Klsing Loc: Georgia

Hello everyone. I was wondering what everyone uses for photo storage that you are comfortable with?

Always concerned with losing files on a computer.

Thanks.

Dngallagher Loc: Wilmington De.

I keep my image library on a large external hard drive, primary backup is to another external drive (Time Machine) which does an incremental every hour.

Monthly I make a mirror image of my image library & Lightroom Catalogs to a separate external drive that is normally stored in a fire proof/water proof box.

Regardless of where you store your images, ,set up a good backup plan, test it, and use it.

JerseyJim Loc: New Jersey, USA

I keep old school negatives, slides and prints in polyethylene (not PVC) shoebox type containers with lids, placed in a dark closet. Slides in TransVue trays are also stored in the closet.

My digital storage/backup has evolved:

1) I used to backup to CD-ROM. Still have a bunch.
2) Off-site I uploaded to my hosting server via FTP.
3) Then I backed up to USB flash drives. A couple are in my safe deposit box.
4) I continue to use the USB drives but also backup to DropBox. I also use the FTP site since they now allow 300 GB of space.

All my digitals are also on the hard disk of my main desktop work station. Keeping old pictures handy is good for family projects (cards, Facebook nostalgia, etc.)

Dbrogers Loc: Shenandoah, Iowa

I back everything up to a external HD. I think I will get another external HD and buck up to it also. I do have some flash drives too. I like the idea Dngallagher about putting HD in fire proof & water proof box.

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

All my images are on an external hard drive. They are backed up to another external hard drive. Both these drives are attached to the desktop. I have a third external hard drive that I copy everything to at irregular intervals. The third drive is kept at the farm a mile away in the barn. (This all sounds very similar to a previous post).

Like many others I used to back things up to CD's. Back in the early '90's that was what everyone did. They were cheap so you could do several copies in case one of them quit (which happened more regularly than was healthy for the backups). The files were smaller then so it wasn't too much of a problem. But eventually I got about a cubic foot of CD's (in cases) and while they all have labels, they don't always tell you what's on them. Also, the backup programs I had at the time would write the backups in a proprietary format. The programs are long gone and the CD's are basically useless, even those that are still readable. As file sizes increased, DVD's got used, but even then there were too few files per unit backup medium to really be efficient. If you had written a list of what was on the disk on the face of the disk, you had to unpack each disk and try to figure out whether what you wanted was there. I understand there are things out there that store more than DVD's but I don't believe they store enough more to be worth using. I have about 1.2 TBytes of backup stuff (mostly images, but also email and word processing stuff).

With a large external hard drive, it's all on the same medium, so you don't have to search through a big pile of stuff to find it. You might have to search through the file structure, but that's a lot easier. All the stuff on the CD's got transferred to the external hard drives. The disks are maybe in a corner somewhere because I probably didn't get around to throwing them out.

Every so often I consider online storage. I have always decided against it for several reasons. (1) 1TByte of data will take a while, both to back things up and to restore them if necessary; (2) For the price of a year's worth of online storage I could buy an external hard drive that would store my stuff for many years; (3) Online storage places the responsibility for my data's viability with someone I don't know. I'm not so much worried about someone reading my data as I am worried about someone losing my data. I like to have my stuff under my control as much as possible. I have never had an external hard drive fail (knock on wood-grained vinyl). That means the reliability is good enough that if one does fail, it's very unlikely that the other two will fail at the same time.

Any storage medium will need maintenance. If you're using external hard drives like I am, you have to run them occasionally to see that they still work. Based on 20 years of personal data, I feel fairly confident that not more than one will fail at any given time and I can then produce another from the other backups.

jim quist Loc: Missouri

I use zenfolio as a backup

Mr PC Loc: Austin, TX

External drives, Blu-Ray disks and Carbonite, plus copies on my desktop and laptop computers. Belt and suspenders kind of guy, I have my own computer repair and networking company and I have seen the angst when the only copy of that precious baby picture goes up in smoke because of a lightning strike or other calamity. People tend to get religion about backups AFTER disaster strikes. If you are serious, you need to rotate hard drives to other locations in case of flood, tornado, etc. or have online backup.

wilsondl2 Loc: Lincoln, Nebraska

The pictures that are most important to me I double print and send one print to son for storage and keep one. - Dave

Ol' Frank Loc: Orlando,

I use an external hard drive to put files that I really want to keep and DVD's for specific displays. If the computer hard drive crashes again, I will just go out and shoot 10,000 more.

SteveR Loc: Michigan

WD My Book. I have either a 2 or 3 terrabyte drive which I update manually. My son told me that if I'd gotten the ethernet compatible drive, I could connect it to my modem and it would update automatically any time a change was made on my computer.

I do need to back up to two drives (one kept on site and the other updated monthly and kept off-site), so my next purchase will be the ethernet or network capable My Book.

ValliPride Loc: Lost in Florida

I am in the process of Transfering all my Masters to a external hard drive times 2

Cdouthitt Loc: Traverse City, MI

Hard drive for working
External for full backups (raw and jpg
Smugmug for jpgs and sharing with family and friends

mtparker Loc: Cape Charles & Springfield, Virginia

I make three copies.
1)A copy of original files (NEF) on main computer
2) Backup entire system to 10TB Hard Drive Array
3) Backup images to portable 5TB HD

Morning Star Loc: West coast, North of the 49th N.

Jim, depending on how old the CD's are that you still have, are they the only copies of your photos? I hope not.
You say "still have a bunch" - which tells me it's a while since you burned them. Have you checked them to see that they are still readable? I just checked some old CD's the other day: two are no longer recognized by my computer, or by my laptop, or by my husband's laptop.
And yes, I have the files of those CD's on and external hard drive as well, which I promptly copied (twice) so I now have three copies of those files, instead of two. Keep the EHD's in different locations as well.

waegwan Loc: Mae Won Li

Just to ditto some other posts, I use a solid state hard drive back-up, the best stuff also goes on DVD and can be stored off-site at my office, some stuff can go on the cloud for off-site backup. If you have film, consider getting it digitized and store either the film or the digital copies off-site.