Storage of photos (Page 2): Get two 2tb drives, (they're about $120 each right now) and use disk utility to RAID them together. Then you don't have to worry about copying them.. Bill...

andesbill

cindy11 wrote:

I read the latest topic about what to buy for an e... (show quote)

Get two 2tb drives, (they're about $120 each right now) and use disk utility to RAID them together. Then you don't have to worry about copying them..

Bill

billybob40

A flash drive works, great deals on tigerdirect.com. I take them off my laptop and PC, then to my exteral hard drive. You can take a flash drive and store you picture by subject. It gets full get another. I've had them up to 36G but a 4G and 8G I use most. A link to help http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/Category/category_tlc.asp?CatId=379
Also get a 1 or 2TB exteral drive for date storage and online at smugmug.com for $40. a year you can't go beat it.

TheBrit

It is also worth looking into online backups. I currently use crashplan.com works out at $2.92 a month for a 4 year contract for unlimited storage. The initial backup is slow but once done it only backs up changes or added files. Automatic so you do not need to worry about it and its offsite as well which is the best part. I currently have about 230GB uploaded, initial back up took about 14days, its trickles up in the background so not to effect machine usage.

cindy11 Loc: Honeoye Falls, NY

TheBrit wrote:

It is also worth looking into online backups. I currently use crashplan.com works out at $2.92 a month for a 4 year contract for unlimited storage. The initial backup is slow but once done it only backs up changes or added files. Automatic so you do not need to worry about it and its offsite as well which is the best part. I currently have about 230GB uploaded, initial back up took about 14days, its trickles up in the background so not to effect machine usage.

Does it back up everything else too besides photos?

marcomarks Loc: Ft. Myers, FL

cindy11 wrote:

quote=MT Shooter I would seriously look at an ext... (show quote)

Unless you have a second backup I wouldn't delete. And never delete original photos until you are absolutely sure they all copied onto the new drive(s). There have been users on here who thought they copied, deleted the originals from their cameras' memory card and then found out the copying didn't actually happen. You might also want to keep one of your hard drive backups at a different location, such as a bank deposit box, a relative's or neighbor's house, or somewhere that wouldn't be destroyed by a catastrophic event at your home.

Looks like you're going to spend about $200 to do this right with huge storage capacity but it's worth it. Keep in mind that hard drives sometimes crap out and having a second one plus backing up all photos to both of them often (like once every month or two at most) is the only way to make sure you don't lose everything. Once you get all your photos arranged into a single big folder with many subfolders within it, backing up is painless and it can even take place while you're doing something else on the laptop.

TheBrit

Will backup what every you tell it too. Currently, photo's and documents, about to add my music which is another 80GB, I still keep a copy on my machine or external drive but its piece of mind. I was keeping an external drive at my office but now work from home so offsite is important.

Kestrel1029 Loc: Philadelphia, PA

Thanks, once I download the pictures, can I delete them on my laptop?[/quote]

Yes you can. Any precious files it might be a good idea to write them to CD's too, just for longer term storage. And its cheap.[/quote]

I agree with the backup to a disk. I would back them on a DVD, it holds more. That way if you have a hardware failure you have you pics backed up on something that is easy to restore onto a new drive or computer.

Kestrel1029 Loc: Philadelphia, PA

montanasoybean wrote:

I understand about backing up and the risks involved, but my question adds file management to the lot. How do I back up everything but still keep an idea on my computer about what I have taken photos of. With over 100,000 shots I begin to forget where "that picture" is. As the good book says about council of many, what are the UHH people using to solve this problem?

What I do is, at the end of the days shoot, I download my pics to my computer, (My camera places that days pics into a folder with that date), I then change the name of the folder to the project I'm on as well as the month and year. Makes it easy for me to find what I'm looking for.

montanasoybean Loc: Montana

Thank-you everyone.. MT Shooter that was a good system when working with Windows. Was using IPhoto but am now ready for more PP so upgraded to Apeture. Threads about 8N and 9N tractors reminded me of photos that I have (we still have two of each on the farm), but finding them is nigh impossible. Photos and cd and hard drives scattered from here to kingdom come. Hoping Apeture can save all my thumbnails but not tie up all my memory with the originals. Any Apeture users...... Suggestions welcome. :-)

KTVasser Loc: Los Altos, California

I've had two hard drive crashes in the past, so I upload my photo's to an online site: smugmug. It's pretty cheap, and you can share your photo's with family far and near.

They have different levels of membership - you can also upload your video's.

montanasoybean Loc: Montana

Use Carbonite, but due to slow upload speed (my problem - not Carbonites), my back up has been going for 1.5 years. But that does not address keeping thumbnails on my computer and having it tell me where to find the originals.

jamesrd Loc: Juneau, WI.

Why not use a FREE line storage like ADRIVE, its 50GB free? :-)

kschwegl Loc: Orangeburg, NY

cindy11 wrote:

I read the latest topic about what to buy for an e... (show quote)

Cindy, here's a "primer" on storage terms that will help you out.
1 KILOBYTE (1KB) is 1000 Bytes.
1 MEGABYTE (1MB) is 1000 KILOBYTES.
1 GIGABYTE (GB) is 1000 MEGABYTES.
1 TERABYTE (TB) is 1000 GIGABYTES.
A BYTE is the basic unit of storage and composed of 8 bits.

JPG pictures are about 6 MEGABYTES (MB) each, or at least that's how big they are on my camera. (D3100). So, 25,000 pictures at 6MB each equals 150,000 MB, or 150 GB. The numbers do get large. I'd go for a 1TB external USB (Universal Serial Bus) drive.

Hope this helped.
kschwegl

cindy11 Loc: Honeoye Falls, NY

kschwegl wrote:

quote=cindy11 I read the latest topic about what ... (show quote)

How did you know I had no idea about all that byte talk? I wasn't going to go there but I am so glad you wrote it out for me. I'm copying that table and carrying it with me until I get it straight. Thank you so much!

mountainman Loc: MOUNTAINS-NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA

Large external hard drives are quite cheap, and easy to afford,
plus many thousands of photos can be stored on them. Also
copy them on to cd's, which are very cheap, and can be stored
safely for long periods of time. I use the Sony MULTI FUNCTION
DVD RECORDER for transfering all my photos from the memory
card directly onto the DVD. It is simply and easy to use, and the
cost is quite reasonable, and it only takes a few minutes to load
down three or four hundred photos, and you don't need a computer to use it, and can be carried with you, as it is a compact unit.