Best way to save and store photos

M

meme

Suspended / Banned
Messages
35
Edit My Images
No
Can you recommend the best way to do this please? I'm assuming disk but how big a memory, which ones etc

:thinking:
 
disk...yes
how big... as big as you need/can afford. Photography is my job and I have hundreds of gigabytes of photos. You may well have less.
Which ones... all of them. I don't delete photos.

oh, and remember to ALWAYS back up...hard drives die!
 
Get yourself an external hard drive, you can pick up a 500GB drive for around £45 these days.
 
Thank you. I have no clue about disks at all. Never bought them before so i have no idea how many can be stored on them. Is there a minimum memory one you would buy?
 
500GB would let you fit roughly 42,000 RAW files (at an average of 12MB per image).
 
and i'm assuming not R-RW ones? If that is even such a thing :lol:
 
and if it is just to put 1 wedding shoot on, what would be the best one please? Sorry about the questions
 
meme said:
and i'm assuming not R-RW ones? If that is even such a thing :lol:
Click to expand...

Think you've misunderstood. An external drive will plug into your USB drive and you can drag and drop images into it when required. You seem to be talking about a CD or DVD. For a wedding, a normal blank DVD should be fine.
 
If you can afford it:

Put a bigger secondary drive in your computer (if you need the extra space), and buy 2x external drives that have the same capacity (or more).

Use the internal drive to store your photo's, and backup to the 2 external drives weekly (or after you upload a lot of files) using the operating system's Backup options, or a script such as Robocopy for Windows. You can configure these to backup everything, or just your folder(s) with the photos in etc.

Keep 1 external drive at your house, and put the other one at a friend/family members house (somewhere safe and secure).

Once a month (for example) take your current backup to their house and swap it with the other drive. That way you have a fairly up-to-date off-site backup.

Hard drives fail. It's OK having masses of storage, and even a backup. However if the worst happens and you have a fire or your computer/laptop gets stolen then there is little to no chance of recovery.

You can use "cloud" storage (i.e. online file storage) by the likes of Mozy Home (http://mozy.com/home) or DropBox (https://www.dropbox.com/) etc., however to get any decent space can cost a fair bit of money, and the initial backup can take days/weeks to complete depending on how much data you have to start with.

I have over 10 years of digital photos and converted video amounting to about 500+Gb. Now I have my new Nikon D90 this will only grow as the files sizes are bigger.

I am in the "lucky" position to have a server at home, but use the 2x backup drive routine to backup only the important stuff that will fit on to 2x 2Tb drives, and then keep one at my parents house.

Unlike many files - photo's are memories. If you lose your CV or a few media files you downloaded or ripped from CD's etc., it's annoying. If you lose photo's can you ever get back to that location and re-take them again?
 
Sorry that is my fault. This is if i want to send the images to someone or take images off my PC just to store them.
 
meme said:
...This is if i want to send the images to someone or take images off my PC just to store them.
Click to expand...

Both those things require different solutions.

Sending files to someone: a blank CD or DVD is ideal. USB memory sticks are also good but obviously cost more, fine if you can have it returned.

Backing up/storing images from your PC: this is safeguarding your files against loss should your PC's hard drive die. For this you need at least one external USB hard drive. I say "at least one" as some IT guys have a saying - if data doesn't exist in at least three places, it doesn't exist. This is to make double sure you have a backup copy of your files available. If your hard drive dies, your data is gone. Forever.
Blank/writable CDs and DVDs degrade over time so are NOT good media for long term backups/archiving.
 
meme said:
Sorry that is my fault. This is if i want to send the images to someone or take images off my PC just to store them.
Click to expand...

Sending Images : CD / DVD / USB Stick / USB Hard drive / Google Picasa / Flickr / Email / Free Web hosting via ISP / etc. there are loads of options.

Storing Images : CD / DVD / USB Stick / USB Hard Drive / Google Picasa / Flickr / web hosting - EXCEPT - make sure you have a local copy, and at least 1 backup off-site.

As per my reply and Burningflan's - they are different solutions - but make sure you have a good off-site backup maintained regularly.
 
i u se my USB stick :)

when i get more paid shoots i will put them on disks as well as :)
 
Backup onto DVDs - but use good quality blanks - NOT poundland specials etc.

I have used DataWrite blanks for about 10 years without loss of data.

And I store them in cheap CD folders.

Hard drives can also fail.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top