Archiving your digital images. What works for you?

[Hockeyshots]

What methods do you guys use to archive your digital images? Online storage? CD/DVD? RAID? Something else? I don't have any archiving method yet, but I need to find one and am looking for ideas that work for you. Thanks.

HS

[Sebastian]

I only use a PowerBook, and everything gets mirrored to two external HDs. I don't bother with CDs or DVDs, once a year I replace a drive and mirror the contents of the old one onto it. The new drive is always larger than the old. This lets me grow storage while keeping a backup regiment going.

[Franglais]

What methods do you guys use to archive your digital images? Online storage? CD/DVD? RAID? Something else? I don't have any archiving method yet, but I need to find one and am looking for ideas that work for you. Thanks.

HS

My RAW files go first onto CD-R or DVD-R along with any other stuff I'm doing at the time (scanning my film library). They hang about for a while on the hard drive of my second system that's never connected to Internet, with on offline backup to DVD+RW. I also have a complete backup of my library on an external hard drive that I keep in the cellar and update from time to time.

Plus - there's the JPG's made from the RAWS which I actually keep online to look at (in ACDSee). These also have their own copy onto DVD+RW and external hard drive.

OK so I have three different archiving media and at least 4 different copies of every image. I'm a computing professional. I'm supposed to know about this stuff.

Charles

[Michael Fanelli]

What methods do you guys use to archive your digital images? Online storage? CD/DVD? RAID? Something else? I don't have any archiving method yet, but I need to find one and am looking for ideas that work for you. Thanks.

HS

Well, I keep it simple. I have my images on the computer's main drive with a copy on an external hard drive. Both drives are error checked once a month. That's twice the protection I ever had with film!

With jpeg originals, everything is saved as is. Before working on a jpeg, I copy it. Never ever work on an original. RAWs, most of my images, are kept in their original formats. I do, however, keep an extra copy of all RAWs in Adobe's DNG format (free converter on Adobe site). So I guess I really have two backups instead of one.

The longevity of CDs and DVDs have turned out to be less than ideal. I no longer archive anything important on them.

[SmartWombat]

Archive and backup are different things, I think.
Srchive implies that it mught be catalogued, and you can find things in the archive.
Backup is just a copy of files, you may not be able to search that except on filename.

I have several backups.
Out shooting, on the Phototainer (just back form repair) or the XSDriveII - both 80GB
Back at home, the RAW files get backed up onto DVD.
Then the JPEG files when created from the RAW also get backed up to DVD.
The whole lot is copied off the D: drive over to an external HD.
I have a 250GB drive ready for 2006

[Hockeyshots]

Well, I thank you all for your responses. Looks like a lot of you use external hard disks or DVDs as archiving storage. My only concern with either of these is, optically written DVDs don't have a great shelf life and hard drives - whether external or internal - crash. I guess an argument could be made that from a redundancy standpoint, backing up to a second hard disk makes it less likely you'll lose your work since failure of both drives at the same time is extremely unlikely, but if you're keeping more data on your backup than on your primary (i.e. you're really depending on your external HD as your archival storage and it's a B-I-G disc) then you're still kind of playing russian roullette with that drive by counting on its not failing.

Frankly, I was a little surprised that no one mentioned online storage. If you're images are propery copyrighted, then theft shouldn't be a real concern. Loss is, of course, and depending on what you shoot it may be a fact that no amount of money can compensate for the loss. But I would also think they would be able to recover from loss as a result of some kind of hardware failure as opposed to some kind of facility failure, such as fire or flood.

I think the best way to go is RAID. Kind of expensive, but you have the security of keeping your files at home or office and also being able to survive disc failure. No one uses that, huh?

[Franglais]

Well, I thank you all for your responses. Looks like a lot of you use external hard disks or DVDs as archiving storage. My only concern with either of these is, optically written DVDs don't have a great shelf life and hard drives - whether external or internal - crash. I guess an argument could be made that from a redundancy standpoint, backing up to a second hard disk makes it less likely you'll lose your work since failure of both drives at the same time is extremely unlikely, but if you're keeping more data on your backup than on your primary (i.e. you're really depending on your external HD as your archival storage and it's a B-I-G disc) then you're still kind of playing russian roullette with that drive by counting on its not failing.

Frankly, I was a little surprised that no one mentioned online storage. If you're images are propery copyrighted, then theft shouldn't be a real concern. Loss is, of course, and depending on what you shoot it may be a fact that no amount of money can compensate for the loss. But I would also think they would be able to recover from loss as a result of some kind of hardware failure as opposed to some kind of facility failure, such as fire or flood.

I think the best way to go is RAID. Kind of expensive, but you have the security of keeping your files at home or office and also being able to survive disc failure. No one uses that, huh?

The whole point of doing an archive is to make a copy of files offline. Any online file can be deleted or damaged instantly and irrecoverably without you even realising it. The possible causes are multiple - operator error (i.e. you), malignant virus, attack from Internet, system error (pretty rare nowadays with NTFS). Plus there are more basic dangers like fire or theft taking out your entire configuration.

RAID is no help. The system will apply changes made immediately to the entire RAID setup. RAID is only useful to protect against the failure of one drive (which is also pretty rare nowadays).

Charles

[Hockeyshots]

Hi, Charles...

The whole point of doing an archive is to make a copy of files offline. Any online file can be deleted or damaged instantly and irrecoverably without you even realising it.

Are we talking about two different things here? I am talking about storage by a service accessible via the web, where you upload your data to them and they provide the secure storage. They supply the servers, backups, maintenance and safe environment for you, relieving you from having to buy more and more storage.

RAID is no help...RAID is only useful to protect against the failure of one drive (which is also pretty rare nowadays).

RAID is much more than that. It's more like storage protection through fault tolerance as opposed to drive protection. Instead of one drive, you have many drives (the "A" is array, the "D" is disc, or drive) and your data is spread out amongst the various drives in such a manner that should one drive in the array fail, you simply remove it and install a new one, and you don't lose any data in the process. That is certainly helpful towards protecting against catastophic loss of one's portfolio due to a hard drive crash.

[SmartWombat]

RAID is not a cure-all.
We lost two drives on the same array at work, and all our data was toast.

[Franglais]

Hi, Charles...


Are we talking about two different things here? I am talking about storage by a service accessible via the web, where you upload your data to them and they provide the secure storage. They supply the servers, backups, maintenance and safe environment for you, relieving you from having to buy more and more storage.


RAID is much more than that. It's more like storage protection through fault tolerance as opposed to drive protection. Instead of one drive, you have many drives (the "A" is array, the "D" is disc, or drive) and your data is spread out amongst the various drives in such a manner that should one drive in the array fail, you simply remove it and install a new one, and you don't lose any data in the process. That is certainly helpful towards protecting against catastophic loss of one's portfolio due to a hard drive crash.

OK by "online" I hadn't understood you meant storage with an outsourcer. That is safe as long as they do their job properly.

I agree that RAID provides fault tolerance. It's useful to ensure that your everyday production environment is available all the time. But that's not archiving. An archive must be isolated from incidents.

Charles

[splats]

I burn all My pictures to CD and Make 2 Copies one caopy I call my "working" copy , while the other one I Keep in the Basement stored in the Dark. exposure to light its the enemy to CD-Rs