This is a non issue, because pretty much all online backup services offer the ability to buy physical storage devices containing all your information should you want it. For example, you can buy a HD from them with all your backups for piece of mind.
storing your photos
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This is a non issue, because pretty much all online backup services offer the ability to buy physical storage devices containing all your information should you want it. For example, you can buy a HD from them with all your backups for piece of mind.
That's great. But the OP isn't looking to buy an office building nor a fire proof safe.
James Pardon
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I backup all my images to a NAS box, I built one from and old machine and some free software called FreeNas. (If I didn't have this I'd go out and buy a Drobo)
Both use RAID drives so if a single drive dies i've not lost anything. Then to get around the whole fire/disaster I use BackBlaze to copy it all onto the cloud. $5 a month for unlimited storage. Sure it takes a while but just keep it running and it gets there.
Both use RAID drives so if a single drive dies i've not lost anything. Then to get around the whole fire/disaster I use BackBlaze to copy it all onto the cloud. $5 a month for unlimited storage. Sure it takes a while but just keep it running and it gets there.
neil_g
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unless the raid controller fails and then all your data is toast.
personally im in the "if you want substantially more storage youll have to pay for it" camp.. ive just picked up 3x 1TB samsung F1's from dabs for 56 punds each. thats after i sold a load of old tat i had laying around on ebay to raise funds.
hollis_f
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Yes, but you don't need an office building to keep your off-site backups. A friend or relative's house will do just as well. I'm just lucky enough to have a friend that runs an IT Security company who is willing to give me space in their secure storage.
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OMDz do you have a answer for everything? bethere are an adsl broadband provider not cable broadband so perhaps you should get your facts right
Any back to OP IMHO you should invest in a new hard drive depending on your systems specs already... as you havent mentioned what your system specs are it is very hard to provide any real help.
Have you looked at 7zip and seeing if you can compress all your folders to a smaller archived file? I have seen a whole dvd shrunk to around 400mb using 7zip.
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7zip is like winrar but better apprantly
BalSanghera
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It can compress a full single layer dvd iso file to around 400mb when you extract its 4.37gb
it come down to money I'm afraid - but spending it wisely - if your taking lots of photo - in high res & raw - you want to keep them - you need the disks
Pick up a sata docking station (£20-£30), you can then get internal hard drives at £75 each for 1.5tb
ideally you should have each image stored at least 2 drives - ideally 1 drive at differnt site - if these images are valuable you don't want some theif walking off with all you valuable data if you get burgled (or worse your house burns down)
photography is expensive - but the real value isn't tthe kit - it's the photos we take - some things can't be replaced with an insurance claim
Pick up a sata docking station (£20-£30), you can then get internal hard drives at £75 each for 1.5tb
ideally you should have each image stored at least 2 drives - ideally 1 drive at differnt site - if these images are valuable you don't want some theif walking off with all you valuable data if you get burgled (or worse your house burns down)
photography is expensive - but the real value isn't tthe kit - it's the photos we take - some things can't be replaced with an insurance claim
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yeah but like i said it depends on the files you are compressing.. generally JPG is already highly compressed so it doesnt reduce much in size when used with ZIP/RAR etc programs. i think from memory typically 1% compression is acheived?
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Well no, there's no data on the raid controller it's the drives. I can just rebuild with another raid controller.
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You're right. Already compressed files, like jpegs, don't shrink by much when compressed again. Indeed, it's possible that they can increase in file size! When it comes to raw files, it depends on whose files we're talking about. Canon raws are already compressed. I believe that Nikon, on some cameras at least, offer the user to use uncompressed or compressed raws.
Storage is stupidly cheap. Anybody running a photography business that can't afford £80 (possibly less, if they can reclaim the VAT) to store their images should probably re-think their business.
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I don't trust anyone else to look after my photo's.
I have a docking station and a couple of TB drives for all my data, I only have a single small Raptor drive on my PC I do not store any data on my internal drives at all.
All my jpegs are then burnt to DVD as and when I get enough to fill one up and they are kept in my desk at work.
I have a docking station and a couple of TB drives for all my data, I only have a single small Raptor drive on my PC I do not store any data on my internal drives at all.
All my jpegs are then burnt to DVD as and when I get enough to fill one up and they are kept in my desk at work.
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no i know, however if the raid controller fails it can destroy the data on the attached drives.
excellent thread - nothing has been off topic as its all questioned raised by different photographers who work in different ways, so keep it coming 
BalSanghera - nice one for the suggestion, I'll check out 7zip, i'd not heard of it before. like i said earlier im only looking for a temporary, cheap solution to storage space - im out of work and living off tiny amounts of money while waiting for my crb to clear for a new job, so spending even £50 on a hard drive seems like a big risk to me, when i'm not sure when my wages will start rolling in.
however, i should have money by xmas, if not in the new year, first on the list is 2 TB hard drives to back up existing work and one for new stuff.
Jim.R - ahhh, I'm on windoze, so no aperture for me! Does lightroom also do non-destructive edits? This is obviously the root of my problem, as if i could just save the raws and some metadata, then i could essentially cut back my photo folder by about half of its existing size! and store the storage problem (for another few months, hehe). I was planning on getting photoshop in the new year once ive got some cash together, is it an add-on to photoshop? i notice they are both made by adobe. would lightroom be good enough to use on its own, or would it be recoomended to buy both when i get round to it?
martsharm - thanks for the info i might just try a blind test, i just found that when editing pics, they came out a lot cleaner when i edited them in RAW and then converted to jpeg. although i might start shooting in jpeg for personal galleries e.g. ones where i wont need the RAW files
Badgerlover - thats pretty much the same process i go through after a shoot
thankfully in terms of securing my backups, i live between two cities. my main house is in norwich, where my workstation is etc, but i still have a room at my mums in london. both are in safe areas, so ill keep a HD at each house and sync them whenever possible.
BalSanghera - nice one for the suggestion, I'll check out 7zip, i'd not heard of it before. like i said earlier im only looking for a temporary, cheap solution to storage space - im out of work and living off tiny amounts of money while waiting for my crb to clear for a new job, so spending even £50 on a hard drive seems like a big risk to me, when i'm not sure when my wages will start rolling in.
however, i should have money by xmas, if not in the new year, first on the list is 2 TB hard drives to back up existing work and one for new stuff.
Jim.R - ahhh, I'm on windoze, so no aperture for me! Does lightroom also do non-destructive edits? This is obviously the root of my problem, as if i could just save the raws and some metadata, then i could essentially cut back my photo folder by about half of its existing size! and store the storage problem (for another few months, hehe). I was planning on getting photoshop in the new year once ive got some cash together, is it an add-on to photoshop? i notice they are both made by adobe. would lightroom be good enough to use on its own, or would it be recoomended to buy both when i get round to it?
martsharm - thanks for the info
i might just try a blind test, i just found that when editing pics, they came out a lot cleaner when i edited them in RAW and then converted to jpeg. although i might start shooting in jpeg for personal galleries e.g. ones where i wont need the RAW files Badgerlover - thats pretty much the same process i go through after a shoot
thankfully in terms of securing my backups, i live between two cities. my main house is in norwich, where my workstation is etc, but i still have a room at my mums in london. both are in safe areas, so ill keep a HD at each house and sync them whenever possible.
No there's not. There are multiple types of compression algorithms. Different ones suited to different applications.
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excellent thread - nothing has been off topic as its all questioned raised by different photographers who work in different ways, so keep it coming
BalSanghera - nice one for the suggestion, I'll check out 7zip, i'd not heard of it before. like i said earlier im only looking for a temporary, cheap solution to storage space - im out of work and living off tiny amounts of money while waiting for my crb to clear for a new job, so spending even £50 on a hard drive seems like a big risk to me, when i'm not sure when my wages will start rolling in.
however, i should have money by xmas, if not in the new year, first on the list is 2 TB hard drives to back up existing work and one for new stuff.
Jim.R - ahhh, I'm on windoze, so no aperture for me! Does lightroom also do non-destructive edits? This is obviously the root of my problem, as if i could just save the raws and some metadata, then i could essentially cut back my photo folder by about half of its existing size! and store the storage problem (for another few months, hehe). I was planning on getting photoshop in the new year once ive got some cash together, is it an add-on to photoshop? i notice they are both made by adobe. would lightroom be good enough to use on its own, or would it be recoomended to buy both when i get round to it?
martsharm - thanks for the info
Badgerlover - thats pretty much the same process i go through after a shoot
thankfully in terms of securing my backups, i live between two cities. my main house is in norwich, where my workstation is etc, but i still have a room at my mums in london. both are in safe areas, so ill keep a HD at each house and sync them whenever possible.
I think with 7zip you zip each individual photo or file then zip it again with high compression this leaves your jpg intact and unmodified im sure there some tutorials online if you google it....
If you can post what sort of drives you got at the moment I can probablly advise you better on how to manage your space. Have you tried CClenaer? This basically removes all the temp files etc you may have that are not needed... There are many other things you can do to reduce space.
If theres no rush to buy a hard drive at the moment then wait until after XMAS as im sure you can cope another few months the way it is... Just simple things can save a lot more space than you think.
The one thing I will say is if you got a old pc then compression and extraction using 7zip etc might be painfully slow.
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sorry that was a very sweeping statement wasnt it.. i was referring more towards you average desktop compression program.
got 2 pcs, both very fast and efficient so running comoression will be no problem. as for ccleaner, i steer well clear! it broke my ableton 7 (music production software) and i had a painfully long process fixing it. I'm damn organised, and keep my computers in check more than most people I know, my harddrives are kept very clean and one computer i have isn't even online to save it from the lurgy. it was just inevitable that i'd run out of space at some point, and it just so happens that ive run out while i'm incredibly skint. 
does 7zip work like that with RAWS? i think I'm going to get a lightroom demo and start just saving the unedited RAWS with the metadata, which will save loads of space. I've cleared out 8 gig of old raws i dont need to make space for work this weekend.
i just have 2 hobbies that take up an incredable amount of space, and i cant really cut back on either unless i change the way i process my pictures (my other hobby is music production and mixing ive currently got around half a TB of tunes all in wav and flac format for mixing, it takes up so much space but playing anything but a lossless audio file through a soundsystem in a club sounds awful!)
does 7zip work like that with RAWS? i think I'm going to get a lightroom demo and start just saving the unedited RAWS with the metadata, which will save loads of space. I've cleared out 8 gig of old raws i dont need to make space for work this weekend.
i just have 2 hobbies that take up an incredable amount of space, and i cant really cut back on either unless i change the way i process my pictures (my other hobby is music production and mixing ive currently got around half a TB of tunes all in wav and flac format for mixing, it takes up so much space but playing anything but a lossless audio file through a soundsystem in a club sounds awful!)
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How heavily do you edit your files, I find I hardly ever have to take images out of Lightroom for further processing in Elements.
don't find myself doing a lot of editing, but then again i'm not too keen on overly edited pics. only things i do is sometimes change the brightness, and contrast. and trim them
so i probably dont have a lot of need for elements, but i'm not sure if my minimal editing is becuase i don't know how to edit beyond what i already do, and i've never played on photosop and have no idea what you can do on it beyond my basic knowledge. i'd love to learn more and am going to go on a 4 week course in the new year, but i might just stick to lightroom for now
got a demo on the download, so will see how it goes.
so i probably dont have a lot of need for elements, but i'm not sure if my minimal editing is becuase i don't know how to edit beyond what i already do, and i've never played on photosop and have no idea what you can do on it beyond my basic knowledge. i'd love to learn more and am going to go on a 4 week course in the new year, but i might just stick to lightroom for now
got a demo on the download, so will see how it goes.
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I use a media server, with all my external drives attached and backed up on internal drives. This allows me to access my images anywhere. It's easy to set up and the server itself doesn't need to be all that modern.