File Storage

Bthornton · Oct 12, 2008

I'm using about 1TB every four months in in storage for customer photos. I keep buying external hard drives to do this. I also keep a copy at my biz partners office for a back up. It's getting crazy doing this every 4 months.
I'm glad the costs are going down but I wonder if I'm missing a better way to do this.
Any ideas? Thoughts?

SpeedTrap · Oct 12, 2008

Are you deleting Anything?
We tried to back up all of our customers images for a while, but gave up and now only back up the selected photos.
So after a shoot we go through the photos pick the best one and delete the rest. It has saved a ton of room on my servers.

Bthornton · Oct 13, 2008

I only keep JPEGS and a few PSD's (ones that might need changes) that we proof for the customer to view. I'm brutal in what I keep, no time to deal with "it might work images". We photograph 20-50 people a week and it add up fast! Just this past weekend I photographed 15 children each alone, 40 women alone and in groups, and a family group of 25 both as large group and broken down in to smaller family units. With that I have over 500 images to weed thru and pick the best and I'm sure when I'm done I will still have over 200 images. That's a normal weekend for me and then I add to that other sessions during the week and I am drowning in JPEGS!!!
Any ideas?

SpeedTrap · Oct 13, 2008

Here is the million-dollar question.
Are you charging your clients to Archive the prints?
This is something that is often overlooked. We let customers know if they would like us to archive the prints for 24 months it is a $25.00 charge. We have to pay for the storage and maintenance on the equipment so we need to include the fees. As well after 24 months the customer can buy a copy of the achive images for a fee.

As well if you are filling 1 TB ever 4 months, there is something else wrong. Average of 5mb per Jpg
5mb X 500 images per week = 2500 Mb per week
2.5GB X 16 weeks = 40 Gig.

It would seem you are either keeping 20 times the images you think you are or there is a problem somewhere.

Big Mike · Oct 14, 2008

PSD files (or TIFFs with layers etc) can be enormous. After a certain amount of time, I will go back and delete the 'working' copies of my images (PSD or TIFF files). If I haven't already, I'll delete the RAW files of the images that didn't make the cut to final editing.

Maybe you should think about setting up a network server storage system, if you haven't already.

Bthornton · Oct 16, 2008

Yeah I get rid of my working files after I'm sure things are good with it. I do save PSD's of portrait creations till I know the customer won't want changes. I download, weed out the bad, do the work in psd format convert to jpeg on 90% and save on 2 hard drives in 2 locations. I no longer keep anything on disc other than weddings (I feel better with weddings in 3 places) because with files in 2 locations I should be fine. I guess the amount of storage is just part of the biz. I had hoped I missed something to save on storage. I should be happy I'm busy enough to be drowning in files

.

TUX424 · Oct 16, 2008

with all of the data please tell me that you are at least running RAID
because i would hate to lose all that data because of a bad hard drive
eslpealy since your photographs are worth money

Bthornton · Oct 18, 2008

TUX424 said:
with all of the data please tell me that you are at least running RAID
because i would hate to lose all that data because of a bad hard drive
eslpealy since your photographs are worth money

I did not think I needed to deal with a RAID since ALL my images are kept on 2 different hard drives in 2 different locations. Is that not the case?

cherry30 · Oct 22, 2008

I am not a professional photographer but with I am the official photographer for all family gatherings. I am trigger happy so I have at least 200 shots per occasion. I backed them up with an external HD, discs or I give copies to each family involved. And of course, I weed out the pics that are not worth keeping.

TCimages · Oct 22, 2008

wow that's a lot of images. You're a busy woman. You're doing the only thing you can do. You can buy NAS (Network Attached Storage) devices that will allow you to add multi-terabytes at a time. It's not cheap and you would have to buy two if you want to store offsite. If not, I would consider RAID. Even with this you'll have to add more drives when they fill.

I guess you could consider online storage to make use of enterprise class equipment. Maybe that could be your second copy.

How many images are you keeping per shoot?

Ls3D · Oct 22, 2008

3 TB a year is pretty hungry, but drives so cheap these days! 250 GB for $49,.. that's $600 for the year.

LG should have their 4 TB NAS with automatic Blu Ray backup shipping pretty soon...

BTW - We are all waiting for Blu Ray drives, media (especially) and standards to settle down.

Let's see - 3 TB would be Sixty 50 GB disc.. (its late), which probably run over $25 dollars each right now, so that is $1,500 in media. Personally I would just archive to HDD's now... some newer NAS devices even dock bare drives and have sipper ports to automatically dump USB sticks and memory cards to preset folders, etc.

-Shea

Bthornton · Oct 23, 2008

Ok I keep 25-40 images on a "regular shoot" of one person or family. 100-250 of a portrait party shoot. 200-300 of a wedding, product shoots can be anything from 3-300. Event shoots like trade shows are 1000 and up.
This is not just me shooting it's my biz partner as well.
We keep one copy at my house and one copy at her house.
I think I will end up with a whole new system with a new computer that can handle the work (I kill them now) and RAID. I'm looking at $6000 to get this set up but if it keeps things safe and the work flow moving then I have to do it.