best way to store digital photos

[Momof6]

This has probably been asked before -
What is the best way(s) to store digital photos? CDs or DVDs? Any brand you can recommend?
Thank you SO much!
denise

 

[safetymom]

Whatever you choose you should make two copies. Also every couple of years you should reburn them to new cds. Also if they come out with a new storage media you should reburn all your images to that.

 

[Anewman]

Thing is that the word "BEST" is always subjective...

For some "best" in this question might equal safe, while for others it might mean convenient. While I do agree that multiple copies stored at different locations on DVDs might be near the top of the SAFE list, I find implementation of such a back up plan very often fails because it is not very convenient, at least in my own personal experience.

I currently have all of my RAW image files on
2 networked computers, simple transfer.
1 external drive dedicated to images only, only powered up for transfer.
1 external drive that is used for everything, always on.
1 digital foci photo safe, pretty much an other external hard drive but tis the size of an IPOD(1st gen). This is kept in our evacuation briefcase(inside safe).

Yes all of my back ups are on HARD DRIVES which will all eventually fail, BUT I am confident they will not all fail at once.

 

[thefirebuilds]

Some kind of physical, non volatile memory would be best.

Personally I use CDs, but CDs are subject to degradation (so are DVDs), and physical damage. In my opinion CDs are better because they hold less material so if you lose one you lose a lot less data than a DVD might hold.

That said, do as the others suggest and reburn your stuff. I keep my stuff online, uncompressed, and I have a network drive with a RAID pair of mirrored SCSI hard drives.

 

[Melissa_E]

What ever you do, do it OFTEN!!!! I knew my laptop was about to die so I've been getting all of my photos off of it. It died last night and DH was about to pull off the last bit in safe mode.

 

[PolyGuy]

One could also keep backups on Flickr or Photobucket.

 

[Groucho]

Redundancy is key. I like DVDs because 1) they're cheaper per meg (significantly so) and 2) I'd have a huge pile of CDs if I wanted to store all my photos on them! Even more so since I shoot raw now.

I burn them to two discs, one that I keep loose with other backup discs, and one that goes in the fire safe. I always tell Nero to verify after burning, to make sure that the discs are 100% error-free, at least to start with.

I also am trying to keep them on one of my other PCs that I use as a NAS box, but disk space is an issue there, too!

Keeping them on multiple hard drives is better than just one, but I'd want at least one copy on DVD no matter what. If you're really paranoid, create something like PAR files or SFV files for the DVD's photos, so you can easily check to make sure that each file is error-free in the future. Check every year or so, then rest easily.

 

[alan]

In my case, there are three copies

- on the PC's hard drive
- a LinkStation external drive. I back up to it every night using Microsoft's SyncToy (well worth googling for if you're looking at backups)
- off-site backup at http://www.mozy.com - well worth US$100 for two years of online backup

regards,
/alan