Where are your photos?

[Kpablo]

Where do you store all your images? I was thinking about getting a 1TB external hard drive. After talking to a co worker who's e. hard drive fried I'm contemplating it. She keeps hers on Rewritable DVD disk.

Suggestions? Inputs? Ideas?

[ed rader]

Where do you store all your images? I was thinking about getting a 1TB external hard drive. After talking to a co worker who's e. hard drive fried I'm contemplating it. She keeps hers on Rewritable DVD disk.

Suggestions? Inputs? Ideas?


i use a mirrored set of external drives.

ed rader

[MT Stringer]

External drives are nothing more than an enclosure with a hard drive in it and some sort of card . The drives can fail in those also. Or the little card can go out. I just took a 1TB drive out of service because it is 90% full of sports photos from the last couple of years. I am using a NexStar hard drive dock, so if I need to get to the pics, I can put the drive back in . Otherwise, it is in storage. I have a new one for pics starting in 2010.

Good luck. I guess it depends on how many images you shoot. I captured almost 1500 yesterday at a high school soccer match. :-)

[lankforddl]

I use a multi-step process which is time consuming but thorough.

1. a copy of all media on local computer
2. a copy of all media on external drive
3. a copy of all media on DVD (created after each photo session)
4. favorites on Flickr. ($29 per year unlimited)

If my whole house burned down the one thing I'd hate to loose are the memories contained with-in my photos.

[Tim Kostka]

Mine are stored on my main hard drive and also backed up to a separate hard drive. I also have most of them stored online at picasaweb or zenfolio.

[Lowner]

Currently on a single 3200 WD external hard drive. I don't store more than a half dozen or so images on the PC's hard drive.

I have 2x 1TB external drives on order that I plan to use as mirror images of each other as a safety precaution.

I have also saved a lot of work on CD. A lot of CD's!

[ben_r_]

I have mirrored drives on my pc, backup to an external HDD, and back up to DVD-Rs.

[Familiaphoto]

All photos backup to an external drive which in turn is backed up to another drive that is stored off site. All original RAW files are burned to DVD and stored off site as well.

[MT Stringer]

and back up to DVD-Rs.

Ben, just curious how many dvd's does it take?

[crn3371]

I've got my photos in 4 places. On my main computer, a connected external hard drive, an external drive stored off site, and in the cloud.

[mathogre]

I have a 500GB drive for my photos and use a 1.5TB drive for backup. On the Mac, backup happens automagically once an hour or whenever I command it.

[gjman]

1) Two 1TB SATA internal HDD stored anti-static storage boxes with one HDD kept off site.
2) Two eSATA docks (one of each computer that has data that needs to be backed up).
3) Two copies of free MS Synctoy to do the back up.

[fibrepunk]

RAID-5 on my server. But RAID-1 should be enough for peace of mind. Also from time to time I would make copy of the images to an external hard drive.


Where do you store all your images? I was thinking about getting a 1TB external hard drive. After talking to a co worker who's e. hard drive fried I'm contemplating it. She keeps hers on Rewritable DVD disk.

Suggestions? Inputs? Ideas?

[mitch2k1]

A Drobo with 4 1TB drives in a Raid 5 set. Backed up via time machine to an external 1TB drive, favorites on Flickr.

[Erik_L]

Right now I just use my laptop and backup every now and then to my server - but it's only got 3 76 GB scsi drives so I don't have much space.

Building a computer in a few months - 3 1TBs in RAID5 for data, two drives (don't care about size) that are 10K RPM and in a RAID0 for the OS and applications. I may also consider one of those gigabit ethernet NAS devices, as they are pretty cheap now compared to more SCSI/SA-SCSI drives for my server, and a new backplane

[nadtz]

After losing a home raid5 due to write hole fun my new hotness setup is:

initial copy on my desktop/laptop/whatever

second copy on my hacked nas running freebsd using zfs filesystem for storage

third copy on external HD connected via esata that I rsync from the NAS

4th copy to online storage pool where I work (this could be any online storage/backup service, this just happens to be handy)

I don't really consider flickr a backup but my best/favorite stuff goes there as well.


I've had enough random issues over the years that have lost me mp3's/photos that I finally took a few months to do some research and find a solution that fit my budget and need. ZFS+raidz is a godsend for someone like me who now cringes at raid 5 (I also work in IT, I've seen just about every cost effective solution die in some way that raid isn't supposed to) but who also wants something better than a stack of external drives (which are also a single point of failure so you would need at least to copy those drives). After a few weeks testing I am finally feeling secure not counting acts of god or what have you that my stuff is as safe as I can make it on my budget.

[bohdank]

RAID1 internal 1 TB drives and an external ESATA dock. I back up the RAID to the external once per week and have a second external drive that I keep in the trunk of my car which I back to once a month.

I had a hard drive failure in the late 80's and lost 6 months of midi work. I learned my lesson.

[mellofelow]

1 machine dedicated to media (not this surfing machine). Dual drives and copied via Norton ghost. This is where RAW files are stored. Converted JPEGs are stored in a Dlink Network Access drive where it can be access by anyone via WiFi.

[ssracer]

I keep the most recent on my laptop, but usually just the jpgs to save space. Everything, including a lot of my raw files, I keep backed up to a linux PC at home that I use as a networked file server and I also periodically back up to a separate external hard drive.

[mdr]

Firewire 800 external for my working Lightroom library (0000's of raw files far too large for my Macbook Pro's hard drive), with only the latest one or two shoots on the Macbook Pro's hard drive.

Backup on 6TB NAS with X-RAID (fully redundant) in the loft. Manual triggered backup after every shoot and (major) editing session. One drive failed recently (after 18 months), replaced with new drive with full redundancy after initialisation/resync (about 8 hours).

Backup of negative/slide scans (4000dpi tiffs) on negative/slides in the safe.

No off-site backup at the moment, but intending to purchase extra RAID storage, backing up weekly and taking the disks to my work for storage.

Photos on the web are no use in case of a disaster, as these are 800/1000 pixel wide jpg's so no use for enlargement prints.

[hxpham]

I have my laptop, 40gb external, 750gb external, and 2 1tb externals.
Current edits go on the laptop and also backed up on the 40gb. When they are done, they are copied over to the 750 (which I bring between my dorm and home). There is one 1tb at dorm for backing up and one 1tb at home for backing up.
It's not perfect, but it is fine for now, until I can afford one of those crazy NAS or something similar.

[Nicksan3]

Originals on hard drive of desktop. Copies then placed on a WD 1TB external hard drive kept in seperate room. Once a month, copies from first WD copied to another WD 1TB external kept in cabinet in basement. (external HD's are currently inexpensive).

[ETERNAL]

I have everyting on the home comp 1tb. Then backed up to two seperate 500GB hard drives. With one hard drive sent to my parents yearly that I update with new photos. Plus I upload a lot to PB, so that in a worse case scenario, (my house and parents house burns down, gets robbed on the same day), I atleast have something through the years to show my travels and family and all.

[MT Stringer]

write hole fun

Huh? :-)

[Obtong]

All files on laptop HD for easy access etc.
Entire My Pictures folder copied to external HD once a month, or just before a trip.
DVD (by year) of pictures as full-sized JPG's with edits (sRGB)
DVD (by year) of pictures of RAW files

One copy of the DVD's is kept at home, the other with an out-of-state relative.

~Dom

[nadtz]

Huh? :-)

If you use raid 5 google 'raid 5 write hole' I lost a bunch of stuff because my raid 5 array (4x500gb drives on an adaptec 2405) was corrupting itself *and* my backups. I'll never trust raid5 again. Decent adapter + UPS weren't enough to keep my raid array from eating itself to unreadability over time. I'm much happier with my super anal ZFS + esata solution now that I've played with and tested ZFS for a while, I only wish I had known about this and it had been available a few years ago.

My problem is through my work I have seen just about every consumer/soho option fail in some catastrophic way and I've usually been the guy called to save the day or find out how bad it is. I don't trust raid 1, I don't trust single disks Drobos are fine when they work, but when they dont poof. I trusted raid 5 mostly till a few years ago. Happily I now have an option that suits my needs and is fairly inexpensive. Though not for the faint of heart my NAS chassis cost $150 and with some upgrades/modifications should provide years of service, though I might grab another chassis simply because I'm that anal.

[ETERNAL]

What are peoples thoughts on solid state drives?

[nadtz]

What are peoples thoughts on solid state drives?

Depends on use, they are fast, but fairly small sizes and expensive right now. I've seen a few new OCZ drives come in DOA or die shortly after installation, overall we've seen and had better luck with Intel drives. When they work they fly though! We have some customers who use them on DB machines and some other uses and we use the internally for a few machines, but right now cost/performance isn't enough for me to want to use them for my own use.

[Quizzical_Squirrel]

I have two mirrored 1 TB drives.

I did think about a RAID 1 array because it does seem like the best option but since I already had a single TB drive and the extra expense to replace that and buy another RAID compatible drive plus the enclosure just seemed too much for my needs at the present time.
I'm also thinking of moving to MAC in the fairly near future so don't want to commit to something different right now.

I also upload personal and some of the better photos to Flickr and burn them on CDs or DVDs (whichever is to hand.)

May I ask a quick question here?

Someone told me it was better to write to CDs rather than DVDs but they didn't know why. Has anyone else heard this?

[nadtz]

May I ask a quick question here?
Someone told me it was better to write to CDs rather than DVDs but they didn't know why. Has anyone else heard this?

SUpposedly CD's age better, see http://www.loc.gov/preserv/rt/projects/cd-r_dvd-r_rw_longevity.html (or google cd dvd logevity or something along those lines).

[xMClass]

Most is on my main HD. Every 2 months or so I back them up on two WD Externals. Unless I'm doing something really important, I won't back up until the 2 month period. Also have online storage on Flickr. That's 4 different places.

[Damian75]

1 copy on Internal Drives
1 copy on Drobo Pro
1 copy on and offsite private server
1 copy every 6 months to DVD and into safety deposit box

[Gipetto]

Mine are on the hard drive in my laptop. That hard drive is backed up twice at work (one is a full Super Duper backup, the other one a Time Machine backup) and then at home I back up just my Aperture Library to an external hard drive.

I've only ever had one of those drives fail at a time and fortunately its only ever been an external drive. I did, however, make the mistake once of deleting a block of images when upgrading the storage space at home and at a time when I didn't do redundant backups at all, so human error has been my only downfall and my greatest learning experience.

Don't skimp on the backups! I don't think it really matters what you back up to, just make sure that you do and be redundant if you can.

[Quizzical_Squirrel]

SUpposedly CD's age better, see http://www.loc.gov/preserv/rt/projects/cd-r_dvd-r_rw_longevity.html (or google cd dvd logevity or something along those lines).

Thank you for that link, much appreciated :)

[pablo9]

Here's a solution I think is worth checking (http://www.deathtofilm.com/2008/06/30/image-mechanics-off-line-archiving-system-the-next-generation/). Very flexible, expandable as your library of images grows and very easy to use.
You can streamline the backup process with CHRONOSYNC (Mac version for me). I'm currently implementing this system and I'm very happy I made the move.