Tips and Tricks: Getting Around
Archiving Your Work
It's easy to become complacent about how safe your digital photos are, especially if you used to shoot film. It's rare for non-professional photographers to really worry about losing their photos. However, digital photos are much easier to lose than actual film pictures. Even if a dropped Coke drenches a photo album, you've probably got the negatives stored somewhere, right? But what happens if your hard drive crashes - a much more common occurrence, right?
Many professional photographers have redundant backup systems - photos on two separate hard drives, backups on DVD that are stored at an off-site location, maybe even data tape backups. Their livelihood relies on their images - why should yours be any different? Even if you make prints of your images, you should setup a system to backup your images - even if your house is, God forbid, burned down or flooded, you'll still have all your photos.
Hard Drives
I suggest keeping all your photos on a separate hard drive from your system drive - that will mean less wear on the drive. It should also be a newer drive - less than three or four years old. Hard drives are mechanical, and even the best eventually fail. This should be your primary means of storage - once you've copied all the images from your memory card to the hard drive, check and make sure they made it ok, then wipe your memory card.
One option is to have a second hard drive as a backup. External hard drives are becoming increasingly more affordable, and are very convenient. You don't need to open your computer, or worry about configuring anything. Just plug it into an outlet, and into your computer, and you're good to go! The disadvantage is that being stored at the same location as your primary storage, it's susceptible to the same dangers your primary hard drive are - disasters, etc.
Optical Media
As backup, CDs or DVDs are hard to beat in the value category. They offer the largest space at the least cost, and nearly everyone has a CD or DVD burner now. Go with name-brand discs - I have had great experience with Verbatim and Ritek. The cheaper discs use lower-quality coatings on the data surface, and may not last as long. There is quite a bit of debate regarding the longevity of optical media (CDs and DVDs). Some estimates range to as short as 5 years. One solution to this is to regularly restore your backups and record them to new media. The backups should be stored in a cool, dry location, out of direct sunlight, and not subjected to extreme changes of temperature.
For myself, I have copies of all images (both original, non-touched and cleaned/modified) stored on two PC's here. I perform monthly backups to an alternative local disk drive. I also burn copies to DVD that are to be stored at relatives houses and even the banks safety deposit box (which can be quite limiting due to size of the box in order to fit multiple DVD's in). The DVDs used are archive-quality for longevity.
Online
The third option is to store your photos with an online backup service. This is basically a server you connect to and upload your files to. The downside is that if you don't have a pretty speedy connection to the Internet, it can take a long while to upload a decent amount of photos. The advantages include low cost per space, and it's automatically away from your location. For example, SmugMug offers unlimited photo storage for $39.95 a year. They keep four backup copies in three different states - it doesn't get much more secure than that!
It's easy to become complacent about how safe your digital photos are, especially if you used to shoot film. It's rare for non-professional photographers to really worry about losing their photos. However, digital photos are much easier to lose than actual film pictures. Even if a dropped Coke drenches a photo album, you've probably got the negatives stored somewhere, right? But what happens if your hard drive crashes - a much more common occurrence, right?
Many professional photographers have redundant backup systems - photos on two separate hard drives, backups on DVD that are stored at an off-site location, maybe even data tape backups. Their livelihood relies on their images - why should yours be any different? Even if you make prints of your images, you should setup a system to backup your images - even if your house is, God forbid, burned down or flooded, you'll still have all your photos.
Hard Drives
I suggest keeping all your photos on a separate hard drive from your system drive - that will mean less wear on the drive. It should also be a newer drive - less than three or four years old. Hard drives are mechanical, and even the best eventually fail. This should be your primary means of storage - once you've copied all the images from your memory card to the hard drive, check and make sure they made it ok, then wipe your memory card.
One option is to have a second hard drive as a backup. External hard drives are becoming increasingly more affordable, and are very convenient. You don't need to open your computer, or worry about configuring anything. Just plug it into an outlet, and into your computer, and you're good to go! The disadvantage is that being stored at the same location as your primary storage, it's susceptible to the same dangers your primary hard drive are - disasters, etc.
Optical Media
As backup, CDs or DVDs are hard to beat in the value category. They offer the largest space at the least cost, and nearly everyone has a CD or DVD burner now. Go with name-brand discs - I have had great experience with Verbatim and Ritek. The cheaper discs use lower-quality coatings on the data surface, and may not last as long. There is quite a bit of debate regarding the longevity of optical media (CDs and DVDs). Some estimates range to as short as 5 years. One solution to this is to regularly restore your backups and record them to new media. The backups should be stored in a cool, dry location, out of direct sunlight, and not subjected to extreme changes of temperature.
For myself, I have copies of all images (both original, non-touched and cleaned/modified) stored on two PC's here. I perform monthly backups to an alternative local disk drive. I also burn copies to DVD that are to be stored at relatives houses and even the banks safety deposit box (which can be quite limiting due to size of the box in order to fit multiple DVD's in). The DVDs used are archive-quality for longevity.
Online
The third option is to store your photos with an online backup service. This is basically a server you connect to and upload your files to. The downside is that if you don't have a pretty speedy connection to the Internet, it can take a long while to upload a decent amount of photos. The advantages include low cost per space, and it's automatically away from your location. For example, SmugMug offers unlimited photo storage for $39.95 a year. They keep four backup copies in three different states - it doesn't get much more secure than that!