Digital Storage

[smoke665]

Raw Image files, post processed image, and finished image files are starting to add up.Still have some room on my network drive but I see this topping out before long at the rate I'm going. I'm somewhat old school in my feelings toward relying solely on online. Storage capacity is relatively cheap be it online or as an NAS, but I'm also questioning how quickly/easily I need to access some of my storage, and at what point do I purge some data. How do others handle the data overload?

 

[480sparky]

Drop a dime on the book "DAM: Digital Asset Management". Well worth the read.

 

[Watchful]

I keep recent photos on internal ssds, the older stuff gets uploaded to Backblaze and archived on M-Disc BDs.
I do the same for movies I make, digital art I create and music I create. After making a master album on CD and a copy of master recordings on the M-Disc BDs.

 

[jcdeboever]

Raw Image files, post processed image, and finished image files are starting to add up.Still have some room on my network drive but I see this topping out before long at the rate I'm going. I'm somewhat old school in my feelings toward relying solely on online. Storage capacity is relatively cheap be it online or as an NAS, but I'm also questioning how quickly/easily I need to access some of my storage, and at what point do I purge some data. How do others handle the data overload?

I do not use cloud storage as I am a computer geek and just add drives to my server but give Amazon a look, it is reasonable, reliable, and secure. When I moved out into the sticks (bad internet) I had to find a storage solution for my customers and I steered them to Amazon on the business side. However, the consumer storage is based on the same model. Very reasonable. If your a prime member, it's free.

Welcome to Cloud Drive

 

[Watchful]

Or use what Amazon uses and go with raxspace directly. You can also use mdisc as a service. You upload to dropbox, link the mdisc account, and they archive it to optical discs that they mail to you monthly, the discs will last your lifetime, unless you live to 1500 years old.
Personally, I prefer burning my own.

 

[smoke665]

M-Disc is one option I looked at. Only problem is it takes about 213 of them to equal 1 TB of drive storage or roughly a stack 10" tall. Given how fast technology is advancing, its' doubtful that in a 1000 years anyone will view images the way we do now. The other problem is finding a particular image if you did need it years from now. Online is something I use as a matter of "short term" backup, but "long term" I have concerns, as companies come and go. What's here today, may not be tomorrow and then there's the issue of uploading with a less than fast internet. Portable external drives now are relatively cheap for 2 TB, but are limited to about 8 to 10 years. As suggested I looked at Backblaze, for the money this looks to be a viable option for online. I'm thinking my solution is to clean my files up, and segregate into logical directories that can be weeded/archived when they aren't used daily, upgrade my network file server to 2 TB, sync my daily use files to an online service, and backup file server weekly to alternating portable hard drives. When it comes time to archive, I might just use a compact portable hard drive, stored in offsite safe.

 

[Watchful]

Tagging all your photos, though time consuming to do, will speed up searches later when you want a picture with a 'blue flower' or a 'cat laying down', etc. The more tags you add the more relevant your searches become. Use the name of the place, person, major color, secondary color, animal type, pose, and any other info you might find helpful when searching based on your past searches. I always tag photos as I load them onto the computer the first time.

 

[Watchful]

Tagging all your photos, though time consuming to do, will speed up searches later when you want a picture with a 'blue flower' or a 'cat laying down', etc. The more tags you add the more relevant your searches become. Use the name of the place, person, major color, secondary color, animal type, pose, and any other info you might find helpful when searching based on your past searches. I always tag photos as I load them onto the computer the first time.

Your portable external drive should last from 8 to 10 years, or 3 to 5 years running.

 

[smoke665]

Might not help much as most of the tags would be granddaughter with blue flower, granddaughter laying down, granddaughter............ LOL However that is still a good suggestion

 

[goooner]

It took me about 4 hours to tag around 20K images when I started using LR. I now tag them right after my 1st cull.

 

[smoke665]

Tagging all your photos, though time consuming to do, will speed up searches later when you want a picture with a 'blue flower' or a 'cat laying down', etc. The more tags you add the more relevant your searches become. Use the name of the place, person, major color, secondary color, animal type, pose, and any other info you might find helpful when searching based on your past searches. I always tag photos as I load them onto the computer the first time.

Your portable external drive should last from 8 to 10 years, or 3 to 5 years running.

Keep them in a dark, cool place free of potential magnetic damage (safe deposit box) and they're pretty stable

 

[Watchful]

Solid State, or "Flash" drives, though still new, would theoretically last longer. That being said, you should never count on more than a solid eight or nine years, because the whole point of data storage like this is to keep it safe, not to take chances. Technically, it's possible for a NAND flash drive to last far longer than a decade in storage, but every unit is made differently, and some might have cheaper components than others. As for heat and magnets, an SSD will fare much better than a traditional hard drive (it would take a supermagnet to even begin to affect one).

The basic thing to remember here is to check the data on the stored drives once every few months, just to be sure that it's still intact, and to invest in a replacement for the drive every few years. Other than that, all you can do is keep them safe, and hope for the best.