Strange Storage Choice: A professional photographer friend of mine stored his original files on thumb drives. My recommendation to him was to at least put them on a DVD/CD for safer...

Badgertale Loc: Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA

A professional photographer friend of mine stored his original files on thumb drives. My recommendation to him was to at least put them on a DVD/CD for safer keeping because all it takes is one errant static electrical charge or magnetic field to screw his thumb drive up and lose his photos.

Why are people willing to gamble with their profession?

Discuss. :0)

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

DVD/CD storage isn't a lot better. Disks vary widely in quality. I have had disks (from the low bidder) become unreadable in 3 years. And I have had disks that I burned 25 years ago still readable. But even if you use the best CD/DVD media, they don't hold enough to be really practical. A DVD holds less than 5 GBytes. I can shoot 20 GBytes in a single shoot. If I stored all my photos on DVDs I would have a few hundred DVDs to deal with. Then finding the right one becomes a REAL chore.

Best current storage medium is a hard drive.

Safest current storage medium is a cloud backup from a reputable provider.

But everyone is entitled to their own mistakes.

Badgertale Loc: Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA

Agreed. Money is an issue. He is an earn-and-burn type of fellow and has gotten himself into a trade situation whereby he trades photography for goods instead of money. I wish I could encourage him and steer him toward a better model but he seems set in his ways.

Mr. SONY Loc: LI, NY

Discuss.

He's Nuts!
Sorry, couldn't resist.
Those thumb drives are notoriously unreliable.
For the price of 1, 2tb ssd he could buy 2, 5tb WD black series drives.
One drive is not a safe backup either.
You need multiple drives for a few reasons.
One of which is human error.
All my data is backed up on 3, 5tb WD black series drives and 3 more 4tb drives.
Safety in numbers.

cjc2 Loc: Hellertown PA

I know quite a few professional photographers, and none of them store images on thumb drives. Doesn't sound like a pro to me. I just don't know where to start. All I can say is: WOW! Best of luck.

User ID

Badgertale wrote:

A professional photographer friend of mine stored his original files on thumb drives. My recommendation to him was to at least put them on a DVD/CD for safer keeping because all it takes is one errant static electrical charge or magnetic field to screw his thumb drive up and lose his photos.

Why are people willing to gamble with their profession?

Discuss. :0)

EZPZ discussion ...
You are dead wrong about flash drives, static electricity, and magnetism.

You wrote "a professional photographer friend of mine ..... ". Such phrases are almost always a warning that a load of misinformation is about be unloaded on the reader.

User ID

Badgertale wrote:

Agreed. Money is an issue. He is an earn-and-burn type of fellow and has gotten himself into a trade situation whereby he trades photography for goods instead of money. I wish I could encourage him and steer him toward a better model but he seems set in his ways.

Why did you call him a professional when clearly he is not ?

Doddy Loc: Barnard Castle-England

The problem with Dvd's is having the medium to play them. It is old technology and it is increasingly harder to find Dvd players for sale.

Badgertale Loc: Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA

Absolutely. Thanks you for your reply.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

I prefer HDD or SSD for storage.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

Is there a possibility that he’s just messing with you? I have a couple friends who occasionally make outrageous claims to stimulate conversation.

Jack47 Loc: Ontario

Been using these drives for years now and never a problem. I once had one overwinter in my driveway under ice and snow. Cleaned it and dried it off and it worked perfectly. I’ve had several come apart. A little dab of glue and they were good to go.

LeeinNC Loc: Morganton, NC

Yesterday, I had this topic happen to me. I received my dream lap delivered. HP Pavilion 15.6", 2TB storage, 32 GB RAM, AMD Ryzen 7,touchscreen, backlit keyboard. I was finally able to utilize the latest versions of PS and LRC. It was screaming fast. I transferred over 43k photos from 2 external SSDs to my computer in less than 2 hours. All was right with the world! HP suggested I update my BIOS. I figured with everything else being updated (Win 11 Pro, Creative Cloud etc.), why not? 10 minutes later, my laptop was a paper weight. Not only that, I had formatted the 2 ext SSDs to backup the laptop. Luckily, I discovered a third ext SSD with the majority of my photos on it. Saved by the 3rd backup!!!

BebuLamar

I have a number for USB thumb drives with the connector damaged. They got loosen and pushed in the drive.

Bison Bud

There is a risk with any kind of storage! Personally, I don't see a thumb drive as being a much higher risk as anything else. The secret is to have multiple backups and at least to me, using thumb drives as one of those multiple backups is a perfectly viable option. I wouldn't put all my proverbial eggs in one basket or backup data in any one type of storage or only in one place. I have personally never lost anything I've put on a thumb drive, but have lost multiple, mechanical hard drives over my years of computing.