Archiving pics

I'm curious as to what is the best way to store all your pics without using up GB after GB on the computer. I purchased a terabyte of space in a external hard drive. Should I back them up onto that and then dump them of the computer. Any suggestions would be great. What do you do?

hello scpictaker,

That is exactly what I do. I usually leave a couple of months worth in my laptop's hard drive then I archive them in my external hard drive. I know I will need more room soon for my recently purchased 5D's pics. I am also thinking about getting another TB external to backup my backup photos. Sounds crazy but it is not fun losing years of photos when your hard drive decides to crash.

Another option is to burn them on DVDs especially now with dual layer blank media. More time consuming and demands space to store them but some find this archiving practice safer.

Hope this helps.

Peace,
Yanis

Yanis wrote in post #7491574
That is exactly what I do. I usually leave a couple of months worth in my laptop's hard drive then I archive them in my external hard drive. I know I will need more room soon for my recently purchased 5D's pics. I am also thinking about getting another TB external to backup my backup photos. Sounds crazy but it is not fun losing years of photos when your hard drive decides to crash.

Not crazy at all. Redundancy is key when it comes to storing irreplaceable data like image files. If the data is lost through drive failure, it's gone forever unless you mirrored it somewhere. Having one large back up drive is putting all your eggs in one basket - having a RAID setup or simply having a second drive of similar or equal size and regularly doing manual back ups are two good ways to insure your data. It can be costly but if your main drive fails you would gladly pay the cost of a replacement to get the data back.

Amateur photographers should consider a good backup/storage plan part of the cost of the hobby, and with DSLR/lens prices where they are, you can get set up comparatively cheaply.

How are you supposed to backup your pictures without using GB after GB, as you put it, if you have GB after GB of images? How many GB of images do you have? Enough to use up a TB?

I have about 315GB of pictures taken over the last three years. I have at least four hard drives ranging from 400GB to 1TB. I have a main HDD in my main computer which I backup to a second external HDD. I then backup each shoot to a third and fourth external drive that I carry back and forth to my office. So at any given time I have four copies of my images in at least two locations.

I guess I'm just not understanding your question. It sounds as if you want to use as little space as possible but you hava a TB of storage. Is that not enough for one copy of your images? I'd get more than that though. Hard drives are cheap $99 for 1TB drives. Get two or three is what I'd recommend.

Algorithm wrote in post #7491633
Redundancy is key when it comes to storing irreplaceable data like image files.

Well that is kind of the key - the real key is Redundancy with Different Fail Modes. Otherwise, you still have your eggs all in one basket - just in different piles pretending that they are in different baskets.

If you have all of your backups on redundant magnetic drives (external, hot swappable, etc) and then along comes one EMP, and pfffftt, there goes all the drives at once. So even though I do use redundant drives, I still incorporate a different type of storage in my workflow: EVERYTHING goes on a hard drive that I mirror after every session. THEN, I go through my new photos, and I do a rough filter to screen for the potential keepers, which is usually 10 % of any given shoot. I back up THOSE files to an optical drive.

But I am not done yet. One house fire and there goes both the optical and magnetic. So, I have yet one more layer of backup in my workflow. Once I start editing a photo, it goes in my "Working" folder. As well as the two methods already mentioned, I ALSO backup my Working folder to MozyHome (an Internet storage service.)

Rad

I like the internet storage idea , I used to be a firefighter and have seen many a pictures lost. When backing up to a EXD, I usually copy and past to the drive. Is that the best way to keep image quality and all EXIF info?

if you don't want to end up having like 4 tb's of external hard drive space...do what I plan on doing

back up to your external hd at least once a month, or twice a month if you shoot alot...and then disconnect it and put it away in a fireproof safe or something...don't use it regularly, just when you back up

back up to dvd at least once a month as well...twice if you shoot more...and save those dvd's in some decent cases and put them in a fireproof safe...

my final method of saving my precious pictures will be to burn them yet again to dvd's and put them in another fireproof safe or just a plain box and keep this box somewhere else like my parents or inlaws garage...

the way I see it...If I lose all of my images, then God didn't want me to have them and he wants me to start all over again...

I already have one hard drive sitting in a box in my garage waiting for the day I send it out to get the data pulled after it died on me...

oh and another thing I do...when I get set to back up my files...I go through my pictures and delete the repeats and the ones I know I will never do anything with...I keep the ones I like or the only ones I have of a certain event or whatever...I'm not a fan of storing things just for the sake of storing them...if I don't need it at all...it's going bye bye

Radtech1 wrote in post #7491751
If you have all of your backups on redundant magnetic drives (external, hot swappable, etc) and then along comes one EMP, and pfffftt, there goes all the drives at once. So even though I do use redundant drives, I still incorporate a different type of storage in my workflow: EVERYTHING goes on a hard drive that I mirror after every session. THEN, I go through my new photos, and I do a rough filter to screen for the potential keepers, which is usually 10 % of any given shoot. I back up THOSE files to an optical drive.

But I am not done yet. One house fire and there goes both the optical and magnetic. So, I have yet one more layer of backup in my workflow. Once I start editing a photo, it goes in my "Working" folder. As well as the two methods already mentioned, I ALSO backup my Working folder to MozyHome (an Internet storage service.)

Rad

If you are the recipient of an EMP, then you have more things to worry about than what happened to your pics.

I know what you're saying, though.

OP, what you describe is not backing up, you're just transferring the pics from one source to another. I also went with Mozy, $4.95/month for unlimitied storage. It is painfully slow, however, since I'm only uploading at about 1 MB/s.

My only concern is that they could go under at any time. With the prices of HD so low, I'm almost tempted to just buy another one, but that doesn't address the offsite storage issue.

Regarding using a HD and then removing it and putting it in storage, I've heard that HD last longer if constantly spinning, that the turning off and on wears it out. I have some drives going for at least 2 years almost non-stop with no issues. Anyone have thoughts on this? Is this true, or just urban myth?