Question: Backing massive amounts of photos to DVD (best program)?

[Lachesis00]

I need to back up 9 years of digital photos. I'd like to back them up to DVD. Is there a way to mass do this (like it will say "insert new DVD" when the DVD is full?).

I believe we have appx 100 gigs of photos to back up. I have them on 3 computers plus an external drive, but I really want to get them on DVD. Any suggestions?

 

[handicap18]

I use NeroBurning when I burn my pics to DVD. As you add pictures/folders to what you want burned it tells you how much space you have left on that particular disk. Very easy to use.

 

[Lachesis00]

I swear "back in the day" I had a program that would fill a CD, burn it and tell me to insert a new CD to continue. What program it was I have no clue.

I am just lazy I guess LOL. 100 gigs is a lot

 

[orchjoe]

I would consider breaking them into into categories (like birthday's) and keeping the folders around 4-4.3 GB to fill on 1 single layer DVD.

Since a lot of the newer programs won't let you burn a disk if you have too much information to put on it.

Do you already have a program to burn dvd's? If you don't you should be able to find a free one at www.download.com

 

[Groucho]

For that kind of burning, you probably want an actual backup program. The Nero suite includes one, that'll burn until the disc is full then prompt for another. However, your discs will continue a Nero backup volume, not regular photos that you can just copy back yourself. If you're willing to live with this restriction, that is an option.

 

[Lachesis00]

Stupid question but can you elaborate a little more. I understand back up programs, but your implying the format might change?

That is exactly what I want, prompt me for a new DVD.

For that kind of burning, you probably want an actual backup program. The Nero suite includes one, that'll burn until the disc is full then prompt for another. However, your discs will continue a Nero backup volume, not regular photos that you can just copy back yourself. If you're willing to live with this restriction, that is an option.

 

[MarkBarbieri]

I use ArchiveCreator.

* It spans multiple DVDs if you're backing up a lot of photos.
* It builds an index (with thumbnails) and writes it to all disks.
* It's really easy to use.
* It understands RAW photos and can create thumbnails from them.

 

[handicap18]

I would consider breaking them into into categories (like birthday's) and keeping the folders around 4-4.3 GB to fill on 1 single layer DVD.

Since a lot of the newer programs won't let you burn a disk if you have too much information to put on it.

Do you already have a program to burn dvd's? If you don't you should be able to find a free one at www.download.com

I keep my photo files in order I take them. I don't change the original file name the camera gives it. I keep my folder by year. Then I basically just drag and drop each years folder onto a DVD.

I recently started keeping 2nd folder in each year for edited pictures. I always keep the original and do a save as, changing the file name by adding a 1 or a at the end.

When I first went digital I would seperate everything into categories, birthday, x-mas, halloween, misc, etc... Then I ended up with way to many folders and had trouble getting to pic's quickly. I don't know why I did it this way, because when I got my prints back with film everything went into the photo album in order the pictures were taken.

If there are to many image files in 1 folder to burn onto 1 DVD (happened to me with last years pics) I'll cut it off by month. So for 2006 pictures I have 2 DVD. 1 from Jan to Sept and 1 from Oct to Dec.

 

[Lachesis00]

Mark right on! My husband wants to know if this will back up to DVD? The website says just CD?

If I do this, could I (in theory) send you a DVD or 3? Can you easily look at them? YK? I am going to buy this when ever MY computer is fixed (some creep flipped the power breakers outside and messed up my windows). Wouldn't be a big deal but I do not have a boot CD and my copy of Windows is on the F drive which I can't get to VERY frustrating.

I use ArchiveCreator.

* It spans multiple DVDs if you're backing up a lot of photos.
* It builds an index (with thumbnails) and writes it to all disks.
* It's really easy to use.
* It understands RAW photos and can create thumbnails from them.

 

[Groucho]

Stupid question but can you elaborate a little more. I understand back up programs, but your implying the format might change?

That is exactly what I want, prompt me for a new DVD.

What a backup program will do is create its own archive format on the disc. When you look at the DVD with Windows Explorer, you'll either see one single file, or nothing. You won't see the actual picture files. To get a picture file off, you'd need to load the backup program, look at the index, pick out the file(s) you want to recover, and it'll prompt you which disc to insert, then pull those files out. Think of it as a giant zip file.

Glancing at Archive Creator's page, it's not clear if it also is creating one single file that the photos are stored inside of, or if it is burning the photos directly. It does look like the index takes up an awful lot of space, like 18% of your disc.

 

[disneyfan2]

2 simple questions-\\

1)-Having both DVD's & CD's, which is better to back up on. (I know the DVD will hold more pics)

2)-once you back up pics, do you delete them from your hard drive to make room. I have 1000's of pic on my computer but would like to clear my system once they are backed up. Is this wise?

 

[bostran1]

It looks like this won't apply to you, but for those of you who use Macs, iPhoto will automatically backup your library to DVD.

On the windows side, I'm sure there arae photo organizing programs out there that will back up to DVD too (I used to used Picasa, but I haven't used it in years so I don't know if it backs up).

If you're doing 100 gigs, you may want to investigate external hard drives. That way, you can keep the pictures on your computer and do a full backup whenever you want to.

As with any backup of important files like pictures, be sure to keep the back up somewhere other than next to the computer (preferabely a different building in a different location) just in case anything happens.

 

[MarkBarbieri]

Mark right on! My husband wants to know if this will back up to DVD? The website says just CD?

If I do this, could I (in theory) send you a DVD or 3? Can you easily look at them? YK? I am going to buy this when ever MY computer is fixed (some creep flipped the power breakers outside and messed up my windows). Wouldn't be a big deal but I do not have a boot CD and my copy of Windows is on the F drive which I can't get to VERY frustrating.

I use this to backup to DVD all the time. It works very well. If I backed up 3 DVD's worth of RAW & JPG files, you could send them to someone and this is what they would see:

3 disks, each of which has a mini-website that lists all of the pictures on all of the disks. This way, if you put in disk one and find the picture your want, you can see that it's on disk 3. The website shows the disk number, path, filename, and a thumbnail for every picture (including the RAW pictures).

You can download a demo version to see if it does what you want.

 

[MarkBarbieri]

1)-Having both DVD's & CD's, which is better to back up on. (I know the DVD will hold more pics)

DVD's. They hold more. There's nothing really wrong with CD's, but they don't have any advantages I can think of. If you tend to use 512 meg cards and don't shoot very often, they are probably OK. For most people, it's cheaper and easier to just use DVDs.

2)-once you back up pics, do you delete them from your hard drive to make room. I have 1000's of pic on my computer but would like to clear my system once they are backed up. Is this wise?

Why? If they are slowing down your machine, you should organize them in a way where that doesn't happen. If you are running out of space, that's another story. You either have to make more space or something has to go.

I use computers for a living and think they are really cool, but I don't trust them. Try not to rely on having one copy of any picture because you never know when that copy will go over to the dark side. Copy them to DVD even if you do leave them on your machine. If you are taking them off your machine, copy them to two DVDs in case one of them goes bad on you.

My recommendation is that you back up all of your images to multiple DVDs and store one offsite (at your office, friends house, Fort Knox, whatever). Once you copy them from your camera to your computer, don't erase them from your camera until you've made copies onto two physically different devices (a second hard drive or a DVD).

If you're doing 100 gigs, you may want to investigate external hard drives. That way, you can keep the pictures on your computer and do a full backup whenever you want to.

If you really want to get fancy, get a RAID NAS instead of an external hard drive. You can set it up so that any computer on your network can access it. It can also be set up with several hard drives and if any one of them fails, you don't lose anything. It's not a very cheap option, but it's pretty easy and very effective. Even with the redundant hard drives, it's still not good enough as a single backup. You could accidentally overwrite your files, get flooded, hit by lightning, robbed, or get smacked by space debris. You just never know.

 

[manning]

I use two Seagate external hard drives. I use the automatic backup feature on the second one. As I am downloading pictures on the first drive it is automatically loading it into the second one.

 

[Cricket2]

I have an SDLT for archives but I'm weird like that.