How can I save my railfan pics?

[trolleyboy]

It's been told to you to death, but Every couple of month's I download and burn all my pictrues to a CD, I leave nothing on my actual PC. Any shots I use on line alot I have uploaded to Photobucket or the old Railimages sites.

Rob

[wgnrr]

I use external hard drives, internal slave drives, and DVD backups.

Phil

[trainboyH16-44]

My C, D, and E drives are all different

[stevewf1]

Oh, and one more thing: putting data on your C: drive and copying it to your D: (or whatever) drive is useless unless the D: drive is on a different harddisk.

Oh yes, that's VERY true!

You can "partition" a hard drive all you want, but remember all those "drive" letters are still on the same actual physical drive. If that physical drive fails, then there's going to be a big problem. Most modern PCs can accept multiple SATA hard drives and the drives themselves are fairly cheap... But it's worth it.

 

 

 

 

[miniwyo]

I have a few external HDs. One is kept at my grandmothers house, another kept in the fireproof safe at my house, another kept with my Laptop, I keep photos on my PC at home, My laptop, and then I also burn them to a DVD data disc every so often, those will either go to my Grandmother's or in the safe.

 

I have heard of one of those offsite storage places quite often on the talk channels of Sirius Radio (I love Sirius....) It is carbonite.com Supposedly they are pretty good.....

RJ. I think you have the best method. Multiple hard drives.  I'll check into that. Before this week, I had no idea a CD might quickly deteriorate in just 3 years or so.

 

It works pretty well if you can keep them all updated the same...

 

I need to get a new one though,  the one I carry with my laptop is startig to make that wierd HDD Click of death..... 

[wctransfer]

Three years? Yikes, I have all of my 2005 and 2006 shots on disc right now, I guess I should get going on some external harddrives! How much are we talking for about a 3 GB harddrive? At this time, I have about that much from 2007 alone, and growing.

Alec

[spokyone]

I have a few external HDs. One is kept at my grandmothers house, another kept in the fireproof safe at my house, another kept with my Laptop, I keep photos on my PC at home, My laptop, and then I also burn them to a DVD data disc every so often, those will either go to my Grandmother's or in the safe.

 

I have heard of one of those offsite storage places quite often on the talk channels of Sirius Radio (I love Sirius....) It is carbonite.com Supposedly they are pretty good.....

RJ. I think you have the best method. Multiple hard drives.  I'll check into that. Before this week, I had no idea a CD might quickly deteriorate in just 3 years or so.

[miniwyo]

I have a few external HDs. One is kept at my grandmothers house, another kept in the fireproof safe at my house, another kept with my Laptop, I keep photos on my PC at home, My laptop, and then I also burn them to a DVD data disc every so often, those will either go to my Grandmother's or in the safe.

 

I have heard of one of those offsite storage places quite often on the talk channels of Sirius Radio (I love Sirius....) It is carbonite.com Supposedly they are pretty good.....

[spokyone]

Thanks Chris. I believe the 2005 study was removed from NIST website. Here is a forum discussing the report. It is a good read.
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/05/0024258

 

[CopCarSS]

Well dog my cats, but I can't find the link to the government report on CD longevity. Anybody know where this is hiding around the 'net?

[sgtbean1]

If you have an old computer (or if you're thinking of buying a new one anytime soon, don't dump the old PC) set it up as a file server for your home. Dump all the photos on there, so they're accessible yet out of the way. If you're smart (and if the motherboard allows for it), setup a RAID mirror so the Hard drives are automatically mirrored. That way, if one fails, you still have a complete data set on the other disk. Of course you can also do this manually by copying the contents of disk A to disk B.

I've done this a few years back after buying a new PC and it works like a charm, not only for photos but for financial and legal documents too. I do have the luxury of owning a AID tape drive  that I use for backups, so most of my stuff is on those.  

Alternatively: put them on CD or DVD media and renew them every 10 years or so. 

Oh, and one more thing: putting data on your C: drive and copying it to your D: (or whatever) drive is useless unless the D: drive is on a different harddisk.

[stevewf1]

I realize I need to do something better than my present method. In Google I found this and some other articles.
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/hd-back.shtml

Chris?

That's an interesting article. I never write on or apply labels to any of my backup CDs - even with a "safe" pen made for that purpose. If I must write anything at all, I'll mark it on the little clear plastic center on the CD. And I always store the CDs in the full-size jewel cases, not the slim ones. I'll slap a label on the outside of the jewel case. Another thing I always do is handle the CDs themselves as I did slides... if I need to set the CD down for a moment, I'll put it right back in the jewel case and never lay it on any surface.

And as the article says, I pray...

 

 

[spokyone]

I realize I need to do something better than my present method. In Google I found this and some other articles.
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/hd-back.shtml

Chris?

[RudyRockvilleMD]

I am relatively new to digital photography I back up my digital photos on a CD in case my computer hard drive crashes. I also intend to back them up on a flash drive, and possibly get an external hard drive. My digital camera uses a secure digital flash card, and flash cards with 2 gigabytes of memory are becoming less expensive all the time so they can be used as temporary storage for photos. Since the flash cards can hold many images you don't have to clear them out immediately. I havea 6 mega-pixel digital SLR, and I shoot in the raw + basic jpeg mode, and I can get 237 images on a 2 gigabyte flash card.

What about slides? One way of backing them up is to scan them, and store them on a CD or a flash drive or an external hard drive.

Somebody raised a question about the longevity of CD's I understand archival cd's are available in the CD-R format so the images should last longer than on conventional CD's   

[sfcouple]

You can try a flash drive (aka thumb drive) that will run about $30 for 2gb that runs off an usb port.  Or you can try a free upload service such as mozy.com.  I think at mozy one can upload about 2-4 gb of files for free.  And since your photos would be stored at an off site location they can be accessed any time from most computers.   You can also store photos at photobucket.com

Good Luck,

Wayne 

[stevewf1]

As "cheap" as digital seems to be, there are (should be) other costs...

I have my photos stored on my C: drive and my D: drive. I also have an external hard drive to store photos and am getting a second external hard drive for that purpose. I also make several backups to CD and DVD - I have two CD/DVD burners in my PC.

One of the big advantages of digital is that you can make EXACT backup copies, but it does take some money and effort to do that...

 

 

[CopCarSS]

I've got some links on my home computer about data storage, CD life and things of that nature. I'll post them after work tonight.

As for me, I double up on external hard drives and burn CDs at the moment. I'm planning on adding a third external hard drive soon which I plan to send home with a co-worker who lives on the other side of the Denver Metro Area. I'll have him bring it in once every couple weeks or so and I'll update the back-up on it and send it his way again. That way if I get hit by a fire/flood/tornado/etc. I'll still have a copy of all of my work available.

[spokyone]

Hey, I have a few hundred railfan pics I have taken over the last year and this year and I had a scare that my computer lost them all, I dont have enough room on my camera card for all of them, and I want a digtal backup copy just in case. I am having all of them printed but I want sometihng in care my computer crashes. Any ideas thanks, Mike

A cheap way I use is: Make a backup camera card after a trip. Then when I get around to it, I burn a CD. I have heard recently that a CD may deteriorate in time. 
  Any thoughts on this?

EDIT:  I keep my CDs at friend's house.

[Poppa_Zit]

-External hard drive
-CD archive
-Be more careful with your files!

There are also online services that will hold your backups, but they're not cheap.

I have all of my photos and files backed up on three external hard drives. I use them in order and do an supplemental backup every day when I'm finished working. Takes about 6 minutes and the most work I could lose is the last 24 hours. 

[trainboyH16-44]

-External hard drive
-CD archive
-Be more careful with your files!

[NSlover92]

Hey, I have a few hundred railfan pics I have taken over the last year and this year and I had a scare that my computer lost them all, I dont have enough room on my camera card for all of them, and I want a digtal backup copy just in case. I am having all of them printed but I want sometihng in care my computer crashes. Any ideas thanks, Mike