Archiving RAW files

Looking for ways to archive RAW files. And by Archiving I'm meaning put them somewhere so I can get them back if I need to, but I don't expect to need access very often and when I do, it's okay for it to take a little while.

Now, I could put them onto USB disks, and store them somewhere. But USB disks do fail, and how would I know if they were on the path to failure? I would need to do that by myself.

Or, I could put them onto a "cloud" (i.e. internet) server. That way the host takes care of backing them up, etc. Prices that I have found so far include:

Google - US$10 per month
Microsoft - GBP8 per month, with up to 5 licences for Office 365 included
Dropbox - doesn't have a decent plan
Amazon - £320 per year

(I'd probably also keep a copy or two on USB disk, TBH).

Things like Carbonite don't work because I want to clear space off my local drives; they only backup things that are ON the drive! (I do use Carbonite to back up the JPGs that come from the RAWs, but that's a different requirement...)

So... any other suggestions that I have missed for archival of RAW files that I don't expect to want to use often, but don't want to lose either?

I use Microsoft Azure cloud storage, and I use a program called CloudBerry Backup that does daily backups to Azure for me. CloudBerry Backup may not work for you since you indicated you want to delete the files locally, but you could use a program like CloudBerry Explorer to copy and/or move the files from your local disks to Azure.

Azure storage currently costs $0.02 per GB, you only pay for what you use. I say "currently" because I started doing this a couple years ago and the cost then was $0.12 per GB; there have been many price reductions over the years.

What's wrong with an external HD?

alan_potter wrote in post #17087137
Now, I could put them onto USB disks, and store them somewhere. But USB disks do fail, and how would I know if they were on the path to failure? I would need to do that by myself.

Flash memory typically degrades over time, I did have some USB sticks fail on me over time, but they had a huge amount of data go through them over years of use. I have one 2GB stick that must be 6 years old and it still works, if sluggishly, however I don't know how flash memory performs in terms of cold storage...

It depends on location/provider, cloud storage would be far too slow for me, and I wouldn't be able to use software like Bridge to browse images.

Currently, I simply have my photos duplicated over 3 hard drives, but if I were to start from scratch, I'd get a RAID array with at least 4 drives and put them in mode 5 or 6.

My photo files (and other files too) go on two external hard drives that are updated every few months. One of the HDs alternately is stored off-site.

I also do daily backups of new files on a second internal drive.

I don't zip or compress my files.

Works for me.

Archibald wrote in post #17087366
My photo files (and other files too) go on two external hard drives that are updated every few months. One of the HDs alternately is stored off-site.

I also do daily backups of new files on a second internal drive.

I don't zip or compress my files.

Works for me.

Are you me?

Thank you for the suggestions. CincyTriGuy, I shall have a look at Azure (incidentally, I am hoping to do my first-ever tri in September!)

I'm not looking to do backup; I have that pretty well covered. This is archiving; it's making a one-off backup so that I can delete the files from the local hard drive and know that I can get them if I need them - but they are not frequently-accessed files. Most haven't been looked at in two years or more!

One copy = no copy, regardless of how safe you think it is.

For me:
- One copy onsite in RAW, with a jpeg, on a hard disk in a drawer
- One copy offsite in DNG, with a jpeg, on a hard disk
- Another DNG offsite in a different location, on a hard disk

I just released a tool to validate the integrity of DNG files. If one location has a file that fails validation you can restore from original raw or another location. I had 100 odd files fail validation, out of 75,000 I had on the disk.

See also the backups section of my workflow.

@mike_d: totally agree - an online service would be in addition to HDDs
@tim: I'll have a look, thanks

I keep a set of my photos on my desktop, I central server to back up all those files, I have a couple external hard drive that backups the critical data on the server (this includes Image backup of OS and all data on server) that I store at home and another couple external hard drives that I store at my parents house. Ive been thinking of building a NAS I can store at my parents house and setting it up to connect through a VPN tunnel and backup that way over night keeps me from needing to go and physically get the hard drive every couple weeks.

2 external HDs at home, one occasionally updated at my wife's work and everything online with crashplan. If all that fails I probably won't care, as I probably didn't survive that meteor strike either

Maybe several disks connected with RAID 1 (mirror) would be a good solution? I'm using it and I'm satisfied so far. I had one disk crash but an array has been automatically rebuilt.

If can look at http://www.wdc.com …cts/products.as​px?id=1260

I have 2 internal hard drives that are linked and mirrored. I then have another 2 harddrives under my floor which I back up onto weekly using acronis true image. My logic is that the internal 2 that are mirrored mean I dont lose a file during the week if one drive fails (I still lose the file if I occidentally delete it though). Then my weekly backup to the 2 drives under my floor mean that my PC can be stolen/go on fire/whatever and I would still have the files on these drives (unless my whole house burns down but I figure if that happened my harddrives would be the least of my worries).

If you are using lightroom you can move the files from within lightroom to a removeable drive and they will still show up in your lightroom library but you just wont be able to access them until the drive is reattached. I have been meaning to do this instead of doing a complete backup on a weekly basis I would only be backing up recent stuff

Drives under your floor are an unusual solution. I figure in a house fire what's most important is your memories and data like family photos, over possessions but below people of course. Suggest you get yourself an offsite backup soon. If those backup drives are always connected a virus/user error could wipe them out too.

I have one layer of backups in a nearby building, which is easy but reasonably protected.