Photo storage options

[SpringHeeledJack]

So....the perennial problem of storing the creative outputs of our minds ;-)

I have several small bodied, but large capacity external HD's, variously filled up with folders full of photos and films taken over the last decade. I was mulling using several CD-R/DVD-R's to have a back-up of the back-ups so to say. Not that I'm expecting disasters various, it would be more comforting to know that IF the worst were to happen, at least there would be records of the photos somewhere. Has anyone had experience with large capacity CD/DVD backups ? Any tips appreciated, most of the articles on the web seem to be from yesteryear.

[jimjim1]

large capacity CD/DVD backups ? Any tips appreciated, most of the articles on the web seem to be from yesteryear.

There is no such thing as a large capacity CD or DVD. Well not compared with current USB sticks or heaven forbid disk drives AND they don't last that long in storage although some special long life Blue Ray disks (25GB) are available.

DVD is as I recall 4GB. CD is 0.7GB

Kingston 128GB USB £16.

For archival storage it would be best to check out the longevity of the medium - I think I recall reading that there are problems with recordable disks such as dvd and CD. No idea about Flash (USB drive) or magnetic disks. I suspect for example that Audio tapes are very problematic too and VHS video may be pretty good.

Use good sources for critical decisions.

google - archival digital storage


A couple of randomish articles that may help, I have read them and they don't seem like total nonsense.

https://www.pcworld.com/article/2984597/hard-core-data-preservation-the-best-media-and-methods-for-archiving-your-data.html
https://www.howtogeek.com/356473/how-to-archive-your-data-for-virtually-forever/

[toscana24]

So....the perennial problem of storing the creative outputs of our minds ;-)

I have several small bodied, but large capacity external HD's, variously filled up with folders full of photos and films taken over the last decade. I was mulling using several CD-R/DVD-R's to have a back-up of the back-ups so to say. Not that I'm expecting disasters various, it would be more comforting to know that IF the worst were to happen, at least there would be records of the photos somewhere. Has anyone had experience with large capacity CD/DVD backups ? Any tips appreciated, most of the articles on the web seem to be from yesteryear.

I think that the only solution that is feasible for anyone with many 10s of thousands of digital pix (I have nearly 150k) is to use external hard drives (my latest ones (four) are each of 4TBs). My modus operandi is to keep two sets of the pix (on the 4 HDs) at two different locations and to update them systematically (usually at each month end). It is a bit of a bind but an external drive failed on me earlier this year so having everything duplicated saved the day. I number all my pix with the date (e.g. 190924xxx) but do not keep them in daily etc folders, however, I do keep a spreadsheet summary record showing the daily subjects (e.g. airshow at xyz). That helps find what I am looking for as once you have the date you have most of the name of the photo file.

I have toyed with the idea of cloud storage but concluded that the cost of such storage is prohibitive and the time spent uploading would be too operous.

Hope this helps....

[BirdmanBerry]

We have a Synology NAS at our house mapped on the PC. This then syncs with Google Drive so any photos are uploaded and we therefore have an onsite and offsite backup, and Google Drive allows you to view them on their app.

[compressor stall]

Look at Dropbox for a backup for your backup

[SpringHeeledJack]

Thanks for the suggestions so far. For me 'cloud' storage is a non-starter, mostly due to the bad experiences of others, but I realise that for many that it is the perfect solution. I was considering using larger capacity DVD-R disks (50GB) to store less than 2TB of photos, because they are easy to store/space economical etc, but am aware that the disks degrade after 10 years.

[Specaircrew]

Get a Synology 2 bay NAS, put 2 4TB drives in it so that you've got a backup.

[PJD1]

For me 'cloud' storage is a non-starter, mostly due to the bad experiences of others,

Not sure what those "bad experiences" you refer to are but in terms of data security and safety a good cloud storage solution from a reputable supplier will be by far and away the safest and most secure option. All data storage mediums will fail at some point (it is not a case of if but when) and a commercial data centre should have multiple redundant systems in place to ensure data is not lost in the event of failures. Their firewalls and security measures are likely to be far superior to anything you have on your internet connected devices at home. Also the fact that your backup is in a remote location guards against risks such as fire or flooding, if all your backups are in one location a major disaster could destroy all of them which kind of defeats the point of having a backup.

[BirdmanBerry]

Embrace Cloud but use it in conjunction with offline storage. Everyone will have issues but it could be they didn't do something right and thus had issues.

With our solution we're covered if the house burns down or hard drive fails or if Google go bust (very very unlikely)

[NutLoose]

https://shop.westerndigital.com/en-gb/c/nas-and-cloud-storage

or

https://shop.westerndigital.com/en-gb/products/external-drives/wd-my-book-duo-usb-3-1-hdd#WDBFBE0040JBK-EESN

[India Four Two]

SHJ,

I strongly suggest you take a look at Backblaze. It might change your opinion of cloud storage.

Five dollars a month for unlimited storage. Runs in the background and quietly updates the archive to match your local files.

If disaster strikes, they will ship an external drive to you. For accessing a few files, you can do that online, which is very useful if you are away from your computer. The only potential drawback is that old versions of files are not retained. This is not an issue for me since I use Time Machine on my Mac.

I complement Backblaze by running SuperDuper once a week or so, which updates an external drive containing a bootable clone, which has proved very valuable after a disk failure. There is similar software a available for Windows.

Concerning disk failures, I’ve had three in my career - two spinning disks and one SSD. In the case of the spinning disk failures, there was prior warning in the form of write errors. So the lesson here is that if errors start occurring, replace the disk! If a spinning disk fails, there is usually a chance you can recover some data but with an SSD, there is no chance.

Having a backup online gives me peace of mind when contemplating hardware failures.