Storing electronic pictures

[kami333]

WTB Jaz drive.

i wonder if i still have that Syquest SparQ drive boxed away. 1gb disks were so amazing back in the day. ;_;

I've got both, even a Hi-MD drive at my parents. I figure in another 50years I'll be able to sell them for shit tons of money to someone looking to restore from an old backup🙂

 

[Mark R]

1. Use at least 2 different methods of storing the data, stored on 2 separate sites.
(e.g. BD-R discs/DVD-R discs stored at home, and a hard drive stored in a bank safety deposit box)

This protects against environmental problems, and provides some defence against defective media, or media which shows premature aging.

Remember to use good media and handle it carefully. I recently found some old backup CD-Rs I burned in 1997 and 1998. These discs were kept in jewel cases on a shelf, and were on good quality media (Mitsui OEM). In 2011, every single disc was in perfect condition and fully readable. By contrast, some of the cheap CDRs I used to make mixCDs for my car disintegrated and fell to pieces within 1 year (a combination of poor quality media and poor quality storage - i.e. pouches rather than jewel cases which contact the discs and damage the surface, and extremes of temperature and humidity)

2. Use some form of data integrity protection (for example PAR2 file sets, or use a WinRAR archive with recovery recoord activated). I protect all my photo archive using PAR2 files produced with multipar, on a month-by-month (or quarter-by-quarter, if I've been idle) basis.

If I'm burning DVDs - and I've got a 10 GB folder for archiving (which needs 2 and a bit discs), I'll set multipar up to fill the entire spare space of the 3rd disc with parity and recovery data.

Make sure you include a copy of the exact software that you were using on the discs, so there is no difficulty in getting hold of it, should the data be corrupted and need repair.

3. Periodically test your backups and/or "rejuvenate" them onto new media

This serves 3 purposes:
1. It ensures that the media isn't degrading
2. By periodically copying the data onto new media technology, you avoid the problem of being unable to read obsolete media (as well as mitigating the effects of aging). Again, if you do this, you need to make sure that you verify the integrity protection technology that you chose when you prepared the media (and then potentially switch to a new integrity protection technology for the new media).
3. It also allows you to check that your file types aren't getting obsolete. Files like JPG, TIFF and PNG aren't going anywhere. But be very, very careful with digital camera RAW files. These proprietary formats change frequently from generation of camera to generation, and you can't rely on future software to support "obsolete" cameras.

(At work we had some medical images archived. These had been compressed using 'lossless JPEG', which had been considered to be a good idea at the time (early 90s). We got the files back off deep archive - but there was a problem. Nothing could read the files (file format not supported error). All the current medical image viewing software refused to touch them, even the 10 year old software system installed at a nearby hospital couldn't read them (lossless JPEG not supported). I got a hex editor out and extracted the JPEG data out of the medical file containers. Nope. Still nothing would touch it. Photoshop, Paint shop pro, GIMP - I tried everything. Nothing could read these 'lossless JPEG' files. I couldn't even find source code for the lossless JPEG algorithm (yes, I went that far). In the end, we found a software consultant who knew which software packages could read them, and we found a hospital with the software who was able to uncompress the files.

So, this is a word of warning about "lossless JPEG" which was an open standard file format (albeit an obscure one, and nothing remotely similar to the more common "lossy JPEG" which has become so dominant), which less than 20 years after it was used, was virtually impossible to decode.

Another example: at work we have used magneto-optical discs for data archiving for legal purposes for many years. We started with 650 MB discs about 15 years ago and gradually upgraded to 9.2 GB over the years as technology progressed. The drives were all "fully backwards compatible". However, when we had to pull data from deep archive, we found that the 650 MB and 1.3 GB discs were extremely flaky in the 5.2 and 9.2 GB drives - some not reading at all. Thankfully, at that time, it was still possible to find good condition 1.3 GB drives second hand - although now, if that drive failed, it would be a major challenge to recover data on the deep archive.

 

[bhanson]

SmugMug is pretty well suited for this. They've been around a while and have a good reputation.

 

[bobdole369]

Then what do you suggest?

It seems to me the only "real" way to store your images is to have them printed out, and have offsite storage. Between my wife and I, we take an average of 20,000 pictures a year, plus or minus a few.

But as it stands right now, I will stay with external drives, DVDs and printing out some of my images.

Except that unless you print at a professional shop (read actual photo lab that uses wet process - think of the lab where you used to take wedding film)- you won't have much more than 5-10 years out of prints before they yellow, and you better put them out of the sun, the walmart 1 hour photo doesn't use UV resistant inks.

SATA has been here for a while, but I've already had a situation where a server PS failed and were unable to get the data off of a PATA drive on-site. When was PATA phased out? I didn't think it was, but none of the machines at the site there had a connector except that one. So will you be able to plug in to SATA in 20 years? I don't think you will. USB is today's PS/2 port. NTFS or HPFS are today's formats but again - what will be around to read it in 20 years?

The best approach is to do what companies do - spread it around. Don't bet on a single tech, use 2 or more methods of backup. I mirror databases to another hot-backup, which is copied offsite to a machine in a datacenter. We also do weekly USB HDD backups and a nightly differential to a big flash drive.

So a combo of really important stuff (those you would think to print) on USB or a couple of USB's and store offsite. Do local backups to other systems you use every day, and use dedicated eSATA HDD's that you rotate out at a bank vault or mom's house.

1. Multiple media types, multiple interfaces.
2. most important stuff saved on the most reliable medium, and most likely to exist in 20 years tech.
3. Offsite saves a majority of your stuff from everything besides a city-wide or larger disaster.

I think the idea of using something like tapes is just not feasible for this. it works in enterprise because they can afford it and the time needed, though often we use stuff like dedicated backup servers with redundant drives now.

 

[darkxshade]

Back it up on Facebook... it's the ONLY way to go. 😉