how shall i store photographs

just jon

just jon

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Jonathon
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i have many photographs on a external drive incase my computer has problems or loses files .
At the moment they are stored ay jpeg is this ok or should i convert them to tiff? And which is better to store my photos on dvd or cd
 
Leave them as JPG. DVDs and CDs are only short term solutions,as they can degrade.

I have about 5 seperate backups. 2 offsite and 3 onsite.

I have a NAS drive connected over wifi which backs up everyday, I have a internal harddrive which backs up everyday, a carbonite subscription which automaticly and continuosly backs up to and offsite server. I also do weekly backups to hard drives, one which is kept offsite and one kept at home
 
Just make sure you have them on two different drives and preferably different locations - 2 copies of everything is a minimum - without that you are highly prone to losing the lot!
 
Since the files are already in JPEG form, they may as well stay like that. Multiple copies on external HDDs as well as in the computer. If you have more than one machine, keep a copy on both (or all). CDs and DVDs can degrade over time, so if you use them as an extra layer of backup, check them from time to time and if they show any sign of degradation, create new disks (maybe on a different brand - the degraded disk may be a sign that that brand is unreliable over time). If you're allowed, keep a copy on your work machine (if you use a computer at work). In essence, you can never have too many backups, as long as you keep them up to date. Depending on the size of the pictures folder, it might fit on a large capacity memory card - very portable and takes up no space, just remember where it's kept!
 
Not wishing to hijack the thread - but the answer may be of interest to others too - does anyone use SSD for back-ups, or are there reasons not to?
 
Bristolian said:
Not wishing to hijack the thread - but the answer may be of interest to others too - does anyone use SSD for back-ups, or are there reasons not to?
Click to expand...

I would have thought cost would still be prohibitive . SSD are 3 to 4 times the cost of normal drives, a quick look on amazon and your looking a over £500 for 1TB compared to £75 for a harddrive.
 
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TCR4x4 said:
Leave them as JPG. DVDs and CDs are only short term solutions,as they can degrade.

I have about 5 seperate backups. 2 offsite and 3 onsite.

I have a NAS drive connected over wifi which backs up everyday, I have a internal harddrive which backs up everyday, a carbonite subscription which automaticly and continuosly backs up to and offsite server. I also do weekly backups to hard drives, one which is kept offsite and one kept at home
Click to expand...

I will be keeping copy's of my photograph's on 3 or 4 drives external drives and hdisk drives dvd's
 
EOS_JD said:
Just make sure you have them on two different drives and preferably different locations - 2 copies of everything is a minimum - without that you are highly prone to losing the lot!
Click to expand...

I will be keeping copy's of my photograph's on 3 or 4 drives external drives and hdisk drives dvd's
 
Nod said:
Since the files are already in JPEG form, they may as well stay like that. Multiple copies on external HDDs as well as in the computer. If you have more than one machine, keep a copy on both (or all). CDs and DVDs can degrade over time, so if you use them as an extra layer of backup, check them from time to time and if they show any sign of degradation, create new disks (maybe on a different brand - the degraded disk may be a sign that that brand is unreliable over time). If you're allowed, keep a copy on your work machine (if you use a computer at work). In essence, you can never have too many backups, as long as you keep them up to date. Depending on the size of the pictures folder, it might fit on a large capacity memory card - very portable and takes up no space, just remember where it's kept!
Click to expand...

I will be keeping copy's of my photograph's on 3 or 4 drives external drives and hdisk drives dvd's
 
Forget DVD unless you want to spend all your time doing that - DVD is just too slow. If you have a couple of external drives and maybe an off site disk that would be more than enough. Depends how much data you have. With Terrabytes of images DVD is just not feasible.
 
just jon said:
I will be keeping copy's of my photograph's on 3 or 4 drives external drives and hdisk drives dvd's
Click to expand...

Get a drobo 5D (this is your working drive, USB 3/thunderbolt with mSATA SSD), back it up to a drobo FS on the network, cloud storage to CrashPlan.

Each drobo will protect against drive failure, you can set it against 2 drives out of 5 if you want. That's 4 HD fail out of a possible 10. If you don't have that much data (that is if you have less 4TB of data, and having 20Tb storage in each drobo) you can afford to have 6 HD fail and still can keep working. To lose all your photos you need to have 9 HDs fail instantaneously. To fix it, just replace the broken drive with new one, it will just rebuild the data all on its own.

Plus the drobo 5D has built in UPS.

That's my plan :p

Downside, each drobo will cost about £1,500 with 4TB drives in each of the 5 bays.
 
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Raymond Lin said:
Get a drobo 5D (this is your working drive, USB 3/thunderbolt with mSATA SSD), back it up to a drobo FS on the network, cloud storage to CrashPlan.

Each drobo will protect against drive failure, you can set it against 2 drives out of 5 if you want. That's 4 HD fail out of a possible 10. If you don't have that much data (that is if you have less 4TB of data, and having 20Tb storage in each drobo) you can afford to have 6 HD fail and still can keep working. To lose all your photos you need to have 9 HDs fail instantaneously. To fix it, just replace the broken drive with new one, it will just rebuild the data all on its own.

Plus the drobo 5D has built in UPS.

That's my plan :p

Downside, each drobo will cost about £1,500 with 4TB drives in each of the 5 bays.
Click to expand...

And you have the super fun happy risk of drobos just.... Losing your data.

Based on the experiences of a lot of photographers, digital operators and other industry techs - I wouldn't suggest drobo to be a serious professional grade storage system.
 
For jpg files something like Zenfolio could be a good option. £100 for the year and unlimited storage (plus you can use it to sell images and create your web site)!
 
Will repeat above. Don't store your data on CD - too unreliable (and slow).
 
itsdavedotnet said:
And you have the super fun happy risk of drobos just.... Losing your data.

Based on the experiences of a lot of photographers, digital operators and other industry techs - I wouldn't suggest drobo to be a serious professional grade storage system.
Click to expand...

And also 1 drobo = 1 drive in backup terms. You still need multiple drives / locations.
 
I agree. RAID is NOT back up... it's redundancy against a disk failure. If you have your images on a RAID system, you still need to back it up!
 
I use a 2TB external HDD and I also upload to an online site like smugmug.

The site allows me to link directly into Lightroom and also to download and share as when I need with any compression of the file etc.
 
just jon said:
i have many photographs on a external drive incase my computer has problems or loses files .
At the moment they are stored ay jpeg is this ok or should i convert them to tiff? And which is better to store my photos on dvd or cd
Click to expand...

try storing on a couple of pen drives cheap and easy
if your paranoid make hundreds of copies:lol::lol::lol:
i shoot raw and store raw as you have more flexibility
 
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Bristolian said:
Not wishing to hijack the thread - but the answer may be of interest to others too - does anyone use SSD for back-ups, or are there reasons not to?
Click to expand...

Further to this, Kingston have just announced they are launching a 1TB USB3 flash drive, now if the cost is right that really could be the way to go, fast, big capacity and nice and small.

UPDATE

Just seen this on engadget, so maybe not at the moment, but lets hope the drop in price soon.

512GB edition is a staggering $1,750.0
Click to expand...
 
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I use 2 externals at home and one kept at work and also use Carbonite cloud storage which automatically backs up my files:)
 
EOS_JD said:
For jpg files something like Zenfolio could be a good option. £100 for the year and unlimited storage (plus you can use it to sell images and create your web site)!
Click to expand...

I'm currently trialling a zenfolio account, the benefit of storing your images of there seems a great bonus considering all I wanted it for was a website. I've also have an external hard drive and an internal hard drive. As a hobby I feel this is ok, and the zenfolio account backs up my best images in jpeg in case the worst did happen. I may in the future think about an off site backup external hard drive.
 
Something you may find of interest if you're a Linux user (probably unlikely, but still...) is that there's a FUSE filesystem driver that lets you access a Flickr account as if it's part of your hard drive. You copy files into a specific location on your hard disk and what it actually does is upload them to flickr, and of course you can do the reverse by copying back from that folder to another location on your hard disk. It came in handy for me when I accidentally wiped my hard disk and I was able to mount Flickr as if it was just another external hard drive and copy all the files back.

All that said, I'm just a hobby photographer so it's not nearly as important to me if my photos go walkabout as it is to you professional guys.
 
just too let you know, us 3.0 is quit bad for a lot of small files e.g. photos, my usb 3.0 reader and x400 card only transfers at >20mb/s with photos and over 100mb/s with video's (from card to pc)
 
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neil_g said:
that doesnt sound right, my USB2 lexar transfers (RAW files) faster than that..

USB3 should be faster than FW800 in both read and write too.
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im not sure whats wrong :/ movie files transfer at 80-120mb/s whereas photos are usually below 20mb/s (raw files from a 7d) :S
 
N01Chris said:
im not sure whats wrong :/ movie files transfer at 80-120mb/s whereas photos are usually below 20mb/s (raw files from a 7d) :S
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I would have to agree with Neil, I have the Lexar USB 3 reader and my photos (albeit usually Jpeg, transfer really quickly cf. USB2 readers).
 
Mikesphotaes said:
I would have to agree with Neil, I have the Lexar USB 3 reader and my photos (albeit usually Jpeg, transfer really quickly cf. USB2 readers).
Click to expand...

yep in a usb 2.0 port pictures transfer faster... movies don't though

usb 3.0 must work better with larger files than lots of small files :S
 
Shoot film for stuff you can't afford to lose :D
 
flashp said:
Shoot film for stuff you can't afford to lose :D
Click to expand...

Unless wherever you're storing your shots goes up in flames! At least with digital you've got loads of copies on different hard drives all over. (Or you should have!) :-)
 
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