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archiving of digital photos



 
 
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  #11  
Old September 4th 08, 02:47 PM posted to rec.photo.digital
James Silverton
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Posts: 155
Default archiving of digital photos

David wrote on Thu, 04 Sep 2008 12:53:01 GMT:

Keith nuttle wrote:
[]
I have about 10000 pictures currently plus all of the scanned
images that I have collected in my genealogy research. 16000
pictures does not seem that much for some one who was
really involved with photograph.


Been doing digital since 1998 and have more than 31,000
images. Archived on two PCs, two external HDs, and some on
DVDs.



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?


--

James Silverton
Potomac, Maryland

Email, with obvious alterations: not.jim.silverton.at.verizon.not

  #12  
Old September 4th 08, 03:03 PM posted to rec.photo.digital
David J Taylor[_6_]
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Posts: 75
Default archiving of digital photos

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.

Cheers,
David


  #13  
Old September 4th 08, 03:29 PM posted to rec.photo.digital
James Silverton
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Posts: 155
Default archiving of digital photos

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.

As an amateur, I need more than a date to find an image.

--

James Silverton
Potomac, Maryland

Email, with obvious alterations: not.jim.silverton.at.verizon.not

  #14  
Old September 4th 08, 05:59 PM posted to rec.photo.digital
Keith nuttle
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Posts: 93
Default archiving of digital photos

James Silverton wrote:
David wrote on Thu, 04 Sep 2008 12:53:01 GMT:

Keith nuttle wrote:
[]
I have about 10000 pictures currently plus all of the scanned
images that I have collected in my genealogy research. 16000
pictures does not seem that much for some one who was
really involved with photograph.


Been doing digital since 1998 and have more than 31,000
images. Archived on two PCs, two external HDs, and some on
DVDs.



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?


With traditional chemical photograph, both the negative and the printed
photo degraded over time as the chemistry of the negative and photo
paper reacted to the storage environment.

With a digital photograph, the tradition loss of quality of a picture is
not a factor. The quality, resolution, etc. is dependent on each byte
of information recorded. If the bytes can be read you will always have
the original picture.

I index my pictures by year/month/day or year/month/special event/day.
Generally this works well but there are times you one picture of the
boat taken at the lake that shows the tiller. The system can not
provide this information.

In my computer files I have tried to maximize portability. Most of the
photo indexing software that I am aware of puts the image data into a
proprietary databases.
  #15  
Old September 4th 08, 06:07 PM posted to rec.photo.digital
James Silverton
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Posts: 155
Default archiving of digital photos

Keith wrote on Thu, 04 Sep 2008 12:59:15 -0400:

With traditional chemical photograph, both the negative and
the printed photo degraded over time as the chemistry of the
negative and photo paper reacted to the storage environment.


With a digital photograph, the tradition loss of quality of a picture
is not a factor. The quality, resolution, etc. is
dependent on each byte of information recorded. If the bytes
can be read you will always have the original picture.


I'm not sure that it's an all or nothing process. Noise can be
introduced magnetically or physically but I agree that it's better than
trying, however successfully, to restore a color print when that's all
you have.

--

James Silverton
Potomac, Maryland

Email, with obvious alterations: not.jim.silverton.at.verizon.not

  #16  
Old September 4th 08, 06:24 PM posted to rec.photo.digital
Allen[_3_]
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Posts: 649
Default archiving of digital photos

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?

One thing to consider about digital files: data formats and devices
become obsolete over the years. As far as I know, none of the standard
graphic formats have disappeared--yet; but it will happen eventually.
You should think about using a lossless format so that when support for
specific formats start disappearing you can convert your files to newer
formats when indicated. Also don't count on CD or DVD devices to stay
around forever; both devices were developed for entertainment purposes
and those devices might start disappearing. Look at all the different
formats for writing and reading DVDs: DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, etc.
To me, right now it looks like the hard disk has the longest _useful_
life span. I have finally given all my 3.5" diskettes to Goodwill and I
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.
  #18  
Old September 4th 08, 11:29 PM posted to rec.photo.digital
Alan Browne
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Posts: 12,640
Default archiving of digital photos

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.

--
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-- r.p.d.slr-systems: http://www.aliasimages.com/rpdslrsysur.htm
-- [SI] gallery & rulz: http://www.pbase.com/shootin
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  #19  
Old September 4th 08, 11:31 PM posted to rec.photo.digital
Alan Browne
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 12,640
Default archiving of digital photos

Atheist Chaplain wrote:
"ps56k" wrote in message
...
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...

--
-- r.p.e.35mm user resource: http://www.aliasimages.com/rpe35mmur.htm
-- r.p.d.slr-systems: http://www.aliasimages.com/rpdslrsysur.htm
-- [SI] gallery & rulz: http://www.pbase.com/shootin
-- e-meil: Remove FreeLunch.
-- usenet posts from gmail.com and googlemail.com are filtered out.
 




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