On Thu, 04 Sep 2008 17:34:35 GMT, in rec.photo.digital "James Silverton"
<not.jim.silverton@verizon.not> wrote:
> me@mine.net wrote on Thu, 04 Sep 2008 13:29:38 -0400:
>
>>> haven't had any 5.25" or 8" for years. These issues are
>>> constantly faced by people involved with long-term storage of
>>> commercial and scientific data.
>
>
>I haven't used mag tape for backup for many years but some people still
>swear by (not at) it!
Yes. Now these reels were close to 15 years old, but contained raw test
data that cost more than a few million $$ to generate. We do use robotic
tape libraries at work for back and archival purposes. But were talking
about several orders of magnitude of data.
ps56k wrote:
> from a friend - -
> ----
> I have invested a lot of time and effort in creating a folder
> of all my photos over the years, currently ~16,000 occupying 10.7Gb on my
> hard disk.
> Having learned the lesson the hard way, I have backed them up on DVD's.
>
> Since each DVD will only hold 4.7Gb, I have to split up the folder to do
> this.
>
> I know there are flash drives available that will go to 32Gb,
> and I think now even 64Gb.
>
> My question:
> Is it "okay" to use a flash drive as an archival storage device?
> Is it as stable as DVD's? As secure?
> What if I store it in a "cool, dry place"?
>
> What are your thoughts?
I've stopped backing up onto CD's and DVD's completely.
I just buy external hard drives and migrate the data forward. The
growth of these media far outpace my shooting.
Common writeable CD's and DVD's use organic dyes to record data. After
5 years or so in benevolent conditions (cool, dry) those dyes will begin
to lose integrity. (My experience is 4 - 8 years, data dropouts occur,
YMMV). So you have to back them up again and again, unless...
If your backups must be on DVD, then do get longlife 'gold' DVD's which
in benevolent conditions will last in excess of 100 years. (Yes, of
course they are more expensive).
The sole disadvantage of my hard disk approach is that I keep the hard
disks at home. So I'm crash proof, but not fire proof. But then it's
the same with my DVD's ... I keep them at home too.
Atheist Chaplain wrote:
> "ps56k" <pschuman_no_spam_me@interserv.com> wrote in message
> news:7lIvk.20511$mh5.10861@nlpi067.nbdc.sbc.com...
>> from a friend - -
>> ----
>> I have invested a lot of time and effort in creating a folder
>> of all my photos over the years, currently ~16,000 occupying 10.7Gb on my
>> hard disk.
>> Having learned the lesson the hard way, I have backed them up on DVD's.
>>
>> Since each DVD will only hold 4.7Gb, I have to split up the folder to do
>> this.
>>
>> I know there are flash drives available that will go to 32Gb,
>> and I think now even 64Gb.
>>
>> My question:
>> Is it "okay" to use a flash drive as an archival storage device?
>> Is it as stable as DVD's? As secure?
>> What if I store it in a "cool, dry place"?
>>
>> What are your thoughts?
>> --
>> ----------------------------------
>> "If everything seems to be going well,
>> you have obviously overlooked something." - Steven Wright
>>
>>
>
> what is this stability you talk of in regards to DVD :-)
>
> FWIW you might get 10 years out of a burned DVD if your luck holds, or you
> might only get 5, personally I prefer the HDD route as I have old HDD that
Longlife Gold DVD's will last over 100 years in benign conditions. Yes
for more $.
> are as old as Methuselah that I can still pull all the info off, as a matter
> of fact an old Seagate 850 meg drive that I bought new many many years ago
> still spun up and divulged some old files for me not that long ago.
I had a 9 year old HD die recently... but all the data was copied onto
another HD so no problem.
I also backup by USB/Firewire HD and migrate forward...
jmeehan@columbus.rr.com wrote:
> On Sep 3, 11:11 pm, "ps56k" <pschuman_no_spam...@interserv.com> wrote:
>> from a friend - -
>> ----
>> I have invested a lot of time and effort in creating a folder
>> of all my photos over the years, currently ~16,000 occupying 10.7Gb on my
>> hard disk.
>
> I always have to wonder how anyone (other than a professional) can
> need to save 16,000 images. I suspect that if you would thin them
> out, keeping only the best or most important, down to say one or two
> thousand, the quality level would greatly increase with no loose of
> diversity and that you would find it much easier to find that best
> photo of this or that.
16,000 is not that much. I've scanned close to 10,000 "keepers" since
about 1998 (from print, negative and slide), never mind the photos that
weren't worth scanning.
> I wonder what is or are the best media for archiving? Have you tried
> randomly recalling some of the older images and checking for loss of
> quality?
Long life "gold" CD's or DVD's. 100+ years in benign condtions.
> Another interesting thing is what sort of indexing system is best?
James Silverton wrote:
> David wrote on Thu, 04 Sep 2008 14:03:07 GMT:
>
>> James Silverton wrote:
>> []
>>> I wonder what is or are the best media for archiving? Have
>>> you tried randomly recalling some of the older images and
>>> checking for loss of quality? Another interesting thing is
>>> what sort of indexing system is best?
>
>> Yes, when I got the external HDs I had to recover almost all
>> off the CDs and DVDs. All but one were readable, which might have
>> been frustrating had I needed images of that DVD. One HD
>> and one set of DVDs are off-site.
>
>> Indexing for me is strictly year-month-day.
>
> I guess that you are saying that off-site storage, possibly multiply
> redundant, is the way to go. I wonder what are current estimates of life
> time of personally written DVDs? I don't *need* professionally to have a
> high probability of successful retrieval tho' I'd like it.
Long life gold DVD's : 100+ years in benign conditions
Ordinary DVD's: 5 years (~) in benign conditions
> As an amateur, I need more than a date to find an image.
One nice thing about the Finder in Mac is that you can use it with a few
keywords to find anything pretty quick. So if you name a folder (or
even photo files) with the right keywords, you should be able to find it
pretty ****ed quick. Also add the date in the folder name as a general
mark.
Couple the above with Time Machine and you can find anything very quickly.
Hate to tout Mac, but for this sort of thing it is *** way *** ahead of
Windows...
On Sep 4, 9:32*am, "Gordo" <n...@phony.net> wrote:
...
>
> Remember that back up copies should be stored off site such as a bank vault.
> What happens of you have a fire, flood, earthquake, etc.?
>
> Gordo- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
Very important, however I suggest a good procedure is to copy to
disk and send a copy of the disks to friends or relatives in an area
across country. It is cheap, it give access to those whom you send
them to and it is very unlikely that any natural disaster is going to
get New York Ohio and California.
Re: archiving of digital photos 
Linear Mode
