Storage

[reefrunner69]

What do you use to store your photos on? Any brand of media that offers the most longevity with the best price? With the larger MP cams out there I can see RAW and TIFF files eating up a hard drive quick, I have CD-R/RW, any serious issues with storing them on CD if in 5 years I want to look at them again?

 

[William]

Depends on the brand, and there in the quality.

Research has proven that most commonly purchased CD-R and CD-RW won't last 18 months [ Meaning, that after 18 months the disk degrades to the point to being unreadable ].


If you want long term storage, and can afford a little extra... I would really suggest something like a external harddrive.

Hard drives do not degrade, they maintain their electromagnetic signature [ What they use to write to the disks inside ] almost indefinately, baring any outside magnetic radiation.



CD media is fine for short term data trafficing and storage, but long term really requires something more stable.

 

[reefrunner69]

that most commonly purchased CD-R and CD-RW

Which is why I'm asking, obviously the spindles that you pick up at wallyworld @ 100 for 30.00, are not gonna last, but for long term storage, but there should be some quality CDs out there that have better longevity, the uncommonly purchased ones I think external hard drives are a little expensive. I mean, I just ebayed a 40 gig external hard drive and that will only hold 3150 photos at 13 mb per, some of your other DSLR cams (which I am still seriously trying to talk the wife into in a year or two) files can be larger than that. If I am taking some serious pics....that space can be eaten up pretty quick.

Don't get me wrong, I think they are great and plan on doing one or two, but I can't see purchasing one every 6 or so months, and god help me if I drop it Obviously rudundancy is the way to go there, it just seems there should be a better option. What about zip drives and disks?

 

[RogerMcAllen]

I agree with hard drive.

 

[reefrunner69]

LOL, the question was for the best mix of longevity and price If it is your opinion that is the best mix, then so be it.

Please feel free to uphold that opinion when your married with 4 kids and have a wife looking at you crosseyed when you start talking about more purchases for another god forsaken expensive hobby...

 

[William]

that most commonly purchased CD-R and CD-RW

Which is why I'm asking, obviously the spindles that you pick up at wallyworld @ 100 for 30.00, are not gonna last, but for long term storage, but there should be some quality CDs out there that have better longevity, the uncommonly purchased ones I think external hard drives are a little expensive. I mean, I just ebayed a 40 gig external hard drive and that will only hold 3150 photos at 13 mb per, some of your other DSLR cams (which I am still seriously trying to talk the wife into in a year or two) files can be larger than that. If I am taking some serious pics....that space can be eaten up pretty quick.

Don't get me wrong, I think they are great and plan on doing one or two, but I can't see purchasing one every 6 or so months, and god help me if I drop it Obviously rudundancy is the way to go there, it just seems there should be a better option. What about zip drives and disks?

Sorry, when I say common I ment like Memorex [ Reasonably high quality ].

Not the dirt cheap discount disk.



EDIT

and Reef, if your comfortable with opening your computer, go to www.newegg.com and watch their returns/refurbished section for high capacity harddrives.

I've seen 250gig refurbs for 100-150 bucks.

Just stick it into your PC once a month, copy what you want over to it, then unhook it and place it back in its static bag and put it under your bed.

 

[fishfreek]

Not to be sour but drives fail. I have seen my share.

I would not use CD-RW media. CD-RW media by their very nature is more unstable than CD-R media. I have not seen the studies that William mentions but I dont doubt that they exist. In fact I myself would not trust CD-R media for archiving purposes beyond a few years.

Not sure what the archival life is on those ROM memory chips. U konw those USB memory devices. I think they have some kind of battery in them so my guess would be that they would work till the battery died and then all the data would be lost on them aswell.

Low cost long term storage (ie 5+ years) is a bit hard to come by. As optical storage devices come down in price they might be an attractive alternitive. Until then I would say CD-R or even DVD-R or DVD+R disks and then refresh them on an annual basis.

If you do a hard drive route then I would mirror two disks so if one failed the other still has your data and then you just replace the failed disk and mirror the surviving disk onto the new disk to keep the mirror up and running.

 

[William]

Well, to be honest fish freak, EVERYTHING fails.

Theres nothing that is 100% perfect operational time.


However, a good HDD, pound for pound, is a more reliable, reusable storage medium then any type of Optical Medium.

 

[fish_doc]

I repair several computers a week and I have seen many hard drives fail. The three brands we use are Fujitsu, Maxtor, and Western Digital. Of those three the Western Digital are the most reliable, with the Maxtors being the mid range and Fujitsu being of lowest quality. This is based off of the quantity we sell and the quantity that have been returned. Ironically Fujitsu has the shortest warranty of the three vendors. Keep in mind these are not desktop computers but industral computers many installed in extreme conditions.
As we tell all our customers and anyone who uses computers already knows multiple backup copies are best. But if you are on a budget consider saving only your favorite fotos in high resolution and reducing the resolution for the rest. If you are doing this for studio work you just need to work the cost of storage into the customers cost.

 

[alrmc4]

isn't there any storage places that you can load them and leave them online for a fee?

 

[reefrunner69]

I'm sure there is, heck I could do it on one of our servers (or get another for it) but that is alot of server space and I am still on dial up, broadband is not offered where I live :x 1 picture is 13 MB at max resolution. I think right now I'm gonna go with redundant CD-R (higher quality disks). I have many CD-R disks I've had for 5+ years that are still readable, course I am alos considering a mirrored set of high capcity hard drives, but I think that's gonna have to be a few months down the road, I can slip a few bucks by the wife for the CDs, no way in hades I'm gonna slip twin HDDs by her

 

[cj10488]

Go with a raid setup with 4x 200gig SATA drives.. That should last you alot of time... Have 2 drives stripping and 2 drives mirroring... That way you have redundancy in case one fails.. Although thats some serious cash but you want fast reliable storage LOL.. LMAO.. Me personally I just use CdRs that I back my pictures up from the hard drive on occasion.. I use cheap disks and every few months I just back the same stuff up plus the extras... Although my pics are 40k to 2mb not 13mb LOL I would also think about dvd-r drives.. cheap Mega storage and since they are for storing home movies and such they should last an extremely long time.. Although the disks are a bit more expensive.. LOL

James


James

 

[reefrunner69]

Although thats some serious cash

Again, I gotta bring you back to the wife and 4 kids on a civil servants salary If I can ever make this camera start paying for itself...then that might be an option, but while I'm footing the bill, it's unlikely.

 

[dralarms]

I have many CD-R disks I've had for 5+ years that are still readable

Me too and I use the cheap ones. I have a 12 disk cd changer in my work van, you know dust, bumps, abuse from employee's . Out of the 12 that have been in there non stop for 3 1/2 years I have 1 that doesn't play correctly and part of that is the original was a poor original. The volume went up and down the whole disk. I store plenty on cd-r's. I have a bunch of cdrw's but don't use them for storage cause they really are not reliable. 8O

 

[fish_doc]

Here is a inexpensive 160Gb hard drive for $60

http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?product_code=310369&pfp=hpf2#checkstore

 

[brndfrb]

I store mine on a 60gb maxtor external harddrive. Havent had one problem with it. I have also put them on cd-r's and have some that are 3 or 4 years old ans still readable.

 

[jackdp]

I've not seen the info on CD-R's either. If you think about it, a CD-R is not much different from an audio CD, they both store data in the same fashion. Barring any scratches or physical damage to the disc, I have audio CD's that are almost 15 years old and still read just fine. I'm sure there is more to it when saving files from your pc, ie disc quality, drive quality etc but I think 18 months is a bit pessimistic.

 

[reefrunner69]

I think another thing to note on longevity of a CD-R would be the burn speed. If you have a 40 X burn speed, and burn at that speed, the longevity won't be as high as if you burned at a lower speed. I plan on buring my CD-Rs on about 2X or 4X burn speed.

 

[fish_doc]

All the software we sell at work we burn at a 2x speed even though it capibable of much more. The only advantage is it can burn multiple copies at once.

 

[shawmutt]

I could have sworn I read somewhere that DVD-RAM can be used to archive for 7 years. The absolute best variety comes in a built-in cartridge that protects the surface of the disk. I would say no to zip drives, 100MB or 250MB is no where near the space needed. The new flash memory keys currently goes up to 1GB (although it's still very expensive for anything over 256MB). I would say no to external harddrives, for space and cost reasons. Even if the files can be stored on a DVD for only 18 months, there is relatively low cost involved in re-burning DVDs say, once a year. I have had photos on a CD-R for 3 years now, and they read fine. I have thought of using the online storage places, my ISP gives me 10MB of space and my angelfire account (where I link most of my pictures from) gives 20MB of free space. It's kind of a digital safe-deposit box for all the essential photos.

I say the DVD-RAM is the best mix between reliability and cost. You mentioned it before, and it's just common sense, but stay away from cheap disks--those are the cause of more problems than the method you choose.