Archiving

[Geoff Chandler]

What do most of you guys out there do for Archiving all those thousands of Digital Piccies??
I just got back from an 11 day trip to the West Coast of USA with 2 CD's worth of photos on my 2 cameras. They are on the PC now and will be backed up on CD's shortly. That's just ONE holiday!!! - OK so I took a few more than usual. ~ But eventually I am going to have to think seriously about an efficient way to store huge amounts of Photos - Oh, I nearly forgot, I am also Scanning a lifetime of Film into the world of digits as well!
One friend has suggested I get a DVD writer and before I go beyond 20+CD's I use them instead as you can store so much more. I also intend to upgrade to XP and get a HUGE new hardrive. (use 2 hardrives as well) Any other ideas???
Geoff :cool:

[Rhys]

My setup was as follows:

A purpose-built server running SME Linux which was connected to all the other computers in the house via a network switch and the network was fully cabled. No wireless - cable is much cheaper. The server had two hard drives which were mirrored by the Linux software so if one drive went phut then I lost no data. This is called RAID mirroring. Don't ever use RAID striping. The only restriction with RAID is that both drives must be identical (speed and capacity).

I used an XP Professional-based computer which was pretty good. You do need XP Professional. XP Home is really intended for people who don't really understand computers and hence does not fully support networking.

The XP Professional machine connected to both the internet and to my domestic network and acted as a gateway for all the other domestic computers. Needless to say, it was the fastest of the lot for this reason.

I prefer to back up to CD as opposed to DVD. I had so many issues with bad DVDs that I stuck with an older technology that worked every time. I'd say 75% of each box of DVDs was rejected by the software as being unfit to use. I tried many different programs and the results were always the same - bad DVD or write/verification errors. DVD - no thanks!

[Norm in Fujino]

I prefer to back up to CD as opposed to DVD. I had so many issues with bad DVDs that I stuck with an older technology that worked every time. I'd say 75% of each box of DVDs was rejected by the software as being unfit to use. I tried many different programs and the results were always the same - bad DVD or write/verification errors. DVD - no thanks!

Hopefully DVDs writers will improve in quality before long--I'm backing up onto CD-R right now, but with the huge size of the DSLR files (soon to get even worse when I go to RAW), it's going to become more difficult to keep up with the flow.

[Geoff Chandler]

Great
Well I have 2 techno whizz friends who swear by DVD - save to DVDRW then make a final DVD up when it's full. They haven't had any dudds so far.
I will buy a bigger Hard drive, install XP on it (my Son needs it for his IPOD)
put the old Hard drive back in as a slave, keep duplicates of the photos on both and back them up onto DVD. My PC does Raid but it relies on 2 identical HD's which I won't have, so I won't use it. Keeping the cost down is important just now ~ me & my Son's trip to the USA plus we're just buying him a new Saxophone so funds are down.
Thanks for the help everyone

[gary_hendricks]

Here's an article (http://www.basic-digital-photography.com/where-to-store-your-digital-photos.html) I wrote which shows what I do to archive my photos.

[Ron Rosenwald]

laptop.... at least one better than my 5 year old Dell......... and getting ready to take an extended RV trip with my new E-300....... and knowing I will shoot a few thousand photos over the 8,500 miles trip....... I opted to buy the ROAD-STOR unit....... burns CD or DVD direct to disc using AC or battery....... all you need do is pop chip into unit and load CD, press a button, and in a few minutes, they are stored. If you are Paranoid, load 2 CD.... ship one home in mail, store the other. You need not worry about having everything on just 1 hard drive....... but later, after editing each disc, you can load the acceptable pics onto one place.... or download promising shots for later manipulation....or create an album.... etc........ This seemed like a sensible, as well as inexpensive.... method to solve a real problem. And now I can wait till fall to order the laptop I really want ( need ? ).
Ron