Photo Preservation in the Digital Age

[frank]

Recently I've been scanning some old black and whites , some of which are old and long gone family members, going back to the early 1900s, the earliest ones I have are around 1897 I think. Ok their not great quality but they have lasted this long.

I often wonder in this digital age will all our external drives, backup plans online still be around to pass on in perhaps 100 + years to our families of the future, will operating systems in the far future be compatible with todays technology and be able to read a 100+ year old hard drive ...if it still works.

There's something to be said about prints, maybe old fashioned but i think it's safe to say they will last a lot longer than a hard drive full of photos, even if they do lose a bit colour.

 

[Pookeyhead]

This seems a lot like arguing that our physical-body-based identity (our soul) is worse off than our online identities just because we cannot have "backup" (i.e. a clone to transfer our soul into once our "primary" body dies) for our physical body, and we can die; but our online identities can survive our physical bodies!

That is exactly what I'm arguing. If it was possible, and if your personality was backed up, it would be safer, yes? You can't argue against that... because it's a fact.

The line of thinking here seems to be awfully digital-revolution-influenced, and to fail to respect the physical/biological above the digital, let alone the soul that is based in the body.

Not really. We're not talking about backing up people... we're talking about backing up data. It's not about lack of respect for the physical, because with the vast majority of photographs taken these days, there never WAS a physical What's this revolution you talk about. You make it sounds as if there is some kind of movement forcing people to stop using film. Most people under 25 these days have never even shot a photograph on film. There's a whole generation that thinks images shot on film look like Instagram

And by the way, most of us don't need our photos or data to survive us,

Really. That's a very narrow minded view. If images never survived their authors, we'd have a very poor history of the last couple of centuries. If it wasn't important, and images never survived you, no one would ever have a photographic record of what went before them. That's a very selfish attitude. I think it's VERY important images survive us.

or do not need to overly concern ourselves about that during our lifetime (because, for most of us at least, our lives are more valuable than our photos).

Of course, but let's get back on track shall we. We're discussing protecting your images while we are alive. Having one, physical copy of an image is a really crap way of protecting it against loss... merely by the fact that there is only one copy.

And yet most of those arguing about the supremacy of digital storage seem to be highlighting the data's survival of major disasters.

Errr... yaeh.. and?

The trouble with digital data storage is that we need to think about backup even during short periods of time such as two years. On the other hand, I think that we can safely assume that film, if stored safely, can be relied upon to be found intact (barring a tragedy like a fire) decades later. That, unfortunately, is not the case with a hard drive or DVD.

Why is data storage and back up a short term thing? I created my first ever digital image file in around 1994. I still have it. When I'm, (hopefully) a very, very old man... I'll still have that file. Peopel argue about formats becoming redundant etc, but so what? That file ws originally on a ZIP disc. Who remembers those? It's now on my image server. When something newer comes along... it will be migrated to there too. Some images in my digital archive are 20 years old now. The fact is. I've lost or damaged more negatives than I have digital files. YOUR hard drives may not be around, no, because you have a terrible attitude to back up. Banks? The NHS? GCHQ? You think they're gonna lose data because it's digital? You really are talking nonsense. This is the attitude of someone who has absolutely no idea about digital data protection.

Not a DVD no, their crap, but DECENT back up will still be around, decades, or even centuries after the fact. You seem to think fire is the only thing that can take out a negative? You could simply lose one.. or have them stolen. I was once loading a neg into a carrier to scan it when A colleague thought it would be a wheeze to creep up on me and burst a crisp packet right next to my head. I crapped myself, dropped the neg, and it slid along the floor under a heavy filing cabinet. We dragged the filing cabinet out, only to realise the neg was trapped under the leg of the cabinet, and had been scraped along the floor with 300 pounds of weight on it. It couldn't have been destroyed more effectively if I'd sandpapered it. Never mind.. I could have just used my back u... Oh.. hang on


Get real. Do you take digital images? You do? Then you need them to be backed up. Without back up, data is at risk. Backed up properly it is as safe as a physical copy; backed up very well, and it's much safer than a physical copy. This is a fact and not something you can argue against. Well.. you can if you want, but you'd be making yourself look pretty damned stupid.


I'm not saying we should get rid of all physical things BTW.. I'm not anti-physical as the tone of your post seems to suggest... I'm saying that seeing as we ARE taking digital images, we need to get real about back up. Done correctly it is FAR more secure than holding a physical copy.

If you don't get this.. then you just don't understand what you're talking about. I'll tell you what then... let's forget all this data.. let's go back to the "good old days" when everything was physical... your medical records, your bank account... every piece of information that is crucial to your life.. was just a piece of crisp, dry paper... languishing in a filing cabinet somewhere... just waiting to combust, or mould away, or get eaten by insects, or stolen, drowned, lost or misplaced... yeah, let's do that... that was BETTER wasn't it? Nothing ever got lost or destroyed then did it.

Get real


Anyone with an attitude like that is a dinosaur. I have a massive archive of film BTW.. tens of thousands of frames. I love film. I back it up though. Every neg and tranny is scanned and digitally archived. If my house burns down... my negatives WILL be destroyed. There's no question about that. They will. It's a fact. My digital copies will survive.

That's all the argument I need.



Another thing to consider. How many times as a photographer have you been asked to restore an old photo? I bet a great many of us have right? You get handed an old, faded, creased print. You then ask "Do you have the negative?". The answer is nearly always, "No, sorry, it was lost years ago in a house move" or something similar. Not ONCE have I had the response "Yeah... I'll just go and get it from my archive"

Yeah.. negatives are safer than multiple redundant back ups... sure

 

[Jan K.]

...let alone the soul that is based in the body...

I'm no longer convinced by that... you may be in for a surprise.

...most of us don't need our photos or data to survive us...

Heck, the majority of my shots don't even survive first look-through!

...On the other hand, I think that we can safely assume that film, if stored safely, can be relied upon to be found intact (barring a tragedy like a fire) decades later. That, unfortunately, is not the case with a hard drive or DVD.

Film do decay. Not long ago I heard about the extreme and expensive measures being done by danish film museum to preserve some +80 year old films.
None of which is necessary with data. DVDs can easily last +100 years and data can for close to nothing be transferred to new, fresh storages.

I wouldn't worry about preserving data, but a backup strategy is certainly needed - as you've experienced first hand!

You must have at least two backups for important stuff, preferable with a third somewhere else (cloud, bank, friends etc.).


Re. your external drive, will you report an update later? Would love to hear the outcome!

 

[artyman]

As an adjunct to all this discussion about preserving images for future generations, and comment has been made about old family photographs. I have been transferring to digital old family photos, some of the subjects I can no longer remember their names, perhaps we should also include recording family history by some permanent method video interview perhaps before your memories are lost to your children and grandchildren. It's all history, I regret not asking my grandfather so many things.

 

[Pookeyhead]

Yes... we're forgetting the OP. This may be an interesting discussion, but did the OP try the drive outside the enclosure?

 

[PhotographyBuff]

I would definitely try removing disc from board, since these boards most often in my experience are the culprits. Discs rarely dies...

No problem in using your other box.

Don't worry about testing it, nothing is written to it.

Thanks for the suggestion. I just tried it with my box, after removing the enclosure and the board and hooking it to the box. Unfortunately it did not work. It started three times and each time ended with the clicking sound. In the end I stopped it. I tried another three times just now; but again, no success. I think it's clear that it's a hardware problem with the harddisk.

 

[Jan K.]

Sigh... the clicking death! Not a Seagate by any chance?

It would have started that behaviour some time ago. That would have been the time to "get a backup asap"...

Unfortunately there's no cure, you're drive is beyond repair.

Terrible sorry!


Btw. the price you've been offered for a recovery is actually quite low! At least compared to last time I asked Ibas, the price was some $1500...

 

[Steve Smith]

I often wonder in this digital age will all our external drives, backup plans online still be around to pass on in perhaps 100 + years to our families of the future, will operating systems in the far future be compatible with todays technology and be able to read a 100+ year old hard drive ...if it still works.

Once you are gone, all the active backing up will stop. Meanwhile, those negatives and prints in drawers will be fine.

This is what Kodak have to say on the matter:

http://motion.kodak.com/motion/Products/Customer_Testimonials/Why_Compromise/archive_one_sheet.htm


Steve.

 

[PhotographyBuff]

Sigh... the clicking death! Not a Seagate by any chance?

No, not a Seagate. It's a Western Digital Passport drive. The clicking had started while it was still under guarantee. But it was still working then. I don't even remember if I took it back to the shop and complained about the click. Would I have been eligible for a replacement if I had?

I wish I had backed up then. But I got used to the habitual clicking sound before it fully started.

What I simply can't accept in such a hard disk drive is the suddenness of the loss. With film, there wouldn't be such a sudden "dying" of the film while it rested in the drawer.

 

[Phil V]

No, not a Seagate. It's a Western Digital Passport drive. The clicking had started while it was still under guarantee. But it was still working then. I don't even remember if I took it back to the shop and complained about the click. Would I have been eligible for a replacement if I had?

I wish I had backed up then. But I got used to the habitual clicking sound before it fully started.

What I simply can't accept in such a hard disk drive is the suddenness of the loss. With film, there wouldn't be such a sudden "dying" of the film while it rested in the drawer.

I hate to sound harsh - but it wasn't sudden:

" The clicking had started while it was still under guarantee" You had plenty of warning, which you ignored.

 

[Jan K.]

It's a Western Digital...

Same sigh!

...Would I have been eligible for a replacement if I had?

Absolutely!

And if you had googled "clicking harddrive", you would immidiatly have backed everything up, based alone on the horror stories!
It's a very well known symptom of death coming - and WD would certainly have replaced it.

Like they have in sooo many cases...

You do know film is still available?

For the future I would rather recommend at least two backups. Digital is so much funnier...?

 

[Jan K.]

Btw. if the drive isn't above 5 years old, I would contact WD, not dealer. I think they have a 5 year warranty...

 

[PhotographyBuff]

You do know film is still available?

Yeah. In fact, I am thinking of buying an SLR and using film. However, it's hard to find.

 

[Jan K.]

Don't forget to make backups of the negatives!


Even if they should survive the journey from exposure to developed, they are far away from being insensitive.

Scratches, air pollution, unsafe storage exposed to moist, paper, plastic, insects... burglery! Fire!


Good places to look for SLR are Grays of Westminster (Nikon) and All Good Friend Camera http://stores.ebay.com/allgoodfriendcamera

 

[Pookeyhead]

Once you are gone, all the active backing up will stop. Meanwhile, those negatives and prints in drawers will be fine.

The back up will stop, yes. After someone dies though... what happened to personal images on film and print varied a great deal. Some were rescued and archived because of their historical importance. Some were kept as keepsakes by the family, and I can imagine a majority just got thrown away.

As people get more and more digitally aware... their digital files will be sorted through as much as their physical stuff, as people now know that's where there photos and videos are. This generation won't even THINK to look for prints or negatives.. they'll go straight to the computer... again, you're thinking in an analogue way, in a digital world.

Why not do what I do? If I have an image I think may also be of historical significance in the future, I offer it to my local council's image archive. I've done this hundreds of times already and according to the curator, they are desperate for people to do this as they see the future of image archiving being very much digital... which it will HAVE to be, because no one shoots film any more.

Thanks for the suggestion. I just tried it with my box, after removing the enclosure and the board and hooking it to the box. Unfortunately it did not work. It started three times and each time ended with the clicking sound.

Yep.. that pretty much means it's a bin job. The only recourse now is a professional recovery.


Now please... just invest a bit of cash in back up.

I understand you are angry at technology, and you feel it has let you down.. but it hasn't. You let yourself down. The drive has been behaving oddly for a while according to your own posts, and you did nothing about it, nor backed up your images.

As you like using film as an example, please allow me an analogy: What you were doing is the equivalent of having a huge folder of sleeved negatives on a shelf, directly under a small leak.. slowly dripping onto the folder... and choosing to do nothing about it until the drip became a deluge and ruined everything.

Instead of raging against technology, accept the fact that this was utterly avoidable if you handled, stored and dealt with your data better. With that in mind... please get back up!!

 

[PhotographyBuff]

I hate to sound harsh - but it wasn't sudden:

" The clicking had started while it was still under guarantee" You had plenty of warning, which you ignored.

Yeah, I guess I was in denial. And asking a computer salesperson about the click and his assurance that it doesn't mean anything didn't help at all. I wish I had asked my questions in a forum such as this one before the hard disk died!!! I would then have probably backed it up ASAP.

But still, beyond the click, there was no warning. And the disappearance of the data was sudden in that it went from all to none from one use to the next!

 

[Pookeyhead]

And the disappearance of the data was sudden in that it went from all to none from one use to the next!

That's actually how it normally happens. You were lucky to have a warning.


Back up.

 

[PhotographyBuff]

That's actually how it normally happens. You were lucky to have a warning.


Back up.

Thanks for the advice to backup. I will. But I'd first like to know the most reliable brand of external hard disk drive (even if I will buy two separate ones). I don't want it to start clicking soon after I buy it. And I would also appreciate advice as to how to store it to prolong its life.

I heard about a Japanese brand called Buffalo. Does anyone know anything about it? They have one type that is shock-proof too!

 

[Pookeyhead]

Thanks for the advice to backup. I will. But I'd first like to know the most reliable brand of external hard disk drive (even if I will buy two separate ones). I don't want it to start clicking soon after I buy it. And I would also appreciate advice as to how to store it to prolong its life.

I heard about a Japanese brand called Buffalo. Does anyone know anything about it? They have one type that is shock-proof too!

The problem with buying various brands of external hard drives, is that you never know what actual hard drives are in there.


My advice is buy a reliable drive, and then fit it in an enclosure yourself. It's often cheaper too.

Maybe buy something like this...

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/dynamode-usb-hd35s-30-enclosure-fits-35-sata-ii-3gb-s-hdd-1-x-usb-30

So you have USB 3.0...


and then fit something like this in it....

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/3tb-...-64mb-cache-internal-hdd-for-1-5-bay-nas-24x7


The WD Red drives are great. They're designed to run 24/7, and are great for RAID arrays as they ignore read errors for longer and stop errors making the drive drop off the RAID. They're just as great for single drive enclosures though.

That will give you 3TB or reliable storage... but IMO... I'd not use it as primary storage... I'd use it as back up. Get a second Drive of the same size and install it inside your PC as storage... just use the external as back up only. That will set yu back a few hundred quid, but you'll be FAR less likely to get yourself in this sticky wicket again

You can then just use Windows Back up, and schedule it to make incremental back ups on a daily basis.

An incremental back up is one that only backs up the new data, so once your main back up set is done (3TB over USB3 will take a couple of hours) each further back up is really fast, as it only backs up the new stuff.

I can advise further is needed.

 

[Jan K.]

There's no such thing as "most reliable"... you'll be good with any of the major players, Seagate, WD, Samsung etc...

No need for special storage conditions other than what's described in the manual for your chosen drive.

They are all "shock-proof" to the same degree...

 

[Pookeyhead]

There's no such thing as "most reliable"... you'll be good with any of the major players, Seagate, WD, Samsung etc...

Some drives ARE more reliable than others I'm afraid, which is why you pay around 250% more for enterprise grade drives. The WD Red have a 36 to 40% increase in MTFB failure times, and are designed for constant use, and have a longer warranty as a result. If you use a NAS box in RAID, you also need a drive that has suitable time-limited error recovery (TLER) specs.

Not all drives are the same, sorry. I had 4 failures of WD (EARS) Green drives in a year. They're crap. So crap, WD pulled them (EARS... not the other green drives) from sale.

No need for special storage conditions other than what's described in the manual for your chosen drive.

The guy needs back up not just storage... or he's back to square one.

They are all "shock-proof" to the same degree...

No drive is shock proof when it's running. That's very erroneous advice to be giving.

 

[Teflon-Mike]

While Pookey has decried DVD as 'Crap'.. it is all relative and subjective.

Optical media, CD & DVD, as far as the consumer storage we have available to us is cheap, convenient and dependable.

Hard drives? Well, they have a certain convenience, but they are atrociously unreliable! Manufacturers warranty periods, typically as short as just three years! This ought to tell you that they are NOT the most robust form of long term storage.

They have moving parts, and worse moving parts bearing on moving parts, that will wear out. You may conserve their life, through limited use, removing the drive and only powering it up for back up... but fundamental nature of the device remains.

Meanwhile, doing repetative back-ups, you are perpetually over writing the first 'write'; apart from forcing the disc to wear out every time you write to it, you are also increasing your chances of data-corruption every time you make a regenerative copy.

And if you have that 'Back-Up' hard-drive in the main PC? Well.... first of all its going to be powered up just as often and as long as the hard drive it's backing up..... no great odds it will last any longer than that one, mechanically.

Meanwhile its just as much at risk from any system crash, malware, or likely cause of data loss as the main hard drive.

Hard-Drive 'multiple redundancy' can be convenient, 'one touch' second chance protection, to back-up or restore quickly and easily, but it is NOT an awfully lot better protected than the one copy on your PC's main hard-drive.

CD & DVD. CD is a lot more robust than DVD. It puts the data on the disc as a series of pits in the surface of the foil in the CD laminate; bit like a ticca-tape, or more code. Lazer reads the data, from those pits simply bending the reflection angle of the beam; and on a mechanically fairly large scale by computer standards. Why a CD only holds 700Mb of data on an 80mm disc that in DVD or Blu ray format can store almost five or 25Gb.

DVD and Blue ray, use a slightly different writing mechanism. Remember bending rulers at school? The clear ones, you may remember as they bent refracted light and caused a rainbow pattern. Bend them often without them breaking, the colours remained. This is a phenomina known as polymer stress hysterisis; and DVD uses the effect by 'stressing' the polymer to create specific colour shifts. by reading the colours as much as the reflections, then, it can cram over six times the data on the same area.

Its a lot less robust though. If the disc sees any other cause of polymer stress hysterisis... OK I'll put that another way... bend the disc like you did your school ruler... you can destroy the data! CD's can similarly suffer, but not as much.

HOWEVER; once burned, data is on the disc and 'locked' it cant be over written or changed, as long as the disc isn't damaged, then its pretty secure; and all that takes is a little care in handling and storage. Putting the discs into proper sleeves, not stacking them back on cake spikes, and not laying them data side down on the desk. of sitting there flexing them while waiting for the egg timer to do something!

A solid artifact with no moving parts, read by not-contact read head in a separate and 'standard' drive...... it can be read by any, ad any data cant really be buggered up by whatever tries reading it.

You have a Hard-Drive fail; its a sub-system. There may be three or seven actual magnetic discs in the enclosure, with seperate reading heads for each, all of the manufacturers own, non-standard design and construction, and an interface controller telling them what to do.

There's lots in there to fail; bearings, motors, levers, and then electronics! Stand alone CD's or DVD's do not suffer any of these 'risks'.

Cake of DVD's. 25 for a fiver. 20p each. 4.5Gb on each. That's cheap. Certainly cheaper than a 1 or 2 or 3 Terabyte Hard Drive, 'up-front' and not much different, 5p per Gig to per-gig price of a Terra-Drive.

Clear down your SD card... burn to DVD. AS you GO.... immediate back-up at point of creation. Bag it, Box it. keep it safe. Five, ten years down the line, that data ought still be there, AND there ought to be something to read it.

Yeah, loose your hard drive, might be a bit of a ball-ache to sit there loading back up, 50 DVD's per Terra-Byte, rather than just doing one macro copy from a hard-drive. BUT... first generation, as written data. Not data written to a magnetic drive, possibly shunted around and written; re-written, over-written, or other wise potentially corrupted.

Hard Drives? By all means avail yourselves of the convenience, but don't for one moment be conned into believing that they are in anyway, a 'reliable' long term archive storage.

DC & DVD may not be all we might hope, but as true archive media, they are probably the best we have in the consumer arena!

 

[Pookeyhead]

While Pookey has decried DVD as 'Crap'.. it is all relative and subjective.

A dye based optical disk is a really crap archival medium. Don't take my word for it. Research it. A properly mastered DVD that doesn't use dye as a substrate isn't.. but that's not when you get when you burn your own DVDs.

Optical media, CD & DVD, as far as the consumer storage we have available to us is cheap, convenient and dependable.

We're talking about back up here... really? Can't run regular incremental back ups on DVDs can you?

Enterprise level, mission critical data centres use redundant hard drive arrays for storage and back up. Why do you think that is? A single hard drive, by itself is a matter of concern, yes, but that's not the point. The issue is having back up, not finding a fail safe storage medium, because no such thing exists.

 

[Steve Smith]

Why not do what I do? If I have an image I think may also be of historical significance in the future, I offer it to my local council's image archive. I've done this hundreds of times already and according to the curator, they are desperate for people to do this as they see the future of image archiving being very much digital... which it will HAVE to be, because no one shoots film any more.

That's a very good idea. The difficulty though might be deciding what is going to be of historical significance in the future.

A lot of old images which are fascinating and educational to look at now would have been very mundane at the time of taking - in fact, many of them are exactly the type of images which people would delete now thinking them to be of no interest.

Perhaps photographs of soon to be demolished buildings or areas due for revamping or rearranging.

Don't forget to make backups of the negatives!

I'm really not interested in this myself, although I can see why others might be.

There has to be quite a catastrophe for me to lose or damage my negatives. In such a scenario, they wouldn't be high on my list of priorities.

And even if I did consider my photographs to be of any artistic value, other artists don't have the benefit of backing up. If you work in watercolours, oils, sculpture, mixed media, etc. the artwork is a one off. There is no way to back it up - just make another one! (until Epson makes a canvas printer with oil paints in the ink cartridges and a virtual brush stroke emulator).


Steve.

 

[Jan K.]

Hard drives? Well, they have a certain convenience, but they are atrociously unreliable!

No, they most certainly are not.

I've been through hundreds of them and from them only a handful had issues, like the clicking death...
And never lost a single byte either...

Hard Drives? By all means avail yourselves of the convenience, but don't for one moment be conned into believing that they are in anyway, a 'reliable' long term archive storage.

I sure hope Google, Microsoft, the banking system not least! and all other that daily stores tons of Terra Bytes of critical data are listening... and I'm off to buy shares in DVD manufactures!


Forgot to mention to OP: you have monitoring tools, that can tell you the status of your disc. Have a search on S.M.A.R.T.

 

[st599]

Has anyone done any research on Amazon Glacier? It looks ideal for my backup needs, at present it would coat me about £5 per year and I can live with the 5 hours notice required to get the backup from tape onto server ready for download.

 

[Teflon-Mike]

Enterprise level, mission critical data centres use redundant hard drive arrays for storage and back up. Why do you think that is?

Honestly? Having been a project management 'trouble shooter' (Defence/Aerospace & Telecoms industry) most of my working career.... probably because the managers believed the sales-mans hype and the other managers eager to be seen to be 'with it' forging ahead with the latest gadgets, for the sake of..... but that's another matter.

Industrial standards for data protection and archiving exist at different levels, dependent on the nature of the data, date change frequency and its cruciality.

We're talking about the average bloke not loosing a few photo's.... not the entire records of a Cancer Screening Lab or the Minute by minute transactions of a major banking house!

Its all about risk management; copy corruption vs potential media degradation.

If you have a dynamic data-flow, and need 'snap-shot' back-ups at a high frequency, and employ propper safe-guards for data integrity & maintenence..... and we are talking pretty high level data protection & recovery standards here, ... wonderful.... temporary magnetic bases media may be appropriate at some level.

But we are talking 'consumer' level electronics for the chap in the street with a camera here.....

Bloke takes 500 photo's! Wants to make sure he don't loose them.

Naively puts it onto the hard drive of his computer, believing its 'safe'... malware, virus, system crash, clicking death... it ENT so safe as presumed, as OP's original problem demonstrates.



Consumer-writable DVD, I agree, is NOT the most wonderfully robust medium in the world... but it is still pretty robust. and 'Archived' in a sleeve, in a box, on the shelf... pretty 'safe'... should you're hard drive go titzup for whatever reason, and as long as you don't need to restore data there is no reason to touch the disc, helping assure its 'safety'.

Use a back-up external hard drive; every time you plug it in, every time you write something to it; you risk data corruption, not merely of the new data being added, but to all existing data on the drive.

PRACTICALLY for the man in the street; with not a whole lot of know-how; and not a whole lot of money; real risks vs real costs... for small discipline and small outlay, CD or DVD, burned at upload; bagged & boxed; it's a cheap, easy and easy to manage way to protect your photo's... it takes a cake of discs you can get at the super-market or petrol station for a fiver a time, and the burner that's probably already in the computer you up-load to.

Want a higher level of protection? Want a second layer of direct recovery? Want to get into multiple disc array, multiple redundancy protection; planned back-up validation, version verification, and all that, Go for it....

But, don't dismiss CD/DVD out of hand, as 'rubbish', just because it's not high-end.

Spent a working career promoting the 'Keep-It-Simple' philosophy, faced with ever more sophisticated ever more convoluted, ever more demanding, ever more intensive, ever more likely to effup 'systems' because some-one has an active imagination and affinity for technology!

Its a cheap, simple, easy 'habbit' to get into, that gives you that primary back-up, whatever else you do... and once burned, risk of loss is reletively low; and restricted to small packets of data; compared to HDD systems, certainly consumer external HDD's, that have a high risk of data loss from variouse causes, with mich higher severity in terms of the quantity of data that may be lost from any one incident. Ie: the lot!

 

[LCPete]

Very interesting thread
Beginning to think that maybe external hard drives and DVD together is a good idea
I take too many shots to back up everything to dvd but it looks like a good idea to at least have the finished jpegs on dvds
What about blue ray is that reliable as a long term backup ?
I've already got a blue ray drive for making videos so could easily put all of my best raw files onto a few blu rays

 

[Nod]

Yeah. In fact, I am thinking of buying an SLR and using film. However, it's hard to find.

Film hard to find? It's certainly easy enough here! Boots stock several options, WHS have some and there are a couple of photography shops here too. Then there are the supermarkets and a D&P place. D&P is easy to find too - Boots, Snappy Snaps and a couple of the supermarkets do it on site in an hour. Then there are all the mail order/internet options...

 

[Pookeyhead]

That's a very good idea. The difficulty though might be deciding what is going to be of historical significance in the future.

That's not for us to decide.. now. Only in the future will that be decided. Things that seemed irrelevant at the time, are now of great interest. It will be the same in the future.

A lot of old images which are fascinating and educational to look at now would have been very mundane at the time of taking - in fact, many of them are exactly the type of images which people would delete now thinking them to be of no interest.

That's actually a very good point, and probably more significant than whether it's on film or not. Person takes boring shot of street... thinks "meh".. and deletes it. It's gone forever. That's the only down side to the digital era I can think of. It's not only easier to take photos... it's easier to dispose of them too.

And even if I did consider my photographs to be of any artistic value, other artists don't have the benefit of backing up. If you work in watercolours, oils, sculpture, mixed media, etc. the artwork is a one off. There is no way to back it up - just make another one! (until Epson makes a canvas printer with oil paints in the ink cartridges and a virtual brush stroke emulator).

Of course... that's true. As photographers we're spoiled. The very thing that made Fox Talbot's system more successful than Deguerre's is the fact that it can be repeatedly printed. I often wonder what would have happened if history was the other way around. Would photography be more, or less of an art form? That's an interesting question.

 

[jon ryan]

The difficulty though might be deciding what is going to be of historical significance in the future.

A lot of old images which are fascinating and educational to look at now would have been very mundane at the time of taking - in fact, many of them are exactly the type of images which people would delete now thinking them to be of no interest.

True, dat.

All and any images may well be of extreme value to future historians when we're distant memories. But to be of real use, some sort of context will increase the value immeasurably. A miscellaneous shot of an anonymous person taken at an indeterminate date isn't often much use. If you are going to save your images - and you are, aren't you? - please add some data. Just the date will help, but the more the better.

My wife is a historian, and you can't believe how grateful she is to people who scribbled on the backs of photos 100 years ago.

 

[Pookeyhead]

Geotagging... as this gets more ubiquitous it will help.

Just having images in folders named as "location-Date" helps too. That's something I always do... and been glad of, and I'm not a historian

 

[Steve Smith]

I often wonder what would have happened if history was the other way around. Would photography be more, or less of an art form? That's an interesting question.

Photography isn't art, it's a medium which can be used to make art.

Your point is valid though. If it were a one off without the duplication possibility, it might be valued differently.

I have a friend who used to shoot Cibachrome in a large format camera. That is a one off unless you go to greater than normal lengths to duplicate it.


Steve.

 

[Pookeyhead]

Bloke takes 500 photo's! Wants to make sure he don't loose them.

Naively puts it onto the hard drive of his computer, believing its 'safe'... malware, virus, system crash, clicking death... it ENT so safe as presumed, as OP's original problem demonstrates.

I'm not talking about relying on a single hard drive for archival storage though... no one in here is That's foolhardy, as everyone has been saying. Relying on ANY medium as a sole, stand alone archive is.

Consumer-writable DVD, I agree, is NOT the most wonderfully robust medium in the world... but it is still pretty robust. and 'Archived' in a sleeve, in a box, on the shelf... pretty 'safe'

I've got around 20 CD-Rs here that are around 7 years old that can't be read. That says they're awful IMO. They've been kept out of light, cool, and in low humidity... just as advised too. They've simply degraded over time. Fortunately, my unreliable hard drive back up still has the images

Use a back-up external hard drive; every time you plug it in, every time you write something to it; you risk data corruption, not merely of the new data being added, but to all existing data on the drive.

This is correct. The same is true for burning a disc if you don't verify the contents afterwards though. Using a decent sync program will verify the files you've just moved though, and can compare files from source to target quickly and easily. Some are so simple to use it's normally a one click affair.

Hard drives... used badly. are awful. Optical disks, used badly are awful.

The fact is though... if the hard drive is a back up... then if it breaks... you still have a copy on your local drive. Both drives would have to fail at the same time to lose anything. Finding a corrupted file on a DVD you burned last year (and probably since removed from your hard drive thinking it was safe) is a dead end. The same can be said for ANY medium though. Your idea of using DVDs as back up is no more flawed than my idea of using a HDD... what worries me is you seem to be suggesting using DVDs not as back up, but as archival storage.. meaning they are the sole exhisting copy. Have I misunderstood you? If so, please say so... as we're debating this for nothing

I'm not, nor have I ever been advocating using a hard drive as archival storage unless it is also a back up of data that also exists elsewhere. If data only exists on ONE medium.. then it is at risk, no matter what that medium is. No matter how secure a a medium... it can get damaged, lost.. anything.

PRACTICALLY for the man in the street; with not a whole lot of know-how; and not a whole lot of money; real risks vs real costs... for small discipline and small outlay, CD or DVD, burned at upload; bagged & boxed; it's a cheap, easy and easy to manage way to protect your photo's... it takes a cake of discs you can get at the super-market or petrol station for a fiver a time, and the burner that's probably already in the computer you up-load to.

Assuming they are a back up of files that also exist elsewhere, yeah. If it's an archive and they exist nowhere else.. no, they suck.

But, don't dismiss CD/DVD out of hand, as 'rubbish', just because it's not high-end.

I'm not. I just would never trust them as an archive if the images were not backed up elsewhere. In fact... I'd never trust ANY medium as an archive if the data wasn't baked up elsewhere. That's just good practice.

Spent a working career promoting the 'Keep-It-Simple' philosophy, faced with ever more sophisticated ever more convoluted, ever more demanding, ever more intensive, ever more likely to effup 'systems' because some-one has an active imagination and affinity for technology!

A simple, reliable, easy to use, one click operation, set and forget back up system can be had for less than £300.

Its a cheap, simple, easy 'habbit' to get into, that gives you that primary back-up, whatever else you do... and once burned, risk of loss is reletively low

That's where you and I differ. DVDs as a back up. I've done what you suggested already... burn, bag, store.... I've got unreadable optical disks already after a few years. They degrade. If I'd relied on them as a back up, or sole archive, I'd have lost data now. My HDD based system has not let me down once, even when I've had multiple disk failures (Thanks WD EARS drives BTW).

Photography isn't art, it's a medium which can be used to make art.

Steve... thanks for pointing out the obvious


However... the medium, and how it operates does influence how it's used. As daguerreotypes are one off originals, that can not be copied, or easily reproduced (even today.. scan one, and you loose the very quality that makes them wonderful) would images from revered artists be more highly regarded as fine art if the only way to fully appreciate them is to actually look at the original? I know seeing an Adams print in a book is a poor substitute for seeing the real thing, but this is nothing to what you'd lose by looking at a scan of a daguerreotype in a book, as anyone who's seen a real daguerreotype will be able to testify.

 

[Teflon-Mike]

That's where you and I differ. DVDs as a back up. I've done what you suggested already... burn, bag, store.... I've got unreadable optical disks already after a few years. They degrade. If I'd relied on them as a back up, or sole archive, I'd have lost data now. My HDD based system has not let me down once, even when I've had multiple disk failures (Thanks WD EARS drives BTW).

Well, I have CD's I burned 15 years ago that still read.. maybe our experienced differ.

Media Degradation? Yeah, all media is susceptible to it. It's an inevitability, that is merely a question of time, and in industry standards, a question of setting media refresh rates at intervals an optimum between the risks of media decay and copy corruption.

Difference in what we are advocating, is that you are promoting a level of data-protection, appropriate to a business, where revenue depends on that data, that can justify a protection level 300x the cost or more I suggest, for the average bloke in the street, whose photo's value is mostly sentimental.

A simple, reliable, easy to use, one click operation, set and forget back up system can be had for less than £300.

£300? Hmmmmm That might seem fairly reasonable in your world. In mine? That's how much my car is worth. That's a new camera, or a new lens or two! That's my kids Christmas presents, a new dishwasher; redecorating the living room or 1001 other things around the house, that have to be 'juggled' in priority... Sorry, but, the suggestion I 'needed' £300 out of family accounting 'JUST' to make sure I don't loose a few photo's would not get past 'panel'!

Putting photo's to disc, when uploading from camera, is a cheap, easy, consumer friendly level of primary protection. 20p a disk. not £200! Data 'locked', there is a primary back-up. Better than no back-up, or a back-up that's not as 'safe' as presumed.

Chap bluggers a burn; backing up the next set shot on the next camera clear; there's no real damage done, and worst case, they loose that set.

FMEA the potential disasters backing to external HDD, starting with the really simple.....

1/ Camera names photos numerically, from the last file on the SD card. first set shot; 30 photo's DCF_001.jpg to DCF0030.jpg..... copies to directory on external HDD, "Photos". Wipes SD card. A week later, he shoots 60 photo's. Repeats the upload. Cut & past from camera to PC, then copy to HDD.....
File DCF_001.jpg already exists.. would you like to over write this file Y/N'?
a) he says 'Y'... original 'set' gets wiped.
b) he says 'N'....new files don't get copied to back-up.

2/ Chap has 2000 photo's on his C: Drive..... for any of a hundred or more reasons, they are wiped. Restores them from HDD; takes half an hour to copy across the half terabyte of data from the external HDD through USB.... he goes makes a cup of tea. Comes back, sees his files back in 'My-Photo's... pulls plug on external HDD without realising that they were 'moved' not 'copied'... he now no longer has 'back-ups'.

The list of potential failure-modes, using an external HDD as primary back-up, for all the possible user errors, due to the drive being over-writable, is very long and very tedius.

You probably have 'solutions' for every single one of them; which I can almost grantee, will require either a level of hightened user education and awareness, and or financial expenditure..... To tackle problems with writable media, that are avoidable by simply NOT using it as primary protection.

As such; CD/DVD as primary protection, eliminating all those potential foulupz, at source; has a lot to offer.

Fact that you only need to spend a few quid to do it, and get 'some' primary protection, makes it a very useful, means of data protection for the not so computer literate chap in the street, especially one on a limited budget, trying to stretch that to feed their hobby, who more than likely would far rather have that extra reach lens or new off camera a flash-gun or whatever, to go TAKE photo's, than a big array of computer peripherals, 'just in case' they click the wrong answer on a dialogue box!

Our difference is 'fitness for purpose'... and the level of protection you are advocating, is appropriate for business use; what I am advocating is appropriate for the hobbyist.

 

[Steve Smith]

Steve... thanks for pointing out the obvious

It's what I do best! Although the obvious isn't always obvious to some people (like how to spell lose!).


Steve.

 

[Thmaga]

This is a really interesting thread... This week a friend of mine discovered a box of slides stored in the back room of a local library. Not one record indicated they existed. There was a huge risk of them being thrown out or damaged or just sitting there being unseen, luckily they were found and I'm currently scanning them in. They are images commissioned by our local council in the 70's to document the demolition of our town centre... Pretty important I'd say?

They have never been published or seen by the general public. It really got me thinking about 'physical' archives and how important it is to have an accurate record of what is stored somewhere, and the importance of people knowing of these records so they are not lost as people pass away or leave their positions...aside from being curious as to what else is orphaned in storage I'm seriously concerned as to the state of the digital photographs and information that the council is currently accumulating, I will be contacting them asking what their procedures are for the long term archival of this information.

I do an awful lot of photography documenting my local area, I know where my images are kept and how they're organised but I doubt anyone would have the time to sift through hundreds of thousands of images if I were to pass away. Time to think of the best long term way of organising them.. Maybe write an index? My backup procedures involve two on site copies and I'm in the process of arranging an offsite backup in addition to this, still need to work out the logistics of it all.

 

[artyman]

It is often the case that items that may have little or no significance to us are immenslet important hundreds of years later. Watching a series on Art on TV records of purchases made add to our knowledge, fortunately great houses and the landed gentry tended to keep everything. We live in a throw away society, historians in the future may have a harder time making sense of it all without what to us are insignificant records, so perhaps think twice before tossing away the Tesco's shopping list

 

[Pookeyhead]

1/ Camera names photos numerically, from the last file on the SD card. first set shot; 30 photo's DCF_001.jpg to DCF0030.jpg..... copies to directory on external HDD, "Photos". Wipes SD card. A week later, he shoots 60 photo's. Repeats the upload. Cut & past from camera to PC, then copy to HDD.....
File DCF_001.jpg already exists.. would you like to over write this file Y/N'?
a) he says 'Y'... original 'set' gets wiped.
b) he says 'N'....new files don't get copied to back-up.

So you rename the file... it's just prompted you.. you can't ignore it as you have to do one or the other. If you press either Y, or N, then you're an idiot. It's just told you you already have a file of that name, and it will either overwrite or ignore... isn't it obvious enough?

You'd get the same problem though if you were writing a multi-session DVD.. unless you waited until you had over 4GB of images before you backed up.. which is stupid, as you'd be going a very long time between back ups.

Also... if the same file names were in different folders, there would be no conflict anyway! Who doesn't put each shooting session in it's own folder? Anyone who doesn't, and just dumps everything on a disk has a VERY poor file management system.

2/ Chap has 2000 photo's on his C: Drive..... for any of a hundred or more reasons, they are wiped. Restores them from HDD; takes half an hour to copy across the half terabyte of data from the external HDD through USB.... he goes makes a cup of tea. Comes back, sees his files back in 'My-Photo's... pulls plug on external HDD without realising that they were 'moved' not 'copied'... he now no longer has 'back-ups'.

Then don't drag and drop files in windows like a chimp.. use a sync programme, or a dedicated back up programme.

The list of potential failure-modes, using an external HDD as primary back-up, for all the possible user errors, due to the drive being over-writable, is very long and very tedius.

If you're particularly paranoid, set the permissions in the folders once they're created. It's very easy to make a file un-deletable in Windows.

You probably have 'solutions' for every single one of them;

Yep.

which I can almost grantee, will require either a level of hightened user education and awareness,

No more than it would take to learn how to burn a DVD properly if you've never done that before either.

As such; CD/DVD as primary protection, eliminating all those potential foulupz, at source; has a lot to offer.

It may be easier, I don't deny it. Dye based media just sucks as a archive storage solution. It's flaky long term. I can guarantee those that use DVDs will not be re-burning disks every few years to ensure they remain accessible... too much like hard work... so they'll just assume all is tickety boo.. forever.

Mike.. you may not have had a disc problem yet... but it's coming. I'm still assuming you have no other back up once you archive them to DVD... you never did answer that... if so... there's a whole world of hurt heading your way.

Our difference is 'fitness for purpose'... and the level of protection you are advocating, is appropriate for business use; what I am advocating is appropriate for the hobbyist.

I'm not actually. The protection I HAVE is suitable for business.. what I'm recommending is just a reliable hard drive back up, automatically synced to the main storage drive... if budget stretches, then make that hard drive a RAID1 NAS and you have reduncancy too.

You keep going about being skint, but we've no idea how much money the OP has... and unless you forgot Mike.. this thread is not about you.

It's what I do best! Although the obvious isn't always obvious to some people (like how to spell lose!).


Steve.

Wow... picking up on my typos? That's pretty desperate.

 

[Teflon-Mike]

You keep going about being skint, but we've no idea how much money the OP has... and unless you forgot Mike.. this thread is not about you.

No Pookey, its not about either of us, its about data loss, and how not to be in that situation.

I haven't 'gone on' about being skint; but like most folk, I have to operate within a limited budget, a budget in which £300 is not an insignificant triffle I can afford to spend on a whim. £5 for a pack of discs? Yeah... that I can handle from time to time.

OP? No we dont know how much money he might have, but baulking at spending aprox £250 on disc recovery? Probably in a similar situation where that kind of cash is not exactly 'pocket change'.

How did we get to where we are at? OP had NO back-up what so ever...

So you rename the file... it's just prompted you.. you can't ignore it as you have to do one or the other. If you press either Y, or N, then you're an idiot. It's just told you you already have a file of that name, and it will either overwrite or ignore... isn't it obvious enough?

Pookey... {shrug} .... you presume a level of common sense that is just, FAR above what is actualy 'common'...

PEOPLE DO THIS SH..... STUFF!

You keep suggesting people that do 'Daft' things with computers are 'idiots' or fools.... YET, this thread started with JUST that level of non Computer Savvy bit of 'Numptyness'!

THAT is what it is about....

Mike.. you may not have had a disc problem yet... but it's coming. I'm still assuming you have no other back up once you archive them to DVD... you never did answer that... if so... there's a whole world of hurt heading your way.

Not what I do for data-protection, or you, or who's better at it, or got the better equipment for the job.... irrelevent.

There are folk out there doing bog all.... following the instructions on screen, not thinking about it... NOW wondering if they should.....

And you are suggesting practices and precautions at a level FAR beyond the numptyness of the OP, and the typical chap in the street who has £500 worth of camera equipment and thinks that that is pretty 'special' compared to the typical consumer compact or camera-phone, and suggesting that to protect the pictures it makes.... they need spend as much again on hardware and protection software!

Fitness for purpose... and CD/DVD... its cheap; its convenient; its probably within the sphere of comprehension of the average 'consumer', following the instructions in the burner wizard; & as a primary precaution, it can SERVE THAT PURPOSE... may not be the 'best' or the longest lasting.... but its a chuck site better than nothing, with a fair chunk of advantages over a single external HDD, as far as overall risk management goes. For the 'average' numpty... only 'just' giving it any thought at all!