Question about backing up completed jobs --

Does anyone here archive older jobs strictly on external Hard drives, rather than DVDs? When you complete a job, or your internal drives fills up, do you offload all the material to an external drive and file away that drive, or do you burn to DVDs, or both?

Even though 500GB drives can now be had for around $99, DVDs are still cheaper per GB... but each job (with RAW files, PSDs, slideshows, etc) can span across several DVDs, and there's the time involved in burning them.

Just curious what approaches people are taking to this.

Steve

Right now I'm backing up on both an external and a dvd cuz it's what I have. I'd like to just back up on 2 externals, I think it would be less hassle but another photographer told me back ups should be on 2 different types of devices. Not sure what the pros and cons are to that. They say that using a sharpie on a dvd disk can ruin data in the long run so I've been labeling the dvd paper jacket which is a hassle too (besides burning the disk). There just isn't a real quick solution I guess.

I also do both external drives and DVD's. Memory is cheap nowadays and I am anal retentive about clients work so I still do both. I am actually planning on getting a safety deposit box tomorrow to keep the RAW files on DVD's off site. Right now I keep them in a fire safe but as our business grows I like the idea of off site storage.

HD's and DVD's for a year or two, then DVD's only.

I'd like to get a large enough safe (fire proof) to be able to hold an external drive plus the disks. I have a small safe but small enough to be carried off and not enough room for important paper work and the back-ups, lol.

Not only am I concerned about burglary but also of fire of which I've experienced.

I back up on both. HD is at my apartment and the dvds are at the bank of the parents. haha (Much cheaper than a real safety deposit box )

Thanks, everyone.

So it sounds like some of you will be keeping a growing stack of external drives, along with DVDs? Let's say each event equals 15-20GB: RAW files, edited unflattened Photoshop files, JPEGS, Slideshow, etc. So, that's about 20-30 events archived onto a 500GB external drive. And then, you file that drive away -- as well have DVDs burned of the events on those drives.

Over time, you'll eventually have a big collection of external hard drives in safe storage?

Oh, forgot to say I don't back up the RAW files on dvd, only the edited jpgs. I keep the RAW files in the external for about a year then just leave the jpgs. Cuts way down on my space.

Same here as everyone so far. HD's and DVD's. The DVD's are kept off site. I burn all the original files to DVD and then another set of the final images.

I just invested in a NAS with two 4TB towers that are RAIDed at 2GB each. One is the main backup off my computer hard drive and the other is a mirror of the backup. I can replace the HD's when they are full and store them as well and start again with new HD's.

I tend to be very afraid and anal about filed and losing the, after heariing stories from other people.

This isn't my dream storage system, but it will get me through next year and then i can see what I need to do.

But I think multiple types of media is the way to go, at least for now.

I think I'm the opposite of a lot of people. I jut don't trust disc media (in the sense of discs I create myself). I use Lacie d2 drives in a RAID 1 configuration setup with Disk Utility. Once the two mirrored drives become full, I keep one and take the other to my mom's house. This works well for me and it's a pretty quick way to archive. I'm thinking about setting it up so that the mirrored drives are always at her house and I can mirror them from my own...a friend of a friend who works as a Abercrombie and Fitch server IT recommended this as a little more cautious method.

Thanks all. This gives me some ideas.

Dustin, I imagine when you take out your full mirrored drive to bring to your mom's for strorage and keep the other for yourself, that you then just buy two new blank hard drive and drop it in your mirrored setup? All ready for your next set of projects

I burn DVD's of the raw files straight from the cards. My reason is it's a non-magnetic storage. In theory, a large electrical charge - like a lightning bolt - hitting near your storage location - will put off a huge magnetic wave which can do bad things. Optical disks have their own limits but generally as long as you don't melt it, crack it, or scratch it, it's a solid backup. I also don't mark the front of my disks with markers. Probably over-kill, but it's worth that extra step to me. Everything else is HD backups though - all the edits and such.

I've aslo got a 500GB drive which archive just the final edited Jpeg's and keep that off site. You can fit a LOT of jpeg's on a 500GB drive. My whole life's work at this point and it's just about full.


Good question. I dont' think there's enough serious consideration for backups in general... until it's too late that is.

+1

Use both, actually back up two dvd's of finals. one that i store and one at my parents off site safe.

i do this with personal photos as well.

Yeah, I think my problem is I'm keeping:

1. original RAWS
2. unflattened edited Photoshop files (with curves, levels, touchups, etc.)
3. and flattened edited high resolution JPEGS

I guess that's why each event takes up a lot of storage, so I may need to re-evaluate if I want to archive on both DVD and Hard Drive. Otherwise, I'll be going through hard drives fairly fast if I want to keep all 3 I would think.

Steve, When downloading, I save the original RAW files to two hard drives and burn DVDs for backup.

After processing the RAWs and converting to jpegs in Lightroom, I replace the original RAW files on the external backup hard drive with the corrected RAW files and their side-car XMPs. Because you cannot change a RAW file, you now have both the original RAW file and the modified RAW file (because of the XMP file).

After finalizing the jpeg files, I save the final photos in the same folder (Jones_Wedding_20071208) as the modified RAW files. I then burn DVDs of the final jpeg photos, and store them at my Mother-in-Law's house.

This cut my storage needs by more than half (I used to save the unflattened PSDs too - almost never used them!).

I do like Dustin's idea of mirroring 2 hard drives, and storing one off-site. I do not have total faith in burned media after reading about CD & DVD disk life-spans in storage; it's frightening! Burned DVDs have an even shorter life-span than CDs.

Buy the best quality disk media you can find.

Ken

I haven't used DVDs for a while now. I have a Mac Pro so it's easy to change drives in and out: when I get home from a wedding, the files get copied to both drives. One is the drive I work off of when I edit, make the slideshow, etc...and the other just sits there for now.

Then when I upload my images to my online lab, once I know the upload is complete I erase the old version of the folder on the 2nd drive and copy the new version (which includes ratings of images on the raw files, plus the categorized folder of jpgs) onto the 2nd drive in it's place. Then I erase the copy on drive 1--so now I have one complete copy of all raws and other files on HD, and one offsite copy of the most important stuff (the edited, corrected JPGs) in permanent storage on god knows how many redundant servers in different states, via my online lab.

The place where I am most vulnerable here is the few weeks between wedding and upload, when both copies of the images are on HDs. I guess its possible both could fail and be unrecoverable...although I hear this is rare. It's SUCH a pain to burn DVDs though...I shoot enough to need about 7 of them to fit a whole wedding. When will they come out with hi capacity dvds?

When I went to LA for Thanksgiving, it was the first time both hubby and I and the dogs had been gone at the same time since I started doing this in earnest. We live in a reasonably nice neighborhood, but I still had a mini freakout about what would happen if we were robbed-- I had 2 recent weddings that were not yet uploaded to offsite storage...so I took my computer apart and went around the house the night before, hiding drives in random places (the spice rack, the rag cupboard, etc...)

Well you can't use those hiding places anymore now that you posted this!

You could have just brought the second drive on your trip, dropped it at a friend's house or even left it in your car.

Personally, I used two firewire drives. One on-site, one off-site. Having used a drive array at my day job for over ten years, I have never seen two drives die at exactly the same time, so I feel comfortable with this arrangement.

But a little voice in my head has been telling me lately to burn the RAWs & xmps to DVD as well. I need a burner faster than 4x though. It takes forever this way because the drive doesn't always burn at the rated speed.

I just bought an external LG burner at newegg.com for about $65, and it's super fast (24x) and includes lightscribe too. I was surprised how cheap they were, and this was by far not the cheapest one--there were some for $35+.

We archive the final RAW and Jpeg images to a hard drive raid and the final JPEGs to a dvd to place in the client's folder. We don't archive the raw files to discs because of size and the fact that we honestly won't need them years down the road.

The Raid is backed up off-site every week.

Awesome advice, thanks all. It's been educational, and I can see how workflow and archiving go hand in hand. As hard drives become cheaper, it seems less and less of us will go the route of DVDs for archiving, because of the time involved and piecemeal nature of backing up a big project to DVD.