made from digital photos? I take hundreds of photos a week and am trying to figure out the best way to preserve them. What are your preferred methods? Is it best to make hard copies of favorite shots?
2007-12-16 15:18:25 · 10 answers · asked by Anonymous in Arts & Humanities ➔ Visual Arts ➔ Photography
There are online archival sites, some free to a point, some charge a bit for a lot of storage. Do a search for "online archival".
2007-12-16 16:34:13 · answer #1 · answered by photoguy_ryan 6 · 2⤊ 1⤋
My backup strategy is as follows:
I store all images in a folder, named with the date and a description of the photos: (i.e., 09-28-07 Willey-Long Wedding). I shoot and save only RAW files.
I then back up this folder to an external hard disk drive.
Periodically, I'll burn DVDs of these folders and keep the DVDs offsite, just in case my office burned down or my equipment was stolen. I can't wait for the cost of Blu-Ray or HD-DVD disks to come down, which will make this process easier and cheaper. (Of course, by then I'll have an even higher res camera, so the file sizes will be bigger, and here we go again.)
I'd really like to use an online storage site, but the upload time would kill me. I have the fastest possible internet connection that's available where I am now, and it's too slow to be uploading all of those files.
I wouldn't make hard copies of your files. Printing them out will be expensive, and then, if you need the image later, what will you do? Scanning it back to your computer will result in degraded image quality. This method will also be time consuming.
2007-12-17 02:04:23 · answer #2 · answered by The Former Dr. Bob 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
CD's and DVD's can all degrade. The best tips are to archive copies in separate locations (in case of fire for example) and preferably in a non-magnetic fire safe.
Your best bet is to archive both onto an external / robust HD and onto a media such as DVD. Check them regularly / yearly and if one source starts to degrade make a new copy from your other archive source.
Finally save your images in well-known formats preferably TIFFs, if not JPEG's.
2007-12-17 10:22:48 · answer #3 · answered by The Violator! 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Sure you can record your digital files to film if you want film as your method of archiving using what is called a film recorder. However, the quality that you get from the negatives aren't so good for making large prints. If this is a method that you are thinking about one of the cheapest ones you can get is from Polaroid and can often be found on ebay. DVD's and CD's are good ways of archiving, but they easily get scratched and hard-drives can go bad if they are not properly handled or stored. Although CF cards are expensive at this time, I would suggest using them when the price does go down, simply because they are solid state, and arent as easily destroyed.
2007-12-16 23:33:59 · answer #4 · answered by wackywallwalker 5 · 1⤊ 2⤋
Backing up all your images on an external hard drive is one of the most important steps you can take to insure that you don't lose your images from a hard drive crash. Since these, too, can fail, I back my images up to two separate external drives. CDs are ok, but managing them can be a bother, and they too, can fail. DVDs hold more. Other than taking a photo of an already printed image with a film camera, there is no way to make a negative.
2007-12-16 23:24:44 · answer #5 · answered by Dale 4 · 1⤊ 1⤋
They make archival discs. They are made of gold. They say they will last 100 years. These discs cant be that old so who knows.
The best thing to do is have multiple copies in multiple places. A set at your place, a set at your parents, a set at work etc... You could also store them on a public photo site like Flickr and just make the sensitive ones (or all of them) private. But you have to keep your account updated, no activity for a while and they might just delete them.
2007-12-16 23:26:57 · answer #6 · answered by cabbiinc 7 · 0⤊ 3⤋
I burn all my digital photos to DVD then another copy to another DVD so I always have two backups of all my files. I don't usually print out my digital photos. Why don't you want to save them to disk?
2007-12-16 23:27:36 · answer #7 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 1⤋
Print your best ones and store them.
Save the others to harddrives and store the harddrives. DVD and CD's are a thing of the past for storage.
Get a Raid system and hot swappable drives. The prices of the dives have come down now and they are relatively cheap storage. Terabyte drives are now available.
The members who have posted above me are a tad out of date for high volume storage.
Link : http://www.lacie.com/uk/products/range.htm?id=10061&gclid=COSxu9qdr5ACFQgsQwod-XXkhQ
2007-12-17 06:40:30 · answer #8 · answered by Angel 6 · 0⤊ 2⤋
I have my primary drive, then a backup drive and a DVD backup of everything, so essentially three backups. DVDs get stored off site.
2007-12-17 09:31:43 · answer #9 · answered by gryphon1911 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
1) Make a CD or DVD
2) Make a CD or DVD on another writer.
That's about all you can do.
2007-12-17 02:07:49 · answer #10 · answered by V2K1 6 · 0⤊ 1⤋