Photo storage

There was an article in the Roanoke (VA) Times World yesterday about storing
photos on CD's & DVD's. The author said to be careful about the quality of
the discs. He recommended discs with a certain color. One of the colors he
recommended was gold. Would anyone care to comment on disc quality? I've
got a bunch of photos I want to store.

Ed Mullikin wrote:
There was an article in the Roanoke (VA) Times World yesterday about storing
photos on CD's & DVD's. The author said to be careful about the quality of
the discs. He recommended discs with a certain color. One of the colors he
recommended was gold. Would anyone care to comment on disc quality? I've
got a bunch of photos I want to store.


No storage is save. I would recommend keeping them on a hard drive and
backing them up onto CD's. Use at least two different brands and store
them dry and cool.

Andre

--
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http://www.aguntherphotography.com

On Mon, 25 Oct 2004 22:59:48 -0400, "Ed Mullikin"
wrote:

There was an article in the Roanoke (VA) Times World yesterday about storing
photos on CD's & DVD's. The author said to be careful about the quality of
the discs. He recommended discs with a certain color. One of the colors he
recommended was gold. Would anyone care to comment on disc quality? I've
got a bunch of photos I want to store.

I think its more true of DVD's.. Cd's are cheap enough so burn 2
copies in case one gets damaged.

Ed Mullikin wrote:
There was an article in the Roanoke (VA) Times World yesterday about storing
photos on CD's & DVD's. The author said to be careful about the quality of
the discs. He recommended discs with a certain color. One of the colors he
recommended was gold. Would anyone care to comment on disc quality? I've
got a bunch of photos I want to store.


Mitsui gold CDR is rated very highly:
http://www.inkjetart.com/mitsui

Many other "gold" disks, like Kodak's gold, are reportedly
licensed Mitsui technology.

Roger

Ed Mullikin wrote:
There was an article in the Roanoke (VA) Times World yesterday about
storing
photos on CD's & DVD's. The author said to be careful about the quality
of
the discs. He recommended discs with a certain color. One of the colors
he
recommended was gold. Would anyone care to comment on disc quality? I've
got a bunch of photos I want to store.

No single storage method is perfect. The really important thing to
remember is that CD do not last forever and in a relatively
short time (like 30 years) finding a CD reader and software will become
difficult.

If you store your images in other than true archival paper (which should
be stored with two copies in two totally different areas) chances are good
they will be lost.

We all need to consider that the loss of all those images may not be all
that bad. Just surviving the event or time that long is winning in my view.
Having a collection of photographs is a plus. Put life and photography in
perspective. The next generation will likely throw away almost all those
images. In fact the fewer you really save (only the very best and
meaningful) is likely to mean they will have most of them. Trying to save
everything just hides the jewels in with the trash.


--
Joseph E. Meehan

26 + 6 = 1 It's Irish Math

"Joseph Meehan" wrote in
:

We all need to consider that the loss of all those images may not
be all that bad. Just surviving the event or time that long is
winning in my view. Having a collection of photographs is a plus.
Put life and photography in perspective. The next generation will
likely throw away almost all those images. In fact the fewer you
really save (only the very best and meaningful) is likely to mean they
will have most of them. Trying to save everything just hides the
jewels in with the trash.

I like the part about "jewels in with the trash."

Getting back to the OPs question, the companies that make (or made) the
CDs and the drives (specifically TDK and Kodak) have published papers
that explain that while a typical disc might be expected to last a very
long time (up to 100 years under very specific conditions, according to
Kodak), it is also expected that some discs will not last a year.

CDR is based on organic dye. Organic dye fades. Different types of dye
require different power laser to burn. The power of the laser is
modulated with analog components that wear out. Cheap drives might be
optimized for one dye type or another, or for the average. Data stored on
CDR is generally stable for at least a number of years (I have some at
the office that are 10 years old now), but they aren't certain.

Not much is certain, when it comes to data. I like removable drives for
their combination of price and capacity.

Bob

--
Delete the inverse SPAM to reply

"Joseph Meehan" wrote in
:

We all need to consider that the loss of all those images may not
be all that bad. Just surviving the event or time that long is
winning in my view. Having a collection of photographs is a plus.
Put life and photography in perspective. The next generation will
likely throw away almost all those images. In fact the fewer you
really save (only the very best and meaningful) is likely to mean they
will have most of them. Trying to save everything just hides the
jewels in with the trash.

I like the part about "jewels in with the trash."

Getting back to the OPs question, the companies that make (or made) the
CDs and the drives (specifically TDK and Kodak) have published papers
that explain that while a typical disc might be expected to last a very
long time (up to 100 years under very specific conditions, according to
Kodak), it is also expected that some discs will not last a year.

CDR is based on organic dye. Organic dye fades. Different types of dye
require different power laser to burn. The power of the laser is
modulated with analog components that wear out. Cheap drives might be
optimized for one dye type or another, or for the average. Data stored on
CDR is generally stable for at least a number of years (I have some at
the office that are 10 years old now), but they aren't certain.

Not much is certain, when it comes to data. I like removable drives for
their combination of price and capacity.

Bob

--
Delete the inverse SPAM to reply

"Ed Mullikin" wrote:

There was an article in the Roanoke (VA) Times World yesterday about storing
photos on CD's & DVD's. The author said to be careful about the quality of
the discs. He recommended discs with a certain color. One of the colors he
recommended was gold. Would anyone care to comment on disc quality? I've
got a bunch of photos I want to store.

Your trolling skills are pathetic.

"Ed Mullikin" wrote:

There was an article in the Roanoke (VA) Times World yesterday about storing
photos on CD's & DVD's. The author said to be careful about the quality of
the discs. He recommended discs with a certain color. One of the colors he
recommended was gold. Would anyone care to comment on disc quality? I've
got a bunch of photos I want to store.

Your trolling skills are pathetic.

"Joseph Meehan" wrote:

No single storage method is perfect. The really important thing to
remember is that CD do not last forever and in a relatively
short time (like 30 years) finding a CD reader and software will become
difficult.

Only because in 30 years everyone will have migrated their collections
to whatever is common at that time. That said, note that you can
still read 9-track tapes these days -- people still have the hardware
and software, despite the archaic nature of the technology. Chances
are good similar services will be available in 30 years for CD's,
DVD's, ZIP's, or whatever may spring up and "die" in the interval.

If you store your images in other than true archival paper (which should
be stored with two copies in two totally different areas) chances are good
they will be lost.

This simply isn't true if you give even passing maintenance to your
data.

We all need to consider that the loss of all those images may not be all
that bad. Just surviving the event or time that long is winning in my view.
Having a collection of photographs is a plus. Put life and photography in
perspective. The next generation will likely throw away almost all those
images. In fact the fewer you really save (only the very best and
meaningful) is likely to mean they will have most of them. Trying to save
everything just hides the jewels in with the trash.

You can buy 300GB disk drives for $200 or so:

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproduc...144-359&DEPA=1

200GB for $100(!!). A pair of these in a software RAID 1 configuration
(simple mirroring, and not the only option; see:

http://www.uni-mainz.de/~neuffer/scsi/what_is_raid.html
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/R/RAID.html
http://linas.org/linux/raid.html )

will be immune to almost anything except physical destruction of the
underlying equipment (and even then, you might still be able to
salvage one of the disks). No CD's, DVD's or their "which colour is
best", "will they last 30 years" issues need be entertained.

Building truly colossal, highly robust storage systems is now in the
kilobuck range, and must be _seriously considered_ for any new
computer hardware a photographer may wish to procure. Many hints
available on the net for this. Example:

http://www.finnie.org/terabyte/

He suggests $1600 for a terabyte+epsilon (a terabyte!!); only months
later the
situation has _improved_. Do the arithmetic and see. Basically,
using a CD, or even DVD drive at this point is a waste of time and
money, and arguably less secure. Spend less, get vast gobs of almost
unending storage and better reliability to boot. What more can one
ask for?

Now maybe you don't need a terabyte and maybe you don't want a
dedicated file server heating up your den; fine, scale down to a few
hundred gigabytes. This can be slapped into a standard PC tower case
without much fuss, and only a marginal increase in cost (especially so
with photo-freaks who are laying out the serious dinero for their
displays, printers, etc). As you migrate from computer to computer
(which is inevitable), you can copy or upgrade using whatever new and
fancy storage technology appears. Terabyte disks in two years for $20
each? Hopefully they won't be disks (damn the evil moving parts and
the attendent power-suck), but it is inevitable something like this
will appear, and fairly soon. People dinking around with DVD's at
that point are going to look like someone today fiddling with a 3.5"
floppy disk...