Best method to archive photos???

This:

Negates this:

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.

"File it and forget it" is an illusory goal. You can't even inscribe data on stone and expect to "file it and forget it"--there are such things as acid rain. Everything needs periodic data validation.

"Multiplication and dispersal" to the greatest extent possible and feasible is the more practicable option, but periodic data validation is still necessary.

Optical disc storage becomes impractical--how many people are going to make multiple copies of discs for a lifetime, updating the formats as necessary, and validating data on stored discs. Practically speaking, it's not really going to happen.

Hard drives are not perfect, but managing and maintaining the data can be made nearly automatic. Multiplication and dispersal are easy and inexpensive (let's not forget that storage "in the cloud" is still just hard drive storage--you're merely using someone else's hard drive).

One thing I started doing after my mother's death last year has been to scan her old photo albums and send copies to all our computer-literate relatives. Multiplication and dispersal. That's why cockroaches survived and T-Rex didn't.

RDKirk wrote in post #11089126
..."File it and forget it" is an illusory goal....

Nice strawman, but I never said "file it and forget it" -- quite the opposite, in fact.

Hard drives, besides being subject to relatively fragile mechanical components, are not immune from format obsolesce. Suppose you had stored your archives 30 years ago on this:

RTPVid wrote in post #11089845
Nice strawman, but I never said "file it and forget it" -- quite the opposite, in fact.

You keep talking about the 300 year (supposed) archival qualities of high-end optical discs...what else do you mean? Those figures are irrelevant if the intent is to periodically (a far shorter period than 300 years) validate data and transfer it to more modern media (again, in a far shorter period than 300 years).

Irrelevant concern, because the intent is to revalidate data at much shorter intervals and move it to more modern media at much shorter intervals.

At one end you're saying you're not talking about "file it and forget it," then you continue talking about "300 years" and "trust priceless archives...on a shelf"...which sounds to me like "file it and forget it."

The first issue is to put the data on a medium that can be practically duplicated and dispersed. That is not an optical disc. Three hundred years archival quality is irrelevant when it gets hit by a hurricane or a nuclear weapon. Locating the data later is relatively easy in an interconnected world as long as we make sure it survived somewhere and is online. That's why ARPANET was created.

I have 2 drives off site , one at my brothers and my nephew has one .
I bought 4 one terabit drives [Buy 3 get 4th free of anything in store - fry's does not do that anymore .
Any I formated them with 2 partitions one fro them and one for me .
They bring over a drive and take different one home . Firewire - I just copy picture folder over and say replace all . Then optimize the disk .
The other 2 are kept current at my house . I was going to replace drive in computer but could not find any IDE , E-IDE , Pata or ata's . All were sata or esata , . I will just get a mac mini . [faster than my G-4 anyway .]

A 1TB drive sells for $55 bucks or so, way less than the price of 1 week of developing costs back in my film days. Sometimes they are on sale for $39 from compUSA.

Then all you need is a desktop drive dock that lets you drop in drive:

http://usb.brando.com …-dock_p01772c061d015.ht​ml

Charge the client for 1 of the drives, and put the other into your safe deposit box, or magnetic media rated safe.

Now is about the time to start copying all of your PATA data onto SATA hard drives.

I'm not paranoid, but: ALL the files on my home computer are backed up on Carbonite. And I copy them to an external hard drive. Which I then copy onto my desktop at work. Which is backed up on the server there. Which is continuously backed up on a commercial online backup.

If something happens all at once to all six copies, I probably have more to worry about than my files!

RDKirk wrote in post #11090380
You keep talking about the 300 year (supposed) archival qualities of high-end optical discs...what else do you mean? Those figures are irrelevant if the intent is to periodically (a far shorter period than 300 years) validate data and transfer it to more modern media (again, in a far shorter period than 300 years).



Irrelevant concern, because the intent is to revalidate data at much shorter intervals and move it to more modern media at much shorter intervals.



At one end you're saying you're not talking about "file it and forget it," then you continue talking about "300 years" and "trust priceless archives...on a shelf"...which sounds to me like "file it and forget it."



The first issue is to put the data on a medium that can be practically duplicated and dispersed. That is not an optical disc. Three hundred years archival quality is irrelevant when it gets hit by a hurricane or a nuclear weapon. Locating the data later is relatively easy in an interconnected world as long as we make sure it survived somewhere and is online. That's why ARPANET was created.

I don't know why you are picking a fight with me. If you want to archive your data on 8" floppies, that's fine by me. The 300 year is a manufacturer's claim; take it for what it's worth. You'd only need to refresh such storage if the format was becoming obsolete, and the chances are, you'd know when you were about to throw away your last drive capable of reading CDs. But, CDs only hold 700MB or so, so on that front it is not very practical these days. But the 200 year blu-ray disks can hold about 25GB. That is at least large enough to consider using.

"Somewhere" online is always somewhere... that is, some specific server or server farm. None of these are forever, especially if you are using "home user" storage services. And, don't confuse hazards. The 300 year CD (or 200 year blu-ray disc) is protecting against the hazard of what used to be called "CD rot" or die fading, not against any thing you could possibly dream up. If you'd rather depend on unseen servers "somewhere" on the cloud, again, fine by me. Go ahead. There are services that guarantee your data against all manner of hazards, but they are not cheap (and they have been known to lose data).

shootings wrote in post #11100713
thank u very much,very useful for me,

I'm glad to help.

Yno wrote in post #11108258
I'm not paranoid, but: ALL the files on my home computer are backed up on Carbonite. And I copy them to an external hard drive. Which I then copy onto my desktop at work. Which is backed up on the server there. Which is continuously backed up on a commercial online backup.

If something happens all at once to all six copies, I probably have more to worry about than my files!

Hmm, I hope you own the business, or else you are stealing from the company. Companies pay a lot for data storage (on the whole, especially large companies)! If I were the storage administrator there, I would kick this data off!

TxDiver wrote in post #11120956
Hmm, I hope you own the business, or else you are stealing from the company. Companies pay a lot for data storage (on the whole, especially large companies)! If I were the storage administrator there, I would kick this data off!

My wife's company sniffs for media files (which might be copyrighted lawsuit bait) and *.exe files (for obvious reasons) as they are backed up from employee workstations to company servers.

Actually, I AM the system administrator. And the company that does the storage is owned by a friend of mine who gives me a discount that more than covers any storage fees.....

Yno wrote in post #11160521
Actually, I AM the system administrator. And the company that does the storage is owned by a friend of mine who gives me a discount that more than covers any storage fees.....

Which means your suggestion is not one available to the average photographer.

Yno wrote in post #11108258
I'm not paranoid, but: ALL the files on my home computer are backed up on Carbonite. And I copy them to an external hard drive. Which I then copy onto my desktop at work. Which is backed up on the server there. Which is continuously backed up on a commercial online backup.

If something happens all at once to all six copies, I probably have more to worry about than my files!

Have you been pleased with Carbonite??

Some friends herre in MN lost 4 years of digital photos when their hard-drive died and Carbonite lost their files (even though they told them that "this never happens"). $1200 for a clean-room attempt at the drive yielded 4 pictures - the $300 they paid to Cabonite is money out the window.

Needless to say, they were heatbroken.

cast_and_blast wrote in post #14096723
Some friends herre in MN lost 4 years of digital photos when their hard-drive died and Carbonite lost their files (even though they told them that "this never happens"). $1200 for a clean-room attempt at the drive yielded 4 pictures - the $300 they paid to Cabonite is money out the window.

Needless to say, they were heatbroken.

I would never use cloud storage as my only form of backup.