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How big is your digital storage?

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BrotherBart said:
It was Neil Van Niekerk that gave this wonderful piece of advice IMHO. Raw is great when you first download to fix/adjust for mistakes. However, once you have the RAW image corrected there's no reason to keep it as a RAW file save it as a JPEG. It's not like you're going to take an already adjusted/corrected RAW file and drastically change it so you wished you kept it as RAW. I haven't anyway, but you'll be the better to know.

I've been going through my old, already corrected/adjusted RAW images and converting them to JPEG and deleting the RAWs.
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Seriously? You are deleting your RAW files?

RAW is the digital 'negative'. JPG is a print, or as I prefer to say, a polaroid.

In the days of film, would you throw away your negatives after picking up that pack of prints from the drug store? No, of course you wouldn't. So why would you throw away your digital negatives?

In addition to the obvious loss of the original data, in facvor of a baked jpg, as time progresses, the raw converters get better. So in 5 or 10 years time, you may be able to reprocess a raw file from today and obtain a better image than is possible today.

Don't think it can happen? It already has. My raw files from around 2002 to 2005 look so much better when processed with today's raw converters than what was achievable back then. If I had thrown away my raw files, I would never have been able to reprocess them.

In any event, it is your decision, but make sure you think it through carefully.
 
I have four 4 TB drives but I also back up to the cloud. Amazon charges $59 for unlimited storage, I sent them nearly 5 TB. Well worth it. Took three months to upload the initial files but the peace of mind was well worth it.
nofumble said:
My 3TB drive is more than half full. It is filling up fast as I am shooting RAW with a Sony A7Rii.

I am thinking to buy a 5TB to use for a back up for now, and eventually become a replacement.

It's amazing that not long ago I thought 1GB hard drive was over killed.
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BrotherBart said:
It was Neil Van Niekerk that gave this wonderful piece of advice IMHO.
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If it works for you and him that's great, but there are many types of photography, photographers, and end goals for a photo archive. As blanket advice I don't agree, certainly it would frustrate and limit me.
BrotherBart said:
Raw is great when you first download to fix/adjust for mistakes.
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... and lots of other reasons, too.
BrotherBart said:
However, once you have the RAW image corrected there's no reason to keep it as a RAW file save it as a JPEG.
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Perhaps you mean once you have the raw image corrected there's no reason to keep it? People other than you might have a reason. They may want to process it differently, or use it as part of a panorama, or rotate it, or adjust the color for a particular marketing use, or try that new noise filter plugin on an old favorite, or output to a particular print device with a custom ICC profile.
BrotherBart said:
It's not like you're going to take an already adjusted/corrected RAW file and drastically change it so you wished you kept it as RAW.
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Perhaps you mean it's not like you are going to drastically change it? People other than you might. Drastic changes are not the only reason for keeping raw files, even subtle changes benefit from the best source material.
BrotherBart said:
I haven't anyway, but you'll be the better to know.
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Ah, yes. I suppose.
BrotherBart said:
I've been going through my old, already corrected/adjusted RAW images and converting them to JPEG and deleting the RAWs.
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Your enthusiasm for this process tells me you do not see yourself performing any of the tasks listed above, and jpegs will meet all your future needs. The time and effort to do the jpeg conversion might be worth the trouble, but I can't help but wonder how much total space you will be recovering? Will the cost of that storage savings be more or less than the cost of a fine dinner?

I have frequently needed to re-manipulate old shots. Sometimes dramatically. Other people have as well, and still other people haven't, but you'll be the better to know.
 
Reading the replies I just hope that no one has single drive storage, if you do fix it immediately! Backup backup backup!!

I'm using 2 laptops syncing to a 3TB RAID1 NAS running live, then 3TB as time-synced offline backup for the NAS. Triple copies.
 
I plan to, at some time down the road, to have a high resolution image of every atom in the universe :-)

In reality, somewhere around 700 GB - I delete ruthlessly (?) :-)

Regards, Mike

--
Wait and see...
I hardly ever speak for anybody but myself. In the cases where I do mean to speak generally the statements are likely to be marked as such.
 
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