Storage of Images

[robert_parker]

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I know this subject has been discussed in the past but I was thinking about ways of storing digital images in a robust format, that might stand the test of time.

 

One option I considered was CD's or DVD's, since they are a non-electronic, non-mechanical storage medium that is less likely to be damaged by a power surge or being dropped but I've heard that the stored image can degrade with time - might this be avoided by copying an old disc to a new one from time to time, or are certain types or manufacture of discs more robust than others ?

 

That being said, is there an accepted storage medium available now which is more robust ?

[dave_d]

The Delkin Gold CD's are supposed to be the best for archiving but even then you should create new disc every five years. They cost about $2 USD each so it can get expensive. I back-up on hard drives using a Thermal Take Black X, Thermaltakeusa»Storage»BlacX»BlacX - SE : BlacX - SE N0029USU. I have three copies of every image file; one on my working computer, one on a second hard drive on the working computer, and a third that I take off site in case of fire. I know hard drives are the most reliable but they are cheap and if you maintain three copies you should be safe.

[farnz]

Robert,

 

If you intend to store images long-term on CDs or DVDs then you need to make sure that the dye used is Phthalocyanine and not Cyanine, AZO or unspecified, and that the reflective layer is gold rather than silver, which may oxidise. Phthalocyanine dyes are by far the most stable and Cyanine and AZO dyes are likely to break down after a few years making the media unreadable.

 

Dave_d rightly points you to Delkin Archival Gold, which is one of the only storage media to have both a gold reflective layer and Phthalocyanine dye and are *rated* for 300 years service life.

 

For peace of mind it is prudent to arrange to cycle these on a x-yearly basis.

 

Pete.

[brucek]

I would (and do) use external hard drives. The price per GB has dropped tremendously to the point that I think it is the most cost effective way to store images. You didn't say if you usually shoot RAW or JPG, but if you shoot RAW I think you'd find that even DVDs can't hold enough data.

[dpitt]

Over the 20 years I am professionally into computers, i had several CD and DVD backup disk fail on me and a 500 GB , 1TB disk .

Backup has taken considerable thought and effort over the years, but I am lucky to never have lost anything important to me. In my experience data loss by human error is more likely and difficult to counter than data loss by hardware failure.

 

Backup CDs and DVD tend to be unreadable when you need them, so I have switched to backup on external disks exclusively for the last 5 years.

Disks can fail too, but it is far easier to keep redundant and off-site copies so that you have several backups to fall back on.

 

My current strategy is as follows:

In production I have about 1.5 TB of data on a RAID. (not all images, video as well)

300 GB of data which I consider most precious is synced every hour to an other internal disk. For my daily work, Time Machine takes care of loss of data by human error. This is only for my system disk, not the data disk mentioned.

 

All data is backed up to a 2TB external disk weekly. It is important that this disk is not always on to keep risk of failure as low as possible.

 

In case of a disaster one external disk with precious data like family photo's gets updated and is stored off site. (in this case in my father's house) This one gets updated at least once a year.

 

Of course one day my backup disks will fail too. So I would not put away a disk and expect to get some data out of a hard disk in 10 years. My solution is to copy all data over to the next data disk every time I upgrade. Disks are doubling in capacity every six months, so you will find that backups from 10 years ago look tiny now. Back then I was struggling with backing up GB's where I am now juggling with TB's. So it is no trouble at all to keep them in a corner of my current working disk.

 

If you are working on a single disk now and your data amount is below 1.5TB, working on a mirrored RAID could be a nice way to keep everything safe without effort. Just do not forget to make a backup on an external drive regularly!