Best way to store digital photos?

[chennaiguy]

In the age of digital cameras, I have lost many a picture to a failed hard disk or a scratched CD. I am sure this has happened to many of you. I am a little paranoid about putting my personal pictures on a website for storage, not to mention the resolution reduction that is automatically done. What do you think is the best way to organize and store photos?

 

[Alpha]

In the age of digital cameras, I have lost many a picture to a failed hard disk or a scratched CD. I am sure this has happened to many of you. I am a little paranoid about putting my personal pictures on a website for storage, not to mention the resolution reduction that is automatically done. What do you think is the best way to organize and store photos?

Storing your photos on a web server is actually pretty great. You have basically zero maintenance worries.

If you store locally, you need to keep multiple drives with an independent backup to each one. RAID is not always foolproof. If you have an error on the disk that the copies are being made from, then you may end up with multiple copies of the error.

 

[dak1b]

flickr pro account + external + internal HD lotta space on each. works great for me!

 

[Skyclad]

Burn them to a DVD-R

 

[chennaiguy]

@skyclad - I have had entire albums lost to a warped or scratched disk... its only a matter of time before an "accident" happens

 

[Eventer]

I put all mine on a USB pretty cheap - Like $20 for 4GB and no worries bout scrtched discs or what not

 

[Derrel]

I store mine in a cryogenic vault that I rent for $24.95 per month.

 

[chennaiguy]

@Derrel - LOL at that cost, I would preserve something like a Van Gogh.

 

[TJ K]

I have my pics on my computer HD, a 1TB external HD, online, and on another external HD.

You can't ever be too safe. When they're gone, they're gone and you can't get them back.

 

[Morpheuss]

I have mine on a couple external hard drives that way if anything happens to one hard drive so if something happens to one i still have them on another. I have the same thing with any important information on my computer. It's all about being smart when you back up your stuff.

 

[Neil S.]

In the age of digital cameras, I have lost many a picture to a failed hard disk or a scratched CD. I am sure this has happened to many of you. I am a little paranoid about putting my personal pictures on a website for storage, not to mention the resolution reduction that is automatically done. What do you think is the best way to organize and store photos?

If you are paranoid about losing your pictures, its best to try to diversify your storage.

Keep them on multiple different single hard drives or RAID arrays. I recommend multiple single drives, because RAID arrays can be difficult to move to a new computer if needed.

Burn them to DVDs or Blu-Rays, and keep those in a fireproof safe for best protection.

Remember that optical media(especially that you burn) was never meant to last forever. That goes for any media actually.

You will need to migrate the data to new drives and disks over time as you upgrade your computers.

Online backup services are also an option, although I don't know much about them. This would help with destruction of your whole house for example.

Throwing some optical media in a safe deposit box would be a good idea as well.

I was a sysadmin for 4 years in the Navy by the way. :thumbup:

 

[Boomn4x4]

The plain and simple truth is "any way you feel comfortable as long as it is backed up". Where people fail at this is they often consider "backed up" meaning "I save it to an external and delete it off of my computer".

The key is to ALWAYS HAVE 2 COPIES.... that is what "backing up" is.

I would NOT recommend USB backups... USB is the most volitile of media types and most susceptable to data corruption/loss. USB (Flash) storage should always be considered temporary.

Personally, I lease webservers that I host various websites on that I use for my databack up. My hosting service does their own offsite databack up so should anything happen to my live servers, all the information is saved elsewhere and can be restored. I also have two internal harddrives, one for my operating system and programs, one for data. When the drive fills up, I pull it out of my tower, put it on a shelf and buy a new one. I always have at least 3 copies of data, one on my shelf (or in my computer), one on my webserver, and at least one copy on my webservers backup.

Externals seem to be popular, but I just havn't gotten comfortable enough to use them. This is more of an "old school" fear because I'm sure technology has improved, but when I went through all my computer learning, it was always bad practice to move a hard drive. Vibrations could cause the read/write heads to touch the disk surface physically damaging it rendering it a drink coaster. I'm sure modering externals aren't susceptible to this, but I just can't get in that comfort zone.

 

[MohaimenK]

Build your own server like I did. Costs $300-$400 with over 2tb space. Use RAID. It'll be very rare that both your hard drive crashes at once. Or else all the other companies would go out of business. Don't you think places like flickr or any internet storage does that? Plus with the price of flash drives coming down, its not a bad idea to keep stuff in there also. But do spend the money and get a name brand one because I had a 32gb chinese brand that went bad after a few months. So yeah anything can go bad, servers can crash, your flickr account could die...don't be too paranoid about something you can't change.

 

[Bryce]

I may never have to ask a question on here since everyone else is asking for me.

 

[pbelarge]

I have yet to feel comfortable about online storage for multiple reasons.

I store all my general photos on multiple exterior hard drives, of which one set of copies goes into a good firesafe, the other hard drive is always connected to my computer. I also store copies of my better photos that I consider really worth saving on an additional hard drive and save them in the fire safe as well.

I have purchased a large firesafe for the harddrives and softward disks.