I just put up a new Quick Poll on PCPhotoREVIEW.com:

How do you store your digital images? (http://www.pcphotoreview.com/qikVote_1373crx.aspx)

Feel free to discuss this subject here, too. It's a good one. And let me know if I've left out any major options.

Well John,

I keep TWO coppies of all my images. My first line of b/u is an external hard drive. The first thing I do after downloading images to my internal hd is to copy them to the external.

After a while my internal fills up. At this time I make a dvd and then remove them. I still leave them on the external. A poor man's raid? Eventually I'll have to start taking files off my external. At that time I'll either double up on dvd's, or more likely, buy another external hard drive.

I find cd's are pretty worthless. They often won't even hold a complete project. The dvd's work great. I have a double layer dvd burner. I can't wait for the prices of the double layered dvd's to come down some.

Mike

How much data does a double layer DVD hold?

I just put up a new Quick Poll on PCPhotoREVIEW.com:

How do you store your digital images? (http://www.pcphotoreview.com/qikVote_1373crx.aspx)

Feel free to discuss this subject here, too. It's a good one. And let me know if I've left out any major options.

I store my images on an internal hard drive with a copy on CD at home and a copy on CD at my sisters place plus a copy on DVD-RW. (Not mentioning the original negative/slide for images I've scanned).

Having just one choice in the poll doesn't really allow me to express the full paranoia of my archiving system.

Charles

How much data does a double layer DVD hold?

It will hold 8.5GB. They are pricey right now; about 10/ea. But, they're starting to be put on the newer PC's so prices should drop soon.

Mike

I'm doing exactly what Darkman is doing except with CD's. Since I usually use 512mb cards and setup a folder for each card when I download, the amount of storage on a CD hasn't been a big problem. Although the quantity of CD's I have is adding up... I'll switch over to DVD's at some point. Even at $10 that's competitive with a high quality CD based on space vs. cost. I'm a little nervous about having a lower quantity of discs - have one bad CD and you'd have problems with less images than a problem with one DVD.

I finally got around to installing a USB2 card in my PC so I can access my hard drive so much faster - went from several (up to maybe 20) seconds to get into a folder to instant gratification. I also leave the drive off unless I'm accessing it. BTW, I voted for external HD because that's my primary storage.

One other thing about my workflow - I format the card when it's put back in the camera, but not until then. That way if something goes wrong, I have a backup copy on the card as well for a couple of days or so (or maybe not depending on what I'm doing).

I finally got around to installing a USB2 card in my PC so I can access my hard drive so much faster - went from several (up to maybe 20) seconds to get into a folder to instant gratification. I also leave the drive off unless I'm accessing it. BTW, I voted for external HD because that's my primary storage.



I finally bought a usb2 card reader. I was at the store and they had a sandisk usb2 cf reader for $15. I'm cheap, but not that cheap!

I did an experiment. I had just shy of 1 gig on a cf card and downloaded it with both the usbI then the usb2. No stop watch, but close enough for me. The usb1card reader took over 18 minutes to download the card while the usb2 reader took 2 minutes!

That's huge!

The other reason I was getting frustrated with CD's is how they were piling up. It was becoming a black box. I want to start using the dl dvd (8.5G), and may, just because of this. One disk can hold a lot of work. Then when I need to find something it's relatively easy. Hopefully the chances of my external hd and dvds going bad together are small.

I also only archive the original out of camera images.

Mike

You can also do a double-sided DVD at 9.4GB, and those run around $2.75 each or less. The real advantage of the dual-layer as opposed to the double-sided is burning a movie without compression and not having to flip it.

Danielle