How many photos on a DVD and is it a best way to go?

scottie

BWV's= Our Second Home
Joined
Jul 31, 2001
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I was noticing we had approx 12000 pics (and growing) on our computer and figured might be nice to get them off the hard drive and onto dvds instead. I do not currently have a dvd burner in our 7 year old Dell desktop but wouldn’t be opposed to adding one, just not sure which would be compatible. Is this a good option to store our pictures on DVDs instead of the hard drive? How many pictures should I expect to fit on a DVD? I believe most photos were taken on the highest setting on cameras that ranged from 3-6 megapixel.
 


I was noticing we had approx 12000 pics (and growing) on our computer and figured might be nice to get them off the hard drive and onto dvds instead. I do not currently have a dvd burner in our 7 year old Dell desktop but wouldn’t be opposed to adding one, just not sure which would be compatible. Is this a good option to store our pictures on DVDs instead of the hard drive? How many pictures should I expect to fit on a DVD? I believe most photos were taken on the highest setting on cameras that ranged from 3-6 megapixel.

I actually had the exact same dilemma today. My computer is about to crash because I have so little memory due to my pictures and what I did was went out and bought an external dvd-drive. It can record onto 4.7Gb discs, so you can do the math there (4.7Gb/6Mb) and find out how many pictures will fit on there. This way, I can just plug it up into my USB 2.0 port and that's all the installation I need. I'll let you know how it turns out! :thumbsup2
 
I actually had the exact same dilemma today. My computer is about to crash because I have so little memory due to my pictures and what I did was went out and bought an external dvd-drive. It can record onto 4.7Gb discs, so you can do the math there (4.7Gb/6Mb) and find out how many pictures will fit on there. This way, I can just plug it up into my USB 2.0 port and that's all the installation I need. I'll let you know how it turns out! :thumbsup2

Yes, please let me know how it goes!!
 
Most people will advise you that having your pictures in only one location is not a very secure way to go. Whether it is on your hard drive or on DVD, every single type of media will crash/fail at some point. Its not a matter of IF, just a matter of WHEN.

At the minimum, you should probably get both a DVD burner and another hard drive. Make a copy of all your photos on two sets of DVDs. Keep one at the house and another away from home (I keep mine in a drawer at work) in case of fire/flood/etc to your house. Then move the files off your main C drive and put them on the extra hard drive.

Other people can offer more advanced backup techniques, but the above is my opinion of the bare minimum that people should do for photo backups.
 


if buying a dvd burner I'd buy a dual layer burner, dual layer disks hold 8 gig of data rather than 4.7
 
I would find some way to get your pictures backed up if not by yesturday, then at least by 2 days ago!!

You can go several routes. Add a USB 2.0 card to your computer if you haven't already or if the computer doesn't have one. Being that old you might only have a USB 1.1

With a USB 2.0 you get a MUCH MUCH MUCH faster transfer and also get extra power to power what ever you plug into it.

WIth this you can get an external hard drive as additional storage and you can also get an external DVD burner.

I would say get both. Keep the pictures on your hard drive, then also have them on the external hard drive and keep copies in a safe or a saftey deposit box on DVDs. The last thing you want to have happen your computers hard drive to crash and lose all your pictures. Its not a fun experience. I've been there. There are ways for computer experts to retreive your files from a dead HD, but it is expensive and they may not be able to retreive everything.
 
But it has been mentioned here before...

the more data you pack on a DVD the more will be lost when that DVD is damaged or lost, compared to a cd.

But it is very convenient to burn 4 DVDs instead of 16 or more CDs.

Mikeeee
 
If I remove the pictures off my hard drive and move them to DVDs, what is the best program to use to view the photos again? I currently have them all saved the hard drive and view them in Kodak Gallery program on my computer. The Gallery program allows me to view them in different groups such as vacations etc and sort. I would like to be able to pop in the disc and still view photos based on sorted categories such as vacations, sports, etc. but maybe with a different program?
 
what is the best program to use to view the photos again?


I personally use Picasa, which is free from Google. It let's you tag photo's, organize them by subject/date/etc. There may be better tools, but I really like Picasa. I will caveat that by saying that although it does have some photo editting abilities, I don't use it for editting, only for browsing. It also does archiving to DVD/CD.

Take a look at least, the price is right. Just go to Google and search for picasa. I'm interested to see what other's recommend.
 
I use SmugMug as both a backup and as a way to share photos. The price I pay for a yearly fee more than compensates for the price of extra hardware. One of the things that drew me to them is the fact that they tout themselves as a backup solution, replicating your photos on servers located in different locations in the country. If the worst case happens and you lose every machine/disk in your house, you can order your original photos on DVDs from Smugmug.

That said, I prefer a couple of USB harddrives to the DVD or CD solution. I've had far too many home burned discs that eventually become unreadable over time to trust them with data I really want to keep. Harddrive space is cheap these days, so you could maintain one to use on a daily basis and another as a backup. Swapping them out would make sure things are usable. Taking one to work with you (and swapping them out on a regular basis) gives you an off site backup.

Finally, with any backup solution, make sure you test your backups regularly. If you burn/copy or whatever and forget, then go back later to find out that backup is no good, you're out of luck.
 
Irfanview actually has a feature to make a DVD (or CD) slideshow automatically when you put it in a PC, but I haven't played with that.

Re: dual layer. I think you'd have a very hard time finding a burner that won't do dual layer at this point. But I wouldn't recommend dual layer blanks just because they're at least 5x the cost for less than 2x the storage. (about 8.5 vs 4.7.)

Re: DVD vs hard drive - no question, DVD. Hard drives are far less reliable. Plus there's the whole "eggs in one basket thing" - if your hard drive fails completely, you lose all your backups. And chances are that because you're only using it for backups, you won't notice if it's getting bad sectors before it fails completely.

Re: storage. A single-layer DVD actually holds more like 4.35 gigs than 4.7. One of those "different ways of counting" things you hear about. ;)

Re: viewing from CD/DVD. It's really not convenient to view from disc, first off it's slow (especially if you look at one picture long enough for the disc to spin down, then you have to wait for it to spin up again) and there's little organization. I would treat CDs/DVDs as backups and view from the PC. The exception would be making a disc to view on a DVD player that can view JPGs, in which case you'll want to organize your photos in folders.

Re: age... if your PC and hard drive are seven years old, you are definitely on borrowed time! You need to back your stuff up immediately! Yesterday even! :)

If you are even somewhat competent with a screwdriver, you can replace your existing CD/DVD drive with a DVD burner yourself. A quality DVD burner costs all of $30 or so from NewEgg. If you want an external, it will be slightly more - and again, make sure you have USB2. A USB2 add-in card is cheap, like probably $10-15.
 
So can all pictures be transferred automatically to a DVD or do I have to use a program like Nero and make a slide show. That would take forever, since I have over 15000 pictures on my hard drive right now)
 
Most people will advise you that having your pictures in only one location is not a very secure way to go. Whether it is on your hard drive or on DVD, every single type of media will crash/fail at some point. Its not a matter of IF, just a matter of WHEN.

At the minimum, you should probably get both a DVD burner and another hard drive. Make a copy of all your photos on two sets of DVDs. Keep one at the house and another away from home (I keep mine in a drawer at work) in case of fire/flood/etc to your house. Then move the files off your main C drive and put them on the extra hard drive.

Other people can offer more advanced backup techniques, but the above is my opinion of the bare minimum that people should do for photo backups.


I can second that. Just had a external hard drive go south a couple of weeks ago. Luckily I had backups.
 
Re: dual layer. I think you'd have a very hard time finding a burner that won't do dual layer at this point. But I wouldn't recommend dual layer blanks just because they're at least 5x the cost for less than 2x the storage. (about 8.5 vs 4.7.)

.

realistically you should only use gold disks for backing up your photos if you want long term reliability, and they are more expensive than dual layer disks..
 
How do I figure out what DVD burner I can install in my Dell Desktop, in place of the old cd burner or dvd player in the tower now?
 
How do I figure out what DVD burner I can install in my Dell Desktop, in place of the old cd burner or dvd player in the tower now?

I believe that there are only two types (excluding notebook styles). One connects with an SATA connector and the other connects with a PATA connector. Given that you have an "old cd burner", it is very likely to use a PATA (IDE) style connector.

An easier option is to just by an external USB 2.0 drive (assuming that your desktop supports USB 2.0.

realistically you should only use gold disks for backing up your photos if you want long term reliability, and they are more expensive than dual layer disks..

I don't believe that gold disks are necessary. Aluminum and silver based disks are only a concern if they oxidize. Assuming that the disk is well sealed, that shouldn't be a problem. Here is an article on the subject of archival storage using DVDs.
 
Does anybody utilize Flash Drives as part of their backup plan?
 
Does anybody utilize Flash Drives as part of their backup plan?

I use them for in-camera backups. I'm not sure that I would trust them for long-term storage. That's not a typical use, so I don't know if they are designed with that in mind. I have talked to a pro portrait photographer that buys 4 gig CF cards in bulk, shoots JPG, and treats the cards like negatives. It works for him, but I wouldn't do it.
 













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