Digital picture storage:

[chet]

I had some pics stored on my computer but put 'em on a memory stick recently. Good thing I did too cause I had to reload the software and lost everything last week.

Now I want to find a way to store the pics permanently without tying up memory somewhere. I went to Staples and saw they have a DVD/RW thingie which cost around $60.00 with the DVD's being $16.00 for 10.
The rewriteable DVD thing seems to make the most sense to me. I can just store stuff on DVDs without tying up memory.

Opinions welcome.

[markinlondon]

I back up my photo work (mostly 35mm negative scans ~ 30MB) to DVDs. I just don't have space for that much data. Flash RAM devices are not really made for long term storage.

[jmintzer]

You can also get a back-up hard drive that'll hold all your pics and more for $150...


Jamie

[ne4tt]

lot less work than making CDR/DVDs.

Very Affordable.

jamie

[chet]

Yeah, but an outboard drive will eventually get filled up. I'd rather just have a bunch of DVDs around.

[woodshedding]

You also might want to consider an off-site storage service, like Amazon's S3 (http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html?node=16427261), or something like Smugmug (http://www.smugmug.com/). That way you've got everything backed up off-site and you're safe in case of theft, fire, flood, etc. at your place.

Personally, I'm a big fan of smugmug - the rare family-owned, profitable web company!

[chet]

Originally Posted by woodshedding

You also might want to consider an off-site storage service, like Amazon's S3 (http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html?node=16427261), or something like Smugmug (http://www.smugmug.com/). That way you've got everything backed up off-site and you're safe in case of theft, fire, flood, etc. at your place.

Personally, I'm a big fan of smugmug - the rare family-owned, profitable web company!

I did that with Lilypix. They stopped my account and wouldn't let me get my pics back. Wouldn't tell me why they did it either.

[woodshedding]

Originally Posted by chet

I did that with Lilypix. They stopped my account and wouldn't let me get my pics back. Wouldn't tell me why they did it either.

Yikes. That's not good at all. I've had nothing but good interactions with the smugmug folks, but I'd be hesitant if I'd been burned before.

I'm so intrigued by Amazon's S3 that I'm considering it for mp3 storage. It's just so cheap!

[mistermullens]

I use Picasa from Google. Very easy to use software, and lots of FREE online storage. Flickr is good too.

[Mark Davis]

Your on the right track get a USB external DVD/CD writer and store stuff on it. I get my DVD's for $24.99 for 100. They hold 4.7 gigs each.

[mrbdxmpl]

I don't know how many pictures you have, or how long you are interested in being able to hold on to them, but CDs and DVDs are not particularly stable in the long run. I would recommend getting an external hard drive--I just picked up a LaCie 320 gig drive for about $110. I'm not a digital expert, but I am a photography curator, and this is how every serious photographer I know stores their images...

[BritishBluesBoy]

Whatever you decide to do - make duplicate copies. That goes for hard drives too. They do fail, so do DVD's/CD's.

[Bill]

All DVDs are not created equal. Last time I looked at CDs for storage, they had some that were more archival quality. You'd think they'd all last a century, but some lost data after 2-3 years. I assume the same issue holds for DVDs.

[601210]

You could also try online storage... Google Docs and the like, or even emailing them to an email account special for that purpose... just check in often so that it doesn't suddenly get wiped.

[chet]

Update: Hopefully I already have a DVD burner on the laptop I bought last year so I can store stuff that way. I'll find out tonight when I get home. I've never tried to burn a DVD before.

[kingalingus]

+1 for www.flickr.com

[FMA]

My wife does art photography and stores her photos on a hard drive. She has a huge second hard drive installed in her computer just to store photos. It's less expensive than an out-board unit and is faster.
I can't remember the size of the thing. I installed it myself and if I can do it, anybody can...

[chet]

I have software called Intervideo WinDVD on my laptop. Anyone know if I can use that for my purposes?

[tiktok]

Originally Posted by chet

Yeah, but an outboard drive will eventually get filled up. I'd rather just have a bunch of DVDs around.

You should consider how you store your digital pictures on your computer. At my house we have about 12GB of photos currently, and we're not actually "photographers", we just take a lot of pictures on visits and such.

Once your total photo collection exceeds what will fit on a DVD-R (not terribly difficult with today's camera resolutions), you either have to copy the entire archive each time you do a backup (which produces a pile of DVD's and takes a tedious amount of time, and the key to a successful backup strategy is to make it painless and automatic if possible), or store the photos on your HD in a way where you can easily determine where the "new" photos start.

External HD's are way more convenient that DVD's, and amazingly cheap. You can buy a Terabyte (1024 GB) for around $300 these days. Yes, it will eventually fill up, by which time $300 will buy you another magnitude of order of storage.

[vonschtupp]

Chet, windvd is a dvd player, but will not create DVD backup copies for you. You need Roxio or some other dvd/cd burning software to write the image to the DVD. If your pc/laptop has a dvd burner, it should have some software that came with it.

As an aside, I will agree with the others who have said an external drive is much easier for backups than a DVD. I use a netdisk so that any pc or laptop in my house can see the stored files (music and pics).

vS

[chet]

I got a DVD-R from someone at work to try tonight.

Can I just display a folder in My Pictures and drag it to the DVD box etc? Does it work like using a memory stick or floppy?

[ibobunot]

Originally Posted by mistermullens

I use Picasa from Google. Very easy to use software, and lots of FREE online storage. Flickr is good too.

+ 1 Flickr is the easiest to use...

[metulmykul]

You need a burning program chet, like nero. if your laptop has a dvd burner, it should have come with burning software.

I'm going through the same issue with my parents atm. Have just put a dvd burner in their computer and suggest that they also got an additional hard drive so they can have 2 copies...to be sure, to be sure.

[popthree]

better check the real world shelf life on those DVD's before you commit the $$ and energy in doing something you will end up either losing data or redoing later onto a more stable media. (hard disk or tape)

[aunchaki]

Originally Posted by mrbdxmpl

CDs and DVDs are not particularly stable in the long run.

+1

I read an article a few months back (can't find it right now) on the long-term vulnerability of all our wonderful data. Disk go bad. Even if they survive, they can become unreadable in a short time. There was a news story this week about an update to Microsoft Office that instantly disallowed opening older document formats (old Word, Works, Lotus, Corel, etc...) for security reasons. Without even knowing it was coming, some people lost access to archives of old data in an instant.

I make redundant backups of important files on a variety of media (multiple hard disks, USB thumbdrives, CD-ROMs, etc...), but none of these is a great long-term solution. About ten years ago, I read an awesome Scientific American article about the physical survivability of magnetic and optical media (hard drives and CD-ROM/DVD-ROM). They compared it to historic media, like the Guternberg Bible (iron gall ink on vellum, still around after 550 years) or the Magna Carta (I saw one of the original versions in Lincoln Castle in 2001. Still readable).

Somebody gave me a 3.5" floppy a month ago. I had to go to somebody else's computer to use it. I haven't had a floppy-equipped PC in five years!

Anyhoo, the best answer is Redundancy, Redundancy and Redundancy.