4) I then use a program (thumbsplus) to make thumbnail contact sheets of the photos on the CD. This serves two purposes, the first is as a visual index of the photos (I keep the thumbnails on my computer's HD so that I can easily locate the photo I want and the CD it is on). The second is a confirmation that the files on the CD are good since Thumbsplus has to read all the original photos on CD in order to build the thumbnail contact sheet. I've also heard the program iMatch is excellent as an indexing/database tool - but I haven't tried it yet.

5) I then mark the directory I just backed up to CD as being saved - ie. "vacation2002" now becomes "vacation2002-saved". I know that if I need more space on my HD, this directory can be safely deleted.

With the cost of blank CDs being so inexpensive these days there is no excuse not to have your photos all backed up onto CD for safe storage.

[octathlon]

Ken,

That sounds like a good system. What kind of directory structure do you use on the CDRW (right-away backup) and where do you backup the files that don't get put into a themed grouping?

Also, how do you organize the edited images in relation to the "originals"?

[ken-w]

octathlon wrote:
Ken,

What kind of directory structure do you use on the CDRW (right-away backup) and where do you backup the files that don't get put into a themed grouping?


Basically I use a dated structure, the same way it gets dumped out (I now use Breezebrowser's dowloader so the directories get named such as 2002-09-28). Since I generally bracket all my shots, I generally do a quick "cull" of the poor ones before I back up and then delete from camera.

Everything eventually gets put into a themed grouping of some sort. For instance I do a lot of nature shots, so I have a nature directory subgroubed with folder names like flowers, landscapes, wildlife, etc. So, everything has a place to go. I try not to have a "miscellaneous" directory, although that has happened. A final name when I backup might be "nature-spring2002" and the next one will be "nature-summer2002" (with all the subdirectories in the nature directory). If I've gone crazy with something, it might be more specific (i.e. a single CD full of "flowers-spring2002").



Also, how do you organize the edited images in relation to the "originals"?

As I'm going through my photos, I will copy (not move) what I think are the best into directories named "print worthy" or "web worthy". These are photos I intend to edit later. When I do edit, I often give the photos a name I can understand but leave most of the original photo number as part of the filename (i.e. katie-birthday2002-302-3344.jpg). So I can always locate the original photo 302-3344_img.

If I'm doing a bunch of edits, these can get theme grouped as well and backed up the same way as the originals. For the rest I rely on a little program called LE Backup that will backup files I have changed since the last backup (I use this program for all my backups). So, I have a couple of CDRWs that are labelled "Photos" and every week or so (if I'm a good boy) I run LE Backup and it adds any files that I've modified since the last backup to the backup CDRWs.

Every few months I back up entire directories (my photo-edit directory for example) on CD for permanent safekeeping.

[octathlon]

Thanks, that gives me some ideas. I'm trying to figure out the best way to deal with all these files, especially the edited variations. The originals are easy to deal with.

What I am doing now is copying the files I want to edit into another folder (called Projects) and saving as a TIF with a meaningful name. Then (usually!) I put the original filename and a caption into the IPTC "File Info" area. Sometimes I put editing comments into the IPTC info as well, which can help. But I accumulate a whole bunch of intermediate versions here and wind up with a disorganized mess.