ollie Loc: Ogdensburg, NY

I was on the site last week with a problem reading photos stored on a disc. What is recomended as the best way to put images into long term storage.
The end of every year I like to clear my desktop and start new in January. I have been storing them on discs. Some of my images are HDR with a Nikon D800 so needless to say they use a lot of megapixels. HDR or not I try to keep each file at 100 photos or less. Otherwise, it seems to take forever to open the file up if I want to use it later. I have friends using SD cards, thumb drives and I'm using discs. Your thoughts about which is preferred would be appreciated. I shoot in raw but I usually only store finished JPEG images if that makes any difference. I shoot for my own pleasure and donate some images to local groups for fundraisers.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Since I only have about 20,000 images right now, I leave all of them on my HD in case I want to go back to them. I keep adding scans of old prints from earlier times.
I usually don't do an "archival" backup since I have them backed up on an external disc, cloud, and laptop. If I wand a particular set of images explicitly backed up (archived), I put them on a DVD. (I'm not worried about the DVD technology changing as I would re-create them with the newer technology when it comes along.) But with father/son/grandfather backups, I don't need a ton of DVDs, SD cards, or thumb drives floating around.

LarryFB Loc: Depends where our RV is parked

What kind of discs are you using? There are a few CDs that claim to be good for archival storage but I'm not sure I believe them. Yes, I have had CD's fail. If you are using DVDs, I don't think there are any appropriate for archival storage.

I store my photos on my computer's SSD hard drive, and two portable hard drives.

If I didn't use hard drives, I would probably switch to quality Thumb drives.

warrior Loc: Paso Robles CA

You might make a new folder for the year. Put all your photos for that year into new folder.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

I am not sure you want to keep the lowest quality image result of your workflow. I would (and do) save the raw file, the psd working file with all of it's layers and adjustments, and NEVER save jpegs. It takes more room, but saving jpegs and tossing the raw files is like making a print and throwing away the negative. I routinely go through some of my 10 and 12 yr old images with the latest raw converters from DXO, On1, Adobe and Capture One, and find that the quality of the edits and conversion of the raw files have improved. If all I had was a jpeg - well, there is no way I could take advantage of the newer tech.

Aside from that, a good strategy is to have redundancy. A copy on your computer, on a backup device, and on a second backup device. Hard drives are still about as reliable and relatively stable (with regards interface type), and online backup. If you are really nervous, then get a scalable Synology NAS device - which will provide a lot of redundancy AND upgradeability.

Disks (CD, DVD, BluRay) that you burn yourself are NOT archival in nature and subject to oxidation and degradation which will render them eventually unreadable. Memory sticks and SD cards are ok, but small. Nothing compares to an array of large drives. If you need really large storage, and you want redundancy, and if your computer can accommodate 4 or 5 internal drives, a RAID 0+1 array will give you fast reads and writes, and dual redundancy for maximum up-time.

Your needs are best met with a backup strategy than covers all the bases.

Here is one approach:

https://photographylife.com/photography-backup-workflow

Ron Dial Loc: Cuenca, Ecuador

I have about 20,000 digital images and 10,000 slides stored, so I understand your dilema. For a while I was using DVD's. You need to index them so you can find stuff. I have about 800 DVD's and they become very heavy, plus you need to make two copies. The danger is that the formats will change over time, and you will need to keep old DVD drives to read them. Also use only very high quality DVD's as they tend to get bad over the years and will get a condition call "hub rot" where the DVD starts to de-laminate at the hub and will then become unreadable. Never put paper labels on DVD's as they will start to peel and jam the DVD drive. Kodak used to make a gold DVD that was rated at 100 years

In the last few years, as hard drives became cheaper, I purchased Seagate Hard Drives and store two sets of images on the hard drives. I use just the regular internal hard drive and purchase a reader that you plug the drive into. Still have to index them or you will never find an image. Needless they should be stored in a climate controlled location. Consider an archive storage facility to store one set of drives or disks.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

I ALWAYS save the RAW.

via the lens Loc: Northern California, near Yosemite NP

I work in Lightroom so have no need to store a second image of anything. I store all my RAW files, including a backup RAW file, on external 8TB hard drives, to date a total of 65,000 images. I store my LR catalog on this type of drive as well as a backup on my computer and a different external drive. When I need an image, JPEG or otherwise, I simply export it from LR, this makes organization fairly simple and there is no redundancy. The good thing about this type of system is that I can go back to any year very quickly and find any image I need within seconds or minutes.

rbest77701

I shoot a lot and have a 2TB internal hdd in my laptop. I keep the last two years of shots on that and move the prior years off to an external 4TB USB 3.0 hard drive. I also used BackBlaze as an online backup of all my images in case of disaster. That's an online subscription and costs like $5.99/mon. Redundancy, redundancy, redundancy is your friend for saving and recovering files. You can also use a small NAS (network attached storage) on your home network where you can usually install the size drives you need, then have them mirror or a small RAID array where if a single disk fails, you lose nothing. There are lots of options out there, some expensive, some not so much, but how much is it worth not to lose your images?

rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

I have 12TB of storage space spread across 4 separate systems. I save everything, as storage space is pretty inexpensive.
--Bob

sv3noKin51E

When consumer HDDs became affordable in the 90's, we regularly filled up 400MB drives with images and refrees every so often; 'affordable' being relative. 20 GB drives finally arrived in 1998 and upped the game, but is a drop in the bucket today. Fast forward, we still use archival drives in the 2TB range. After all the years and drives gone through, we've stuck with Western Digital and Toshiba as we lost too many of the other brand-name drives. Refreshing drives periodically to assure the content doesn't catch 'bit rot' may be controversial for many who aren't familiar with it, but it's worked for us and has been done for decades by IT in commercial/industrial settings. BackBlaze and other cloud-data-service are essentially refreshing all content 24-7 unless you pay for 'cold storage'.

We also used the highest rated/most expensive archival DVDs available; they're bulky/heavy, etc and sometimes fail. Had a couple that failed to read on newer drives and was why we abandoned the practice. With the cost of high-end flash cards dropping and the speed/reliability climbing, we've been using those, only highest/fastest class. A handful of micro USB SDXC cards stored for two years showed no signs of atrophy after being stored in a temperature stabilized vault with a desiccant packet in the container. Whatever cloud-storage you use, if the service is cheap, you'll eventually get what you pay for, which can be devastating. A friend lost all of his archives, stored on a single Seagate at home. When he downloaded his stored images, his entire cloud download turned out to have been corrupted. That's worst-case but there there are no guarantees with cloud/internet storage. Always opt for storage you encrypt before you upload for storage and keep your keys safe. Amazon is still reliable/fast/secure and Apple is pretty good. The price and options go upward from there. Redundancy, redundancy in depth is what will save you when it matters, if your work is worth it. Most cloud backup services will offer you the option to overnight your images on a HDD which you can keep for the cost of the drive, or return for refund; be sure you have the option to make contact with your data center by means other than email, either by phone or by overnight carrier, in case of extended network issues. We were offline for a week last year, a good excuse to get some reading in. Not everyone has gigabit bandwidth, so receiving your archives on an HDD is a good option. We always keep several archival HDDs of the most valuable part of the collection vaulted off-site locally and never had to use it. With all forms of insurance, it's good if you never have to activate that option. Hope this helps. sv

don26812 Loc: South Bay of Los Angeles, CA

If it were me, I think I would move to a portable external HD, and back it up with a cloud storage service. As you know, storing your images is only half the task of a comprehensive digital asset management process. You want to be able to quickly find a selected image. You may want to add Lightroom to your workflow.

bittermelon

External hard drive plus cloud storage. CD's will degrade over time for sure.

chapjohn Loc: Tigard, Oregon

If you have the Prime membership, Amazon Cloud for Photos is free unlimited storage.

don26812 Loc: South Bay of Los Angeles, CA

I have Prime, but I was unaware about the free storage. Thanks for the info.