Archiving Digital Images

[mustafasoleiman]

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coming from analog I am a bit overwhelmed by the amount of images I am producing with my new M8s.

 

with film I used to first select the images that were good, then scan them into my computer for selection and occasional low quality prints. (better or larger images would be printed by a professional printer).

 

One point to remember is that I never throw away any of the images (kodachrome slides) that were not selected... they just sat in drawers for possible future retrieval.

 

Now I find my Aperture db chock full of images I don't really want to see now (and possibly never;) )... but I cannot make myself throw them out...

 

Has anybody any suggestion on how to handle this?

[Shootist]

The one thing I find bad about digital is that I take many more shots then I ever did when shooting film, and even when I shoot film today. With film I would look at the shot from at least 3 side, if I could, and choose just where and how I would take the shot. With digital I lose some of that. Don't ask me why I just do. So I end up with a lot of so-so shots, not that I didn't have them with film I just have more with digital.

 

I throw those bad shots away. I don't fall in love with them and think that in a month or a year I will want those shots.

 

If you really want to save each and every shot you take then you can get a external hard drive to store them on or burn them to CD/DVD disk.

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[hdrmd]

The only answer is to edit ruthlessly. DR

[Guest guy_mancuso]

I actually shoot less but still shoot in the thousands of images per year. i have many external drives. One is for every shoot I do a backup of RAW files period and never touch them, there backup and when that is full i will mark and date it and take it offline put it away. Than I have a external just for finals all Tiffs and all 16 bit marked with client name and date . I back each job up with DVD and store that in a safe place. I will no matter what happens have the DVD backups on the finals . Than i have a working external that i usally keep all my actions, program backups, firmware and stuff like that . That is actually a internal drive so i have computer backup of files, than I have a internal drive that is actually a clone of the main hard drive. Than i have a external with at least a months worth of work that gets moved around. than i always process my raws from the Desktop files becuase it is the fastest drive. i have backup to back up's for the computers and for the files both Raw and finals. Welcome to digital hell is all i can say , get some external 7200 RPM 16mb cache drives and back it up.

 

I piece of advice of doing digital for 15 years. i mean this no joking around

 

Cover your butt because i guarntee you a drive will fail no matter how old or new it may be. They will fail and you will be scratching your head wondering what happened . very simple HEAT will kill them. You can give me all the science in the world that it won't happen but real world i guarntee it will. Have backup to backup and have something off line at all times. Once it is gone it is gone forever. Hopefully that did not sound mean or anything but seriously truthful. It has happened more times than i care to say

[mustafasoleiman]

I actually shoot less but still shoot in the thousands of images per year. i have many external drives. One is for every shoot I do a backup of RAW files period and never touch them, there backup and when that is full i will mark and date it and take it offline put it away. Than I have a external just for finals all Tiffs and all 16 bit marked with client name and date . I back each job up with DVD and store that in a safe place. I will no matter what happens have the DVD backups on the finals . Than i have a working external that i usally keep all my actions, program backups, firmware and stuff like that . That is actually a internal drive so i have computer backup of files, than I have a internal drive that is actually a clone of the main hard drive. Than i have a external with at least a months worth of work that gets moved around. than i always process my raws from the Desktop files becuase it is the fastest drive. i have backup to back up's for the computers and for the files both Raw and finals. Welcome to digital hell is all i can say , get some external 7200 RPM 16mb cache drives and back it up.

 

I piece of advice of doing digital for 15 years. i mean this no joking around

 

Cover your butt because i guarntee you a drive will fail no matter how old or new it may be. They will fail and you will be scratching your head wondering what happened . very simple HEAT will kill them. You can give me all the science in the world that it won't happen but real world i guarntee it will. Have backup to backup and have something offline atall times. Once it is gone it is gone forever

 

Many thanks for the advice Guy.

 

I am into computers and I know exactly what you mean about backups and cannot agree more.

My main issue was actually more about workflow and the differentiation between selected images and rejected ones.

Would you keep them together or separately (they are all raw format)... do you use something like Aperture (or Lightroom) to manage them, and if so, do you have a separate database for selected and rejected?

Within Aperture I can create projects and folders within, that would allow me to do all this within one database, but I am worried about the size of the file, if I keep rejects in the same db.

 

I know that after a short time I will have to create a new db anyway, say every month/year...

 

Again my worry is more about seconds and rejects, which I cannot delete, but would still like to keep them online, ie on a hard drive.

 

I am a bit worried about DVDs because I think they are a less secure form of storage than hard drives.

[Guest guy_mancuso]

I would first do a complete backup of the Raws on another drive , that way you can always go back to them . Than in Aperture or whatever program that sits on the desktop , edit the hell out of it. They really serve no purpose except for raw processing now. The real backup is somewhere else so why load down the desktop drive if you don't have too. I would think of your desktop as more temporary than anything else and with Aperure why keep the outcast ones in that library. i would try to keep the library as slim as possiable because eventually it will get so big it will be hard to manage later . i would do a rough edit before you even bring them into Aperture , use Bridge or something like that just to cut the blank raws out and obvious trash shots . Than bring like a rough draft into Aperture and store that in the library and than go from there with finals.

 

DVD's are just another backup to the drives and are really throw aways but if your office caught on fire and that is all you had left than you have your images

[mustafasoleiman]

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I would first do a complete backup of the Raws on another drive , that way you can always go back to them . Than in Aperture or whateer program that sits on the desktop , edit the hell out of it. They really serve no purpose except for raw processing now. The real backup is somewhere else so why load down the desktop drive if you don't have too. I would think of your desktop as more temporary than anything else and with Aperure why keep the outcast ones in that library. i would try to keep the library as slim as possiable because eventually it will get so big it will be hard to manage later . i would do a rough edit before you even bring them into Aperture , use Bridge or something like that just to cut the blank raws out and obvious trash shots . Than bring like a rough draft into Aperture and store that in the library and than go from there with finals.

 

That sound like what I am going to do... again thank you for the help... I was beginning to worry.

[Guest stnami]

External online companies are a usefull resource as well

[wlaidlaw]

Can I echo what Guy says - back up, then back up your back-ups. Do your primary back-up at least once a week and preferably once a day. If you are busy and leave it a month, as we all have from time to time, one of Murphy's computing laws states that that is when you will have a hard drive failure. Us lucky Mac users will have the luxury of Time Machine once we have installed Leopard but the back-up drive still needs backing up. I think writable/rewritable DVD's are a waste of time. The dye starts to deteriorate after just 18 months. I am guessing that in 5 years, they may well be unreadable. Once I get back to the UK, I am going to buy a 1.5 TB external drive housing, for my final layer of back-up. I am going to put 4 server grade 375 GB SATA II hard drives in it. I may use RAID 0 (mirroring). Leopard will also make networking external computers much easier, without using slightly clunky bits of code as we have to at present. I will have my UK Macs networked to my French ones and get them to cross back up during the night. As long as the network server is hard wired to the router (i.e. not wireless), you can wake up your Mac remotely to back up to or from.

 

Wilson

[Guest guy_mancuso]

Imants makes a good point and something that i need to start looking into myself is offline storage that you can upload too.

 

It is interesting that a company i worked for years ago would use a off site storage company that is based in a mountain side. They still exist today

[mustafasoleiman]

Imants makes a good point and something that i need to start looking into myself is offline storage that you can upload too.

 

It is interesting that a company i worked for years ago would use a off site storage company that is based in a mountain side. They still exist today

 

The company you worked for... or its backups?

[vic vic]

la-cie has some very good solutions for it for various requirments and volumes....... and apple has it too........

ya it is pain in the a**...... archiving....... so it is in analog photography too actually...... same same but different

[wlaidlaw]

la-cie has some very good solutions for it for various requirments and volumes....... and apple has it too........

ya it is pain in the a**...... archiving....... so it is in analog photography too actually...... same same but different

 

Victor,

 

I was looking at a Lacie or Iomega from the Apple Store. I then did a bit of Internet research. For their larger external units (.5 to 2 TB) the feedback is dreadful. There are dozens of tales of woe of disks not mounting and when they do, failing after a few days. The feedback on Buffalo and Western Digital seems much better although there are quite a few complaints about the noise levels of the Western Book II systems and some on the Buffalo. The two factors may be linked. The Buffalo and Western may have more cooling which would make them noisier but more reliable. TANSTAAFL.

 

Wilson

[carstenw]

Wasn't it Google who, with huge farms of disks in perfect environments, were able to prove that heat makes no difference to disk life? They own probably hundreds of thousands of harddrives, and are able to run statistically valid studies on them, and were therefore able to prove and disprove all kinds of theories. Somewhere there is a summary. Very interesting!

 

I tend to believe that disk model and manufacturer are the deciding factors, not heat or other factors. There are good batches and bad batches. My two Lacies have been perfect, but I have had a Maxtor fail, and right now I have a noisy disk, a WD I think, that I am keeping an eye on.

[Shootist]

Victor,

 

I was looking at a Lacie or Iomega from the Apple Store. I then did a bit of Internet research. For their larger external units (.5 to 2 TB) the feedback is dreadful. There are dozens of tales of woe of disks not mounting and when they do, failing after a few days. The feedback on Buffalo and Western Digital seems much better although there are quite a few complaints about the noise levels of the Western Book II systems and some on the Buffalo. The two factors may be linked. The Buffalo and Western may have more cooling which would make them noisier but more reliable. TANSTAAFL.

 

Wilson

 

Wilson I have been using Western Digital "My Book Essential" drives for about 1 year, a little less then a year. First with a 250GB and recently with a 500GB model, both the Essential model (I don't fine a need for all the bells and whistles that come with the more expensive models) both USB 2 only, and have not had any problem with them.

I do not use them as a 4th and 5th drive for the system but as backup drives that are connected and disconnected as needed to do back ups of data. I am a WinTel PC users so I have no idea how they would work on a Mac.

For me I have around 800GB's worth of internal drives in my system and haven't even touched 15-20 % of it.

Not sure why some choose to add external drives to systems for day to day storage needs. Internal drives cost less and for Windows users it fairly simple to add another drive to the system, IF the system supports more then 4 hard/optical drives. My system, which was a new build in September of last your support 2 IDE optical drives and up to 6 SATA2 hard drives.

Never worked with Mac, except at a course I took on Photoshop, so I don't know if that is possible on the Mac platform, old or new.

 

Carsten:

Heat is the number one killer of all things electronic, of course water is worse.

Every PC component does have a MAX temp that it will function at and if you stay below that temp the component should last. As to someplace like google with 100 or 1000 of drives they all can't be in the exact location and that location is more then likely cooled by it's own AC unit.

A school I did some work for had a relatively small LAN closet that housed multiple RAID disk arrays and that one room had it's own central AC unit and a second local AC unit in the room.

[geoffreyg]

Yes, its a problem. I'm with GUy, on external HD. I just added a couple of WD drives at home - I think their software for spinning up the drive is superior to La Cie - every time you do some disk intensive operation, youhave to wait for the sleeping La Cie to fire up, and with the 1 TB at the ofice its a 15 second snooze time, in the midst of an operation.

 

With the WD, it just sits asleep, until you actually need it. Kind of nice. And its quiet while it sleeps.

 

The advice on Aperture is pretty sound also. My first edit is in Iphoto, which is really fast for viewing and deleting. Then import only the key ones, either through Iphoto or directly, into whatever sophisiticated software is in favor for me at that time - either Silkypix, Aperture, or Photoshop, or C1. Each have their advantages, but library control is not their long suit.

 

I tried using Aperture for more general file storage, and am now stuck with a 20 gb library. Any ideas on quick ways to slim it down?

 

Geoff G

[carstenw]

Ed, you need to read the paper. Some things have been repeated so often that we believe them intrinsically. Not all are actually true.

[vic vic]

wilson hi.....

i dont know about lacie big storage drivers (1T and alike).....but i can tell u that normal personal use drivers are super good ........

i myself not coputer person of course, but in agency the big storage solution from apple itself also seems to be super good .......

again, not specialized in computers, so i dont know the other names u menationed......

 

one thing i really would advice.........

to stick with some good "overall solution" in order to make life eassier and probably more secure....

especially when it comes to big volumes of storage data and the complicated sides of it..... but then..

probably there are no perfect solution for all at the same time and extent....... for me a simplier solution is enough, but maybe for photojurnalist or wedding and alike working in digital workflow exclussivly, a much bigger and complicated solution is needed........

 

again........ investigate this issues with full seriousness according to your needs.... and try to find a full coherent solutions by this or that company/service.........

[Guest guy_mancuso]

I am using the Western Digital My Books 2 500 gb and 1 TB drives. If you get anything make sure there are fans on them.

 

Carsten not sure of the stats but really is just a gut feeling on the heat issue . I lost 3 Lacie drives due to heat or failure of some sort and no fans on them. I just don't trust anything and i really think that is the best attitude to take because it will make you backup your backups in some form. if all goes south on me i have the DVD final images. Maybe not the best method and i am always looking at other inexpensive ways to do this. At some point I will get a 5 disk raid drive or something like that. Always looking for the better solution is a good thing.

 

For film shooters i agree it is also a nightmare. I have 4 storage boxes sitting in my daughters closet for years . Now that is not a perfect solution at all.

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[wparsonsgisnet]

... I lost 3 Lacie drives due to heat or failure of some sort and no fans on them...

 

I have lost several LaCie drives, but it's not the drive that is failing, it's the electronic boards. In all but one case, the drive has worked perfectly after being placed in a new, external housing.

 

I buy the ULTRA enclosure, $60, at the moment, and just put the drive in that. BTW, the Ultra enclosure has a FAN.

 

LaCie will only warranty their external drive systems for one year, so I figure they should pay for the repair that I do -- so I only buy their REFURB drives. These are inexpensive enough that I am ahead of the game.

 

I find LaCie drives very fast, and am using the 7200 rpm 8mb drives, in 250, 300, 500, and 600GB sizes.

 

Note: every LaCie that has received the case-replacement therapy has been a Maxtor drive. Some say they prefer other drives, such as Seagate's, to Maxtor's. My experience has been that the Maxtor's run a long time (except for the one that simply failed -- as the postings above say, this happens, depend on it!).

 

Back to the original impetus for this thread -- one problem with weeding out the not-ready-for-prime-time images that that this takes time. That's a commodity I would willingly pay for.