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How are you dealing with your image storage issues?
- Thread starter jerryk
- Start date
I use HD's, just original RAW keepers on one, and best of processed ones on another. Then both hard drives are backed up and stored away from main PC.
And they fill up quick!
But, I think digital spells DOOM to most images in the long run, unless printed, at some point in time, when WE are no longer able to backup and maintain the images they will meet their fate.
Until then HDs are the easiest at the moment.
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Gallery: http://www.pbase.com/jackcnd/favorites
And they fill up quick!
But, I think digital spells DOOM to most images in the long run, unless printed, at some point in time, when WE are no longer able to backup and maintain the images they will meet their fate.
Until then HDs are the easiest at the moment.
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Gallery: http://www.pbase.com/jackcnd/favorites
Kip Cole
Active member
I have an Infrant ReadNAS NV with 4 750Gb drives that I am very happy with. I back it up onto 300Gb USB drives that I store offsite.
Seems to my there are too many long term strorage issues with DVD, and they take too long to burn. They also require a level or organisational beyond mine to manage. A RAID 5 approach gives some redundancy, gives easy access for cataloging and retrieval and is higher performance. And USB backup seems to work well since its pretty cost/performance effective.
With the Infrant devices you can have the NAS back itself up (over a network or two USB attached storage) which helps automate that part of the process. GigE makes a big difference over 10/100 (I wish more PCs had GigE like the newer Macs do).
(I have no relationship with Infrant, other than after a fair amount of research it was the device I selected as best fitting my needs.)
Cheers, --Kip
Seems to my there are too many long term strorage issues with DVD, and they take too long to burn. They also require a level or organisational beyond mine to manage. A RAID 5 approach gives some redundancy, gives easy access for cataloging and retrieval and is higher performance. And USB backup seems to work well since its pretty cost/performance effective.
With the Infrant devices you can have the NAS back itself up (over a network or two USB attached storage) which helps automate that part of the process. GigE makes a big difference over 10/100 (I wish more PCs had GigE like the newer Macs do).
(I have no relationship with Infrant, other than after a fair amount of research it was the device I selected as best fitting my needs.)
Cheers, --Kip
Shane Pope
Senior Member
Roger you are taking yourself a little serious are you not... I did not steal your wife... take a valium. If I made a mistake then I am Sorry for the inconveinience I hope it did not cost you a million dollars.
It could have been that I only partly remembered the article and it may well have mentioned the continual editing of an image... as has already been discussed.
Cheers
Shane
It could have been that I only partly remembered the article and it may well have mentioned the continual editing of an image... as has already been discussed.
Cheers
Shane
jerryk
Veteran Member
Is so, how are you saving them with your raw images?
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jerryk.smugmug.com
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jerryk.smugmug.com
jerryk
Veteran Member
I am leaning toward the NV also. However, I want to see one and more importantly hear it. I know someone that has an older Infrant unit and it is noisy. I won't tolerate a device I can hear in a quiet room.
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jerryk.smugmug.com
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jerryk.smugmug.com
Gary Jean
Senior Member
Khanh M
Senior Member
Unless you are doing some massive retouching on a photo...I don't see why you'd need to save every single photo with layers.
I understand there will be exceptions where you'd want to keep the layers...but in general...I think that's overkill.
It shouldn't take that long to adjust the exposure, contrast, saturation, and sharpen to your liking...
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Regards,
Khanh M
http://www.pbase.com/khanh007
http://khanhmai.com
E
Eugene Powers
Guest
just joking.
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Eugene
The only time a smaller sensor with the same pixel count is superior to a larger sensor (aka higher pixel density) is when you are focal-length limited.
Lee Jay
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Eugene
The only time a smaller sensor with the same pixel count is superior to a larger sensor (aka higher pixel density) is when you are focal-length limited.
Lee Jay
E
Eugene Powers
Guest
I store all my DVDs with original RAW images in my fridge.
One time compressor went out and all my RAWs got spoiled.
What a bummer.
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Eugene
The only time a smaller sensor with the same pixel count is superior to a larger sensor (aka higher pixel density) is when you are focal-length limited.
Lee Jay
One time compressor went out and all my RAWs got spoiled.
What a bummer.
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Eugene
The only time a smaller sensor with the same pixel count is superior to a larger sensor (aka higher pixel density) is when you are focal-length limited.
Lee Jay
E
Eugene Powers
Guest
Were they from Italy? If they were that would explained it.
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Eugene
The only time a smaller sensor with the same pixel count is superior to a larger sensor (aka higher pixel density) is when you are focal-length limited.
Lee Jay
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Eugene
The only time a smaller sensor with the same pixel count is superior to a larger sensor (aka higher pixel density) is when you are focal-length limited.
Lee Jay
UnderWater
Senior Member
They are just designed so you don't notice.
CF cards do the same thing.
--len
CF cards do the same thing.
--len
harrygilbert
Senior Member
1. Hard drives are cheap. My last 200Gb hard drive cost $85
2. I use lossless compression (.zip) on RAW or TIFFs to conserve space
3. I save onto multiple DVDs from different manufacturers. This is quite cheap (50 4.77Gb DVDs cost $12.00). DVDs are stored off-site in case of fire, flood, or burglery.
4. I test the DVDs every 6 months; none have failed yet (I have had failures of CDs).
2. I use lossless compression (.zip) on RAW or TIFFs to conserve space
3. I save onto multiple DVDs from different manufacturers. This is quite cheap (50 4.77Gb DVDs cost $12.00). DVDs are stored off-site in case of fire, flood, or burglery.
4. I test the DVDs every 6 months; none have failed yet (I have had failures of CDs).
David Sherman
Leading Member
Good to know this. I had been thinking about it of late, and thought I saw some damage, but turns out was just noise on my old D60 images, especially in underexposed areas.
UnderWater
Senior Member
Work with images on external drives (or similar) that you can unplug and turn off.
There are several reasons for this, but you don't want gobs of images cluttering up your PCs hard drive and messing up its backups, fragging the hard drive, etc, etc. Also when the PC fails you'll still have easy access to the images. This has just happened to me BTW.
Make sure you have a good backup strategy where the incremental backups are fast and efficient. That way you can do them after every few hours of work rather than once a week.
The time an incremental backup takes should be proportional to the amount of work you've done. Make sure whatever you use can be recovered from - test it. I've used several backup utilities that are very difficult to recover from and get things back to exactly where they were before. Don't assume that just because a backup utility is a market leader that it is working for you. Make sure that the backup you use does not keep old copies of images as you change them, and keeps master originals. Otherwise you'll waste space or accidentally lose images.
Personally, I stay away from keeping images as TIFFs or PSDs as part of my mainstream automated workflow as they will waste much space.
Make sure you have a good image naming convention that will survive contact with a long time. I name my files "Date""time""version", and use Apple Aperture to generate such file names. I've tested it and can't break it's algorithm to mess up and overwrite one file with another file of the same name. DownloaderPro also has reasonable file naming conventions built in, although the program is not so bullet proof. I use databases to find files, as others have mentioned.
On another note, storage solutions keep increasing in size, so if you are generating images at a fairly constant rate, you can figure out the future storage needs and see whether your method is going to break a year or 2 down the line. For example, if you started with 80GB drives a few years ago, you could now switch to 750GB drives, or 1.5 TB raid 0. Maybe in that time frame you haven't generated that many images! It's a lot easier to do a large file copy every few years to upgrade hard drives than to keep futzing around with CDs/DVDs or many hard drives every few days.
If you think all of this is hard, wait until you try video.
--len
There are several reasons for this, but you don't want gobs of images cluttering up your PCs hard drive and messing up its backups, fragging the hard drive, etc, etc. Also when the PC fails you'll still have easy access to the images. This has just happened to me BTW.
Make sure you have a good backup strategy where the incremental backups are fast and efficient. That way you can do them after every few hours of work rather than once a week.
The time an incremental backup takes should be proportional to the amount of work you've done. Make sure whatever you use can be recovered from - test it. I've used several backup utilities that are very difficult to recover from and get things back to exactly where they were before. Don't assume that just because a backup utility is a market leader that it is working for you. Make sure that the backup you use does not keep old copies of images as you change them, and keeps master originals. Otherwise you'll waste space or accidentally lose images.
Personally, I stay away from keeping images as TIFFs or PSDs as part of my mainstream automated workflow as they will waste much space.
Make sure you have a good image naming convention that will survive contact with a long time. I name my files "Date""time""version", and use Apple Aperture to generate such file names. I've tested it and can't break it's algorithm to mess up and overwrite one file with another file of the same name. DownloaderPro also has reasonable file naming conventions built in, although the program is not so bullet proof. I use databases to find files, as others have mentioned.
On another note, storage solutions keep increasing in size, so if you are generating images at a fairly constant rate, you can figure out the future storage needs and see whether your method is going to break a year or 2 down the line. For example, if you started with 80GB drives a few years ago, you could now switch to 750GB drives, or 1.5 TB raid 0. Maybe in that time frame you haven't generated that many images! It's a lot easier to do a large file copy every few years to upgrade hard drives than to keep futzing around with CDs/DVDs or many hard drives every few days.
If you think all of this is hard, wait until you try video.
--len
Alexandru Petrescu
Forum Enthusiast
200 high-quality 4.5Gb DVDs cost around 100usd - 1Tb
Only for comparing HD to DVD price/capacity, and there are of course many other parameters like size, accessibility, reliability, power etc.
I also realize it's difficult to talk about HD in the context of DVD because it may mean hard-drive or high-def dvd (HD-DVD)
Alex
Only for comparing HD to DVD price/capacity, and there are of course many other parameters like size, accessibility, reliability, power etc.
I also realize it's difficult to talk about HD in the context of DVD because it may mean hard-drive or high-def dvd (HD-DVD)
Alex
David Gagnon
Member
Hi,
You loose some information with JPEG only when you modify and resave the image. So, JPEG is ok when you are sure that you will never change it... but for me, I cannot assume that I will never modify an image, so I prefer to keep the RAW instead of JPEG. And for backup, I am using two 300 Go hard drive. One for the original and the other one for backup (fire-wire external drive).
David G.
You loose some information with JPEG only when you modify and resave the image. So, JPEG is ok when you are sure that you will never change it... but for me, I cannot assume that I will never modify an image, so I prefer to keep the RAW instead of JPEG. And for backup, I am using two 300 Go hard drive. One for the original and the other one for backup (fire-wire external drive).
David G.
Gordon S Walker
Senior Member
I suppose you're going to tell me that the pictures of the Eskimos standing by their igloos suddenly became Eskimos standing by pools of water.
I used to keep my film in the refrigerator but never thought about keeping CD's or DVD's in there too. I do have one roll of Ilford FP4 still in there, dated Jan '92. I wonder if it'd still be ok to use ?
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It's an L of a life, this photography lark
http://gordon-walker.fotopic.net/
I used to keep my film in the refrigerator but never thought about keeping CD's or DVD's in there too. I do have one roll of Ilford FP4 still in there, dated Jan '92. I wonder if it'd still be ok to use ?
--
It's an L of a life, this photography lark
http://gordon-walker.fotopic.net/
First, I'll assume that by viewed, you meant recompressed. Now, sounds like these guys weren't too smart. What according to you/SKY took them 18 months could easily have been done in a day... a program could have applied 18x30=540 iterations of JPEG compression in maybe a few minutes at most. They could have 'experimented' with many levels of compression on perhaps a hundred different images in a single day.
Canon
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Canon
Right now the lowest cost per GB for internal HDs is $0.28. The sweet spot is around 250 to 320GB.
1TB = 1000GB => $280
1TB storage can be easily built with 3 or 4 HDs with lowest per GB cost. It would take over 200 plus DVDs to accomplish the same.
The hard drives are far more convenient in backing up and accessing large quantity of data. I use DVD for backups and HDs for archives. Note DVDs are not any more reliable or trustworthy than hard drives. I use multiple HDs and DVDs to store my backup photos.
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Nelson Chen
http://pbase.com/nelsonc
100% RAW shooter with Capture One Pro
Photos of Italy: http://www.pbase.com/nelsonc/italy
1TB = 1000GB => $280
1TB storage can be easily built with 3 or 4 HDs with lowest per GB cost. It would take over 200 plus DVDs to accomplish the same.
The hard drives are far more convenient in backing up and accessing large quantity of data. I use DVD for backups and HDs for archives. Note DVDs are not any more reliable or trustworthy than hard drives. I use multiple HDs and DVDs to store my backup photos.
--
Nelson Chen
http://pbase.com/nelsonc
100% RAW shooter with Capture One Pro
Photos of Italy: http://www.pbase.com/nelsonc/italy
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