Archiving & Labeling Photo CDs

How do you archive your Photos? Do you store your Raw files on CD? For
those using DNG, do archive both to CD? Together or to separate discs?
What about the touched up photos; Do you store them together or separately?

How do you label your CDs? What software do you use for labeling? And
what information do you put on the labels?

Is that too many questions? Are there any more that I forgot to ask?

Thanks,
Randy.

Essentially, you try to ensure that in the future, you can easily know in
which DVD you will find what you're looking for. I chose dates and a
title.
Hope this helps,
Marcel

If you have a mainstream database app like MS (Office) Access it's quite
simple to set up a listing of everything you shoot, with date, location,
subject, etc. I've done this for years, with many thousands of images - both
transparencies and digitals. Point its, as you'll be numbering sequentially,
all (i.e. the minimum) you need put on each disk is the number range from
your database. Then, when you search the list to find any image you're after
accessing, the entry (including number) will come up right away.

The advantage of this over photo-specific systems is that the list file
remains small, and the data will always (?) be exportable to other formats
if and when things change.

I back up RAWS plus jpeg previews to CDR (700meg is quite enough to build up
ready for transfer), then make safety copies of these onto DVD. One never
knows...

Good luck.

RM

I use a slick piece of software for color labeling called "Sharpie".
It allows for an almost unlimited number of designs and any font you
care to use, if you have the ability to produce it. The working end of
the Sharpie system is very soft and works quite well.

Hardware labeling system, use as "Ball Point" risk damaging the disks.
The working end is much too hard.

"Sharpie" is reasonably cheap (but unfortunately not freeware) and
widely available. This system works rapidly and requires few computer
resources.

One could consider it an almost "low tech" option.




Randy W. Sims wrote:
How do you archive your Photos? Do you store your Raw files on CD? For
those using DNG, do archive both to CD? Together or to separate discs?
What about the touched up photos; Do you store them together or separately?

How do you label your CDs? What software do you use for labeling? And
what information do you put on the labels?

Is that too many questions? Are there any more that I forgot to ask?

Thanks,
Randy.

Randy W. Sims wrote:
How do you archive your Photos? Do you store your Raw files on CD? For
those using DNG, do archive both to CD? Together or to separate discs?
What about the touched up photos; Do you store them together or separately?

How do you label your CDs? What software do you use for labeling? And
what information do you put on the labels?

I'd contend that CDs (or DVDs) are a poor way to archive photos.
How long do you expect a home-burnt disk to be readable? 10 years? 20
years?
Will you still have the software to read a propriatory RAW format in 20
years time?
The only way to ensure digital data is preserved is to keep copying it
to new media and possibly new file formats. How likely are you to do
that if it involves feeding disk after disk into a reader?
Better to get a decent size hard drive on your PC and a similar size
external removable hard drive for backups. That way when the time
comes to copy that data across you can do it all in one go. Sure it
will take a while but you can just kick off the copy and let it run for
however many hours or days it takes.
A 200GB drive will let you take 5x10MB images every day for 10 years,
why mess around with CDs?

"POHB" wrote in message
oups.com...
Randy W. Sims wrote:
How do you archive your Photos? Do you store your Raw files on CD? For
those using DNG, do archive both to CD? Together or to separate discs?
What about the touched up photos; Do you store them together or
separately?

How do you label your CDs? What software do you use for labeling? And
what information do you put on the labels?

I'd contend that CDs (or DVDs) are a poor way to archive photos.
How long do you expect a home-burnt disk to be readable? 10 years? 20
years?
Will you still have the software to read a propriatory RAW format in 20
years time?
The only way to ensure digital data is preserved is to keep copying it
to new media and possibly new file formats. How likely are you to do
that if it involves feeding disk after disk into a reader?
Better to get a decent size hard drive on your PC and a similar size
external removable hard drive for backups. That way when the time
comes to copy that data across you can do it all in one go. Sure it
will take a while but you can just kick off the copy and let it run for
however many hours or days it takes.


A 200GB drive will let you take 5x10MB images every day for 10 years,
why mess around with CDs?

.... because HD's can go haywire... and you lose all your data
My friend had a problem with his motherboard. It corrupted his HD and
nothing was retrievable.
Marcel

Celcius wrote:
why mess around with CDs?

... because HD's can go haywire... and you lose all your data
My friend had a problem with his motherboard. It corrupted his HD and
nothing was retrievable.

Of course, sooner or later your PC or hard drive *will* fail so you
can't read the disk.
That's why I said...

Better to get a decent size hard drive on your PC and a similar size
external removable hard drive for backups.

Keep the PC's data backed up to the external drive. Then when you get
a new PC to replace the broken one you can quickly restore your files,
much easier from a single hard drive than hundreds of separate CDs. In
fact if your files were backed up to hundreds of CDs you wouldn't
bother to restore them would you? Then you'd only have a single copy,
just the CD with no backup at all.
Also you're more likely to keep decent backups if you can do it with
one click rather than trying to keep track of what you have or haven't
copied to CD and then having to feed lots of disks into the machine.

"Pat" wrote in message
ps.com...
I use a slick piece of software for color labeling called "Sharpie".
It allows for an almost unlimited number of designs and any font you
care to use, if you have the ability to produce it. The working end of
the Sharpie system is very soft and works quite well.

Hey, that's what I use! Are you using version 2.0, or have you tried the
beta Sharpie release?



Hardware labeling system, use as "Ball Point" risk damaging the disks.
The working end is much too hard.

"Sharpie" is reasonably cheap (but unfortunately not freeware) and
widely available. This system works rapidly and requires few computer
resources.

One could consider it an almost "low tech" option.




Randy W. Sims wrote:
How do you archive your Photos? Do you store your Raw files on CD? For
those using DNG, do archive both to CD? Together or to separate discs?
What about the touched up photos; Do you store them together or
separately?

How do you label your CDs? What software do you use for labeling? And
what information do you put on the labels?

Is that too many questions? Are there any more that I forgot to ask?

Thanks,
Randy.

wrote:
The first thing I do after I get home from a shoot is to download my
digital images into an appropriate labeled folder on my hard drive.
Next I burn a CD-R or a DVD-R or DVD+R. (Do not archive to a CD-RW or a
DVD-RW.) Then I open Photoshop Bridge and start to process the images.

Do keep in mind that the most vulnerable part of a CD or DVD to
chemical attack is the TOP! Do not use a Sharpie or a felt tip pen. Do
not use a self stick lable in that it to can chemically damage the thin
protective lawer on the top of the CD or DVD.

Is this true? I picked up a pack of Memorex labels which I planned to
use with the SureThing software included to print out some labels for
the CDs. Will they really damage the CD or is it more theoretical
possibility? I did a brief search but only found something about labels
not put on can cause them to shatter in high speed readers???

Thanks,
Randy.

For labeling the CD or DVD, use a special marking pen made by Delkin
under the name of eFilm. It is a solvent free black pen made just for
archived CD and DVDs.

When burning a CD or DVD, run at a slower speed so as to asure a "deep"
pit. For really important work, special CD and DVDs that use gold as
opposed to an aluminum substrate are desirable. They are also made by
Delkin and found at B&H. Also other brands are available at
datamediastore.com.

Use the same procedure for your finished images. However, save them as
TIFF or PSD files as apposed to JPEGs. Even though a JPEG will not lose
any detail on the CD, it will on your HD. Every time you open a JPEG
and resave it, compression losses occur.

Hope this helps.

wrote:
I'd contend that CDs (or DVDs) are a poor way to archive photos.
How long do you expect a home-burnt disk to be readable? 10 years? 20
years?
Will you still have the software to read a propriatory RAW format in 20
years time?
The only way to ensure digital data is preserved is to keep copying it
to new media and possibly new file formats. How likely are you to do
that if it involves feeding disk after disk into a reader?
Better to get a decent size hard drive on your PC and a similar size
external removable hard drive for backups. That way when the time
comes to copy that data across you can do it all in one go. Sure it
will take a while but you can just kick off the copy and let it run for
however many hours or days it takes.
A 200GB drive will let you take 5x10MB images every day for 10 years,
why mess around with CDs?

You need to do your homework! Done properly, A CD or DVD will last 100+
years.

Gene

there is no way i would trust a hard disk as a backup. thats why they
make raid boxes. i want a format where the data is stored external to
the machine which is what dvd gives me. also, the fact that dvd, once
written cannot be erased is reassuring. dont use DVD rw as somebody
already mentioned.

wrote:

I'd contend that CDs (or DVDs) are a poor way to archive photos.


You need to do your homework! Done properly, A CD or DVD will last 100+
years.

Gene

Tell the 100 year story to my daughter, whose many CDs full of music
which she custom burned from her pre-recorded music collection are now
unreadable!!!

--wilt