Best method to archive photos???

I've been getting a little nervous about all the photos and videos that I have archived onto dvd's and cd's. Some of the research I've done suggests that many of these cd's won't last more than 7-10 years. I have several of those little portable hard drives that I use for backups on my laptop; but has anyone heard of those not lasting very long, as well?
What do you consider to be the best way to backup and archive all your digital images? Has anyone considered using any of those usb flash drives? They are so cheap these days. It might be most economical to use them?
I need something that I can archive all my old family photos and then keep them in the safe.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Mike

The mantra for backup as always been 3-2-1. 3 copies, 2 types of media, 1 stored off site. Personally I feel that optical media is a pain, and not as reliable as hard disk storage. My photos reside on a minimum of 3 drives. My internal drive, a connected external for routine backups, and a 2nd external that I store off site. A lot of people seem to miss the importance of having a backup stored off site. Local backup is great for protecting you from equipment failure, but doesn't do a thing to protect you from theft, fire, flood, etc.

Don't use flash for archival storage - the technology has a definite data retention life and it is not nearly long enough to be considered archival. In other words, the data fades in a relatively short time (archivally speaking).

Data on hard drive media (i.e. the platters) will last a very, very long time, assuming it is protected from heat and magnetic fields, but the Achilles heel is the mechanical parts, especially the bearing seals. They can dry out in archival storage, rendering the drive unusable, reportedly in as little as 2 years.

The best current option (IMO) for write-once archival storage is archival CDs. Like these: Delkin 300 Year CD. They are pricey, but for archival storage hard to beat. The data should be written at the slowest speed your drive supports.

But, even that does not protect digital archives from format obsolescence. Digital data can become unreadable merely because the hardware and software needed to read it no longer exist. How many of you remember 8 inch floppies? NASA has already had to face this... the digital data from the 1975 Viking space probe is lost, not because they don't have a copy, but because the format is obsolete and the equipment no longer exists to read it. So, if you're talking about real archival storage of digital data, "write once and store safely" is not by itself sufficient. The data needs to be re-written periodically to keep the format up-to-date. You know this intuitively if you think about it. For example, what do you need to do with your home movie video tapes before your VCR finally bites the dust? Have you tried to buy a VCR lately? It is still just barely possible, but I'd guess, not for too much longer.

(The above is a mix of fact and my personal opinion. You can tell which is the opinion, I suppose.)

My current backup and storage is as follows.

RAW Files
1. All raw files burned to DVD's
2. Same raw Files stored on server with a RAID 6 array
3. RAID backed up to portable drive and stored offsite

Processed JPEG's
1. Copy on Main PC
2. Main PC fully backed up weekly to 2 separate locations
- RAID Server RAW files Are stored on and backed up to the portable drive
- Secondary drive in server
3. Files uploaded to Smugmug site

I sleep well knowing there is little chance of losing all my images.

i think using those usb flash drives will be more expensive in the long run. i have three external hard drives that all have the same RAW and JPEG files in my laptop. one of those external drives is stored off-site just in case.

i also store my JPEGS in Flickr and Photobucket for convenience (so i dont have to lug around my hard drives all the time) but i wouldnt suggest using these sites as your main "storage".

maybe you can try making a RAID system? (havent gotten around to doing it though)
http://en.wikipedia.or​g/wiki/RAID

Anyone use the on-line backup services like Mozy or Carbonite?

I agree wih the 3-2-1 rule. I have 1 copy on my computer hard drive, 1 copy on a raid 5 buffalo terastation, and 1 copy with carbonate off site.

It works great for me... remember no matter how many backups you have if thy are all in a building on fire you have none.

I have twin hard drives in the desktop machine and a 500G portable hard drive to mirror the laptop. Everything gets also backed up to a separate 4Tb hard drive. I too got totally pissed off with optical media. I'd reckon on rolling backup to new devices periodically though I haven't gone off site yet.

The problem with almost all forms of
archival" media is capacity vs. archival life.

With terabytes of information, it is simply not reasonable to USE CDR anymore,. and hasn't been for a long time. EVEN DVD-R is too small IMHO.

I use Hard drives almost exclusively, multiple copies,. including off site,. and DVD-R only for certain aspects as extra precaution, but I actually haven't burned a DVD-R back up in about two years.

With the price for HD storage, IMHO the only way to fly is several hard drive copies.

Academically speaking, black&white negative has proved to be one of the best long-term archival media, but that's not very practical. Magnetic tape (e.g. LTO4) is reliable if stored correctly, but the drives are expensive and tape media is no longer as cheap compared to hard disk storage (in price per GB) as it used to be.

In the real world, hard disk is the obvious choice, but use RAID1/5/6 or simply keep multiple copies on different drives, to avoid losing everything in a single drive failure.

Given the ephemeral nature of all technology these days, be prepared to copy your complete archive onto new media every 3-5 years. That deals with both the limited lifespan of the storage medium and the rate at which media types become obsolete.

Yea as everyone has been saying, the solid state and optical options arent really the best route to go. I have mirrored HDDs in my computer, then backup to a NAS that has mirrored HDDs and lastly I backup to an external drive that I had originally planned to be taken off site, but I have yet to start doing that, so for now it just sits in a fire safe.

CyberDyneSystems wrote in post #11081855
...With terabytes of information, it is simply not reasonable to USE CDR anymore,. and hasn't been for a long time. EVEN DVD-R is too small IMHO....

That's true, but the archival CD-R is still the best long-term storage media for digital data, with a claimed life of 300 years. That same manufacturer claims to have archival BD-Rs (blue ray) with a life of 200 years, longer than they claim for their DVD-Rs (100 years).

If all you are archiving is your original raw images, a CD-R can hold approximately a "roll" of photos (30 - 35 shots) whereas a BD-R can hold about 1000 shots. This is getting more reasonable for backing up a job using BD-Rs.

However, we're facing the same issue the Hollywood studios face with digital ... an explosion of data.

Ansel Adams archived his original negatives and notes on how he made each print. Color photographers would archive B&W separation negatives to preserve the color. Life is not so simple anymore.

Since each incremental image is essentially "free", the number of images taken per event, job, or even family outing is many times greater than it used to be with film. In addition, we no longer have a notebook of darkroom notes, but instead all kinds of work files, depending on how we post-process the raw images. We may want to keep the photoshop files, perhaps multiple files of steps along the way, but we may also want to keep a copy of the final work product.

A RAID array is a reasonable way to keep an archive always fresh, since if a drive fails, when that drive is replaced, the archive is written new to the replacement drive. But, you still need some way to keep a copy of the archive off-site. Perhaps the "cloud" can help, with services like Mozy, but do not trust these kinds of services if all you are using is their cheap "home" backup service. My experience is they have about a 99.9% recovery integrity rate, but that 0.1% that cannot be recovered is worrisome. If your archive is critical, use a commercial service, not the $5 per month "unlimited" home service.

But, I still like to have my valuable data on an archived copy that is "write once and store" and does not require anything to be powered up and does not require that I trust anyone else's equipment to be powered up and reliable. Double-layer blue ray is now up to ~50 GB per disk, but I don't know if anyone is making "archival" version of that, yet. Manufacturers are working on 100GB-400GB blue ray discs now (up to 16 layers).

crn3371 wrote in post #11075263
The mantra for backup as always been 3-2-1. 3 copies, 2 types of media, 1 stored off site. Personally I feel that optical media is a pain, and not as reliable as hard disk storage. My photos reside on a minimum of 3 drives. My internal drive, a connected external for routine backups, and a 2nd external that I store off site. A lot of people seem to miss the importance of having a backup stored off site. Local backup is great for protecting you from equipment failure, but doesn't do a thing to protect you from theft, fire, flood, etc.

Bingo - this is spot on. The only thing I don't do is offsite and mostly because I've been lazy.

for backup. I use drobo which give's me reduntancy on the drobo plus my internal hard drives.

RTPVid wrote in post #11083356
Ansel Adams archived his original negatives and notes on how he made each print....

And yet he lost many in a fire, and of course there's the ones that showed up at yard sale..

Off site is one way to do the important images. But I honest believe printing pictures and putting them in several albums is the key. I have 4 children, I make copies for them so they can have them for their own record keeping. Also, e-mailing some images to your family and friends makes them recorded in several places. Heck! Put the images in Facebook or any internet site, it will never go away.