Anyone storing images on or on CD?

[Rand0m411]

CD's and DVD's are not to be trusted, I have had some go bad in less than 2 years. Once the metal starts flaking off, its too late.

Storage technology has advanced in leaps and bounds over the last couple of years. You can subscribe to an online back up service where you can back up everything and pay for the amount of data transfered to the server. This way you dont have to alter any file types or sizes.

Another option is small external hard drives. Wester Digital makes several models which have huge amount of storage 40gig, 60gig, and up to 320gig and are 5.1" X 3.2" X 0.6". Which makes it convenient to store in places like a safety deposit box. Plus its extremely easy to copy stuff over to an external hard drive.

If you dont mind size of your storage device you can get bigger external hard drives that can store 1TB and more.

Tape... well thats old school technology but it does work. But with the super low prices of external HD's, and most have a good 3 year manufacturer warranty. Id go that route.

my 2 cents...

 

[Dieselrider]

CD's and DVD's are not to be trusted, I have had some go bad in less than 2 years. Once the metal starts flaking off, its too late.

Storage technology has advanced in leaps and bounds over the last couple of years. You can subscribe to an online back up service where you can back up everything and pay for the amount of data transfered to the server. This way you dont have to alter any file types or sizes.

Another option is small external hard drives. Wester Digital makes several models which have huge amount of storage 40gig, 60gig, and up to 320gig and are 5.1" X 3.2" X 0.6". Which makes it convenient to store in places like a safety deposit box. Plus its extremely easy to copy stuff over to an external hard drive.

If you dont mind size of your storage device you can get bigger external hard drives that can store 1TB and more.

Tape... well thats old school technology but it does work. But with the super low prices of external HD's, and most have a good 3 year manufacturer warranty. Id go that route.

my 2 cents...

That is what I am leaning toward (going with the HD backups) I will get an external for here next to the computer and eventually put a small server and another HD up in my shop building. That will give me off site and double the files in case I have a crash. I need to do the same for my wife anyway so, what will it be to run one more cable? Thanks everyone.:salute:

 

[Drake]

My backup process isn't as advanced yet since I am a bit low on budget after getting my XTi and lens, but I think it is not that bad. I use my internal 80gig HD for backups. The point is, it is not connected all the time to the rest of the computer so the chance of it being harmed by a virus or electricity supertension (or however you call it) is a lot smaller. I only connect it about once a week just to make a copy of my photos. Additionaly I also burn all new images to DVDs. I am thinking of an external drive though, I'm going to run out of space soon on the 80 gig HD.

 

[TCimages]

I don't use backup software due to most of these programs generate a proprietary file that can only be opened by that software. The last thing you want is a company to go out of business and end up losing your only copy of the software.
I use multiple HDD's for back up too. I have a "review" drive where I dump all my images and sort into files. Every couple of weeks I power up my external backup drive, insert my shelved backup drive (in a bay) and drag into the appropriate folders. I also have a third copy on a Network drive that hosts all my images for use by any of my PCs.

If you find reputable online storage, it will more than likely be multi-million dollar enterprise class storage with redundancy. This would also include the O&M on the hardware. IMO, if you can deal with upload and download speeds, this could very well be a the overall best solution. The thing that worries me here is that many of these online things are here today, gone tomorrow.

 

[Dieselrider]

From what I am reading I may not need the server if I just run a connection from this computer to the shop and have another HD up there to use as a backup. Right now I am just storing on two Hard drives internally but, I don't have that many photos yet and I am still trying to get the quality of shots that others are producing already.

 

[ThePup]

CD's and DVD's are not to be trusted, I have had some go bad in less than 2 years. Once the metal starts flaking off, its too late.

True BUT - DVDs are far superior to CDs.

Christie Photo - I'd seriously recommend taking the time to backup all your CDs to DVDs now that you've made the switch. CDs have the metal flaky stuff on top of the disc. Better quality discs have a thin resin coating on top of this for protection, but it's still pretty easy to get to flake off.

DVDs have the metal flakey stuff sandwiched between, in the middle of the disc, so it's far harder to flake off.

That said, Hard Drives are certianly the way to go as far as ease of use and cost goes.

Software - For Windows PC users, check out the freebee "Synctoy" - Google should find it. Very nice little program for setting up backups. Not sure if it works with newer .NET versions though :-/

 

[Mav]

DVDs are far more prone to data loss from small scratches though, so I'm not sure I'd call them superior over CDs.

 

[Drake]

DVDs are far more prone to data loss from small scratches though, so I'm not sure I'd call them superior over CDs.

True, I've seen some badly scratched brand CDs which were still usable and was pretty surprised how fragile were brand DVDs 2 or 3 years ago. I don't normally use my discs under such conditions but I still don't think the technology has advanced much in terms of DVDs durability.

 

[Early]

Wouldn't it be nice if we could copy files to film? It should be possible since they used to copy data to microfilm.

 

[Dieselrider]

True, I've seen some badly scratched brand CDs which were still usable and was pretty surprised how fragile were brand DVDs 2 or 3 years ago. I don't normally use my discs under such conditions but I still don't think the technology has advanced much in terms of DVDs durability.

Some of the information I was looking at (see the link above) was saying that DVD longevity was quite a bit shorter than that of CDs. I think they were just refering to the loss of data over time not in how the disks were being stored or handled but, I could be wrong. I do not think there is a perfect solution and all we can do is try to back up and act quickly if we lose any one copy.

 

[Dieselrider]

Wouldn't it be nice if we could copy files to film? It should be possible since they used to copy data to microfilm.

That would be great but, we would then have to keep a copy of the original film somewhere as a backup in case of fire or something like that. From what little I have read the film guys didn't backup too much. They would make dups from time to time. I guess that is backing up. How did they handle that issue?:coffee:

 

[Clutch]

I too have moved from CD to DVD as a back up. Additionally, I have a back up external hard drive and then my copy in my My Pictures folder. How long all this will last is a matter of debate - I suppose we can readdress this issue in twenty years and see how things worked out!

My family photos I still take to the local Wal-Mart, CVS or Walgreens and make into 4x6 prints so my most important personal pictures are where they've always been... in a photo album. Hey, I've got 6 kids, 3 grandkids, 1 wife, 4 cats, 4 hamsters, 1 mortgage, 1 very large and very dumb dog and a partridge in a pear tree. OK, so I don't have the partridge but I do have a pear tree... those photo albums are a big deal! LoL

In summation the computer geek in me comes out.. you can never have too much RAM, you can never have too much hard drive storage and you can never back up enough.

 

[Dieselrider]

I too have moved from CD to DVD as a back up. Additionally, I have a back up external hard drive and then my copy in my My Pictures folder. How long all this will last is a matter of debate - I suppose we can readdress this issue in twenty years and see how things worked out!

My family photos I still take to the local Wal-Mart, CVS or Walgreens and make into 4x6 prints so my most important personal pictures are where they've always been... in a photo album. Hey, I've got 6 kids, 3 grandkids, 1 wife, 4 cats, 4 hamsters, 1 mortgage, 1 very large and very dumb dog and a partridge in a pear tree. OK, so I don't have the partridge but I do have a pear tree... those photo albums are a big deal! LoL

In summation the computer geek in me comes out.. you can never have too much RAM, you can never have too much hard drive storage and you can never back up enough.

Just a quick question. If shooting digital, can you just make a cd of the shots you want and take that to Wally world for them to make prints of or is there more to it than that? Thanks

 

[Rand0m411]

Just a quick question. If shooting digital, can you just make a cd of the shots you want and take that to Wally world for them to make prints of or is there more to it than that? Thanks

With Wally world you can take in a CD, DVD, or any card format. You can also send it to them via internet and place your orders online. Only thing that bugs me about that place is their online software auto crops to fit the picture to the page size which leads to horrible cropping most of the time. I find that they are unable to do a scale to print. Which is a simple function and yes will makes some white lines on the print but at least my pic isnt all cropped away. So now I use photobucket since their site can scale to print and/or scale to paper.

 

[RacePhoto]

With Wally world you can take in a CD, DVD, or any card format. You can also send it to them via internet and place your orders online. Only thing that bugs me about that place is their online software auto crops to fit the picture to the page size which leads to horrible cropping most of the time. I find that they are unable to do a scale to print. Which is a simple function and yes will makes some white lines on the print but at least my pic isnt all cropped away. So now I use photobucket since their site can scale to print and/or scale to paper.

Thank you for mentioning this, it drive me nuts too. When I try to do a panorama, it just crops the picture and ruins it, so I have to add blank data, to cut off later. Really dumb!

Best backup, is off site. That was easy?

I still don't use DVDs. Did for a short time, but they take a long time to burn and are prone to errors right out of the drive. CDs are fine for small projects or incidental backups, but they don't hold enough data.

Whatever I would have answered last year, has changed. The external RAID drives are so cheap and inexpensive hard drive space keeps growing. All you need to do, is burn a hard drive backup and by the time you need to copy that, a new larger drive will be on your new system. Just copy it all.

Then put the old drive on the shelf, because it's not going to go back, sitting idle. You can get a 300gb USB hard drive for under $100, sometimes much less. That's 75 DVDs worth of data, and it's much more secure.

Only turn it on, when you are doing a backup. The thing will outlive your next three computers! Like I said, by then you will have replaced the drive for $29 bucks and it will have four times the space.

DVDs and CDs are a waste of time and obsolete technology. (make a note of that, it's not a prediction, it's a fact of life.) Both are going the way of the floppy, only faster.