How pros archive their photos?

A friend of mine who shoots wedding photos asked me this questions and
not being a pro myself I gave the standard common methods like backing
up in external hard disk enclosures, and burning multiple copies on DVD
disks, but I am not sure if this is what pros do.

I was wondering if you are a pro photographer how you normally archive
your work and your clients' images? How long you plan to keep the
archives?

Thanks in advance

Hitchkas wrote:
I was wondering if you are a pro photographer how you normally archive
your work and your clients' images? How long you plan to keep the
archives?

Thanks in advance

I make a CD of every camera download. After every 5 CDs I make a DVD.
This seems to fit my style. I store the CDs and DVDs in a safe place. I
only keep about 10 downloads on the HD. Some exception to the latter. I
also have 3 PCs to use if needed for printing.

Bob AZ

"Hitchkas" wrote in message
ps.com...
A friend of mine who shoots wedding photos asked me this questions and
not being a pro myself I gave the standard common methods like backing
up in external hard disk enclosures, and burning multiple copies on DVD
disks, but I am not sure if this is what pros do.

I was wondering if you are a pro photographer how you normally archive
your work and your clients' images? How long you plan to keep the
archives?

Thanks in advance

CD or DVD, plus a further backup on an external HD. 300G has gotten so
cheap, there's little reason not to.

--
Skip Middleton
www.shadowcatcherimagery.com

On Tue, 22 Aug 2006 19:46:19 -0700, "SkipM"
wrote:

"Hitchkas" wrote in message
ups.com...
A friend of mine who shoots wedding photos asked me this questions and
not being a pro myself I gave the standard common methods like backing
up in external hard disk enclosures, and burning multiple copies on DVD
disks, but I am not sure if this is what pros do.

I was wondering if you are a pro photographer how you normally archive
your work and your clients' images? How long you plan to keep the
archives?

Thanks in advance

CD or DVD, plus a further backup on an external HD. 300G has gotten so
cheap, there's little reason not to.

I do something similar, I backup to an external drive, and then also
to DVDs.

jc

--

"The nice thing about a mare is you get to ride a lot
of different horses without having to own that many."
~ Eileen Morgan of The Mare's Nest, PA

A friend of mine who shoots wedding photos asked me this questions and
not being a pro myself I gave the standard common methods like backing
up in external hard disk enclosures, and burning multiple copies on DVD
disks, but I am not sure if this is what pros do.

I was wondering if you are a pro photographer how you normally archive
your work and your clients' images? How long you plan to keep the
archives?

Everything is stored on two separate computers, one local, the other a RAID5
backup server (RAID5 is such that a single disk can fail and you still have
all your data, but if two disks fail...). Anything important is further
archived to DVD.

--Mike-- Chain Reaction Bicycles
www.ChainReactionBicycles.com

Ace wrote:


Hitchkas wrote:
I was wondering if you are a pro photographer how you normally archive
your work and your clients' images? How long you plan to keep the
archives?

Thanks in advance

I make a CD of every camera download. After every 5 CDs I make a DVD.
This seems to fit my style. I store the CDs and DVDs in a safe place. I
only keep about 10 downloads on the HD. Some exception to the latter. I
also have 3 PCs to use if needed for printing.

CD is not an option for me. Currently I got 63 Gb of RAW files taken in
2006.

I use DLT and DVD... One DLT can hold 35 Gb of data. I have tried to expose
the DLTs to strong magnetic fields (I tried to delete them in a bulk eraser
design for old audio tapes), without loss of data.

--
Jørn Dahl-Stamnes
http://www.dahl-stamnes.net/Foto/

Mike Jacoubowsky wrote:

A friend of mine who shoots wedding photos asked me this questions and
not being a pro myself I gave the standard common methods like backing
up in external hard disk enclosures, and burning multiple copies on DVD
disks, but I am not sure if this is what pros do.

I was wondering if you are a pro photographer how you normally archive
your work and your clients' images? How long you plan to keep the
archives?

Everything is stored on two separate computers, one local, the other a
RAID5 backup server (RAID5 is such that a single disk can fail and you
still have all your data, but if two disks fail...). Anything important is
further archived to DVD.

And if your house burn down?

--
Jørn Dahl-Stamnes
http://www.dahl-stamnes.net/Foto/

On Wed, 23 Aug 2006 08:45:57 +0200, Jørn Dahl-Stamnes wrote:

CD is not an option for me. Currently I got 63 Gb of RAW files taken in
2006.

I use DLT and DVD... One DLT can hold 35 Gb of data. I have tried to expose
the DLTs to strong magnetic fields (I tried to delete them in a bulk eraser
design for old audio tapes), without loss of data.

There are bulk erasers and bulk erasers. Cheap ones are only good
for things like audio cassettes. High power erasers can do a
decent, but not always thorough job with video tapes. Some tape
formulations require much greater power than cheap Radio Shack type
high power erasers. If you have enough money there are very
powerful erasers that are designed to erase hard drive platters
without removing them from the hard drive's cases. But as they're
not easily found, your DLT tapes (and my DDS2 tapes) have little to
fear.

Jørn Dahl-Stamnes wrote:
Mike Jacoubowsky wrote:


A friend of mine who shoots wedding photos asked me this questions and
not being a pro myself I gave the standard common methods like backing
up in external hard disk enclosures, and burning multiple copies on DVD
disks, but I am not sure if this is what pros do.

I was wondering if you are a pro photographer how you normally archive
your work and your clients' images? How long you plan to keep the
archives?

Everything is stored on two separate computers, one local, the other a
RAID5 backup server (RAID5 is such that a single disk can fail and you
still have all your data, but if two disks fail...). Anything important is
further archived to DVD.


And if your house burn down?


1) Raid is great (I have over 20 raid arrays at work and several
more on order). But raid CAN fail. A controller failure
can be disastrous. I had a fan fail over a weekend and in the
two 7-disk raid array in one enclosure, one of the
arrays got cooked and all data were lost. The drives were
flaky and we had to throw them away.

2) Fortunately, the data were backed up to a second raid array in
another building. Critical data were also on DVD.

For my home photography, I have about 600 gigabytes and back
up the data to 3 sets of usb drives, rotating the backups.
Each new photo shoot is also backed up on DVD, and final images
are backed up on DVDs. I keep 2 of the 3 sets of USB hard
drives at my office, and one at home. I keep a set of DVDs
at home and the office. Thus I have a 5 backups on two
different types of media both types in two locations.

Roger

My nephew lives and works, write tour guides, in California and send an
extra backup to his parents in Maine. That keeps him covered if
California fall into the Pacific or if Maine is flooded by the raising
Atlantic but not both. But it does show that there should be more than
one backup and it should be stored in a location independent of the
maim location. Many commercial business use a rotating storage for
their data, usually a once a week rotation so the most amount of data
lost is one week.

Many businesses have also learned, the hard way, to check their backups
are usable. Just because a burn ends does not make it a usable CD-ROM,
DVD or DLT. Check any log files generated for errors and for CD-ROM or
DVD force a virus scan of all files on the disk and check that the
number of files repotted as scanned is what you put on the disk.

There is also the problem that burnable CD-ROMs and DVDs use light
activated dyes which deteriorate over time and DLTs need to be
re-tensioned, clean. So one has to choose their storage location
carefully to avoid long term damage from light, humidity and strong
magnetic field. One should also refresh the their stored data on a
regular basis by making new copies of the stored data..

Roger N. Clark (change username to rnclark) wrote:
Jørn Dahl-Stamnes wrote:
Mike Jacoubowsky wrote:


A friend of mine who shoots wedding photos asked me this questions and
not being a pro myself I gave the standard common methods like backing
up in external hard disk enclosures, and burning multiple copies on DVD
disks, but I am not sure if this is what pros do.

I was wondering if you are a pro photographer how you normally archive
your work and your clients' images? How long you plan to keep the
archives?

Everything is stored on two separate computers, one local, the other a
RAID5 backup server (RAID5 is such that a single disk can fail and you
still have all your data, but if two disks fail...). Anything important is
further archived to DVD.


And if your house burn down?


1) Raid is great (I have over 20 raid arrays at work and several
more on order). But raid CAN fail. A controller failure
can be disastrous. I had a fan fail over a weekend and in the
two 7-disk raid array in one enclosure, one of the
arrays got cooked and all data were lost. The drives were
flaky and we had to throw them away.

2) Fortunately, the data were backed up to a second raid array in
another building. Critical data were also on DVD.

For my home photography, I have about 600 gigabytes and back
up the data to 3 sets of usb drives, rotating the backups.
Each new photo shoot is also backed up on DVD, and final images
are backed up on DVDs. I keep 2 of the 3 sets of USB hard
drives at my office, and one at home. I keep a set of DVDs
at home and the office. Thus I have a 5 backups on two
different types of media both types in two locations.

Roger