Archiving digital image files

[bugmadmark]

Until now, I have backed my files up onto a portable hard drive and DVD-Rs. However, I am aware that DVDs degrade with time - often more quickly than one might imagine. Does anyone here have any experience of using archival grade (gold I think) DVDs and can you make any recommendations? I've Googled it and many of the reports avaialble are 5+ years old and I'm hopeful that technology has improved a lot since then.

[Zonda]

Not sure about the gold discs, but i did have a £100 Western Digital hard drive fail, and lost some stuff. I've got cheap USB keys that have lasted a lot longer than that did, and some of these only cost £2. Safe, cheapish, storage devices,,,, cant be too much to ask ,,can it? I'd not pay more than £50 now, and purchase two for double back up. This is something i have to do soon, but the WD failure frightened me a bit, and i'm umming and aahing over it.

[Dave McCormick]

Well the best solution to backing is to NOT use one source to back up your stuff on, use quite a few, so if one fails, you still have another...External Hard Drive, DVD, USB pen drive, online backup etc... but from what I have been told, devices less prone to failing are those with non moving parts (pen drives are one) as with nothing need to move about, there is less to break easier. The harder part is finding a storage device with no moving parts that has the space to use as a backup device especially when the stuff your backing up is in excess of 30GB like my images and wildlife video I have been shooting.

I use a 300GB External USB hard drive, dual layer DVDs and a second USB external hard disk to back up my stuff but I feel they could be prone to breaking and DVDs don't have the space for what I want.

Not sure about the gold discs, but i did have a £100 Western Digital hard drive fail, and lost some stuff

Exactly what happened to me, I lost all images I took from January to early May as forgetting to backup and my ha drive going kaput.

I am in same boat, if anyone knows a good way of backing up my images and videos, I'd like to know.

[lurkalot]

Well the best solution to backing is to NOT use one source to back up your stuff on, use quite a

Exactly what happened to me, I lost all images I took from January to early May as forgetting to backup and my ha drive going kaput.

I am in same boat, if anyone knows a good way of backing up my images and videos, I'd like to know.

Dave, have you tried recovering your images from that dead hard drive with a USB external enclosure? You can pick them up for about £20. I've recovered images from dead drives using this method. The last one was my main drive in my PC, which I replaced to get me up and running again. I then put the old drive in my USB caddy (enclosure) and plugged in.

The drive sat on my desk clunking away for about ten minutes and hey presto the images popped up on my screen. Needless to say I quickly (very) dragged them onto my new drive.

The USB enclosure is quite handy for backing up too using any old hard drives you might have kicking around. Then put them away somewhere safe and dry.

Rgrds

Mick

[Dave McCormick]

Thanks Mick

Dave, have you tried recovering your images from that dead hard drive with a USB external enclosure?

It was a hard drive in an external enclosure, I did everything, even sent it to get fixed and it was sen't back. I tried it internally in my PC but I got error messages with it. Its the problem with using external hard drives I have issue with as for me they keep failing (3 already) except the IDE external one I had from 4 or 5 years ago, its still intact and working and two 2.5 inc hard drives (external) that are still working, rest failed in different ways.

I even had a program that could rescue files from a dying hard drive and it took a week to run and ended up recovering a few folders but they were empty (I didn't know then how to stop my PC going to sleep as I could't get my PC back on from sleep (wired the sleep button to the moherboard wrong or something) and had to keep checking the PC every so often, got little sleep over the week, but learned a lesson.

[Zonda]

Some of these products are really expensive, and no more reliable than a £2 pen drive. I suppose ones only recourse is to back up on six different devices, which all takes more time.

[bugmadmark]

I'm already backing up onto an external 500Gb drive (soon to be replaced with a 2 Tb RAID WD External Drive), but what I want to use are the 'Archive' grade DVDs that are meant to last decades and which I can keep at work for added security. 25,000 images (mainly of my kids, family and friends but increasingly of insects too would be an awful lot to lose in a disaster. Normal DVDs are supposed to only last a few years (prone to UV damage, oxidation etc etc). At the moment I'm using cheap Tesco DVD-Rs but I don't want to rely on these for long term storage. There appear to be quite a few arguments on the web over what constitutes best DVDs for archiving. Invariably they seem to have a gold coating, but the format is also meant to be key here - i.e. the DVD-R vs DVD-RW issues. I gather the latter is meant to be a safer bet?

As for using USB keys, sure as they get cheaper/bigger they may well be an option. For me to back up a few hundred Gb onto them this would be too costly. I am not personally sure how reliable they are and the data isn't permanently stored (i.e. could be accidentally removed like a RW disc). Whilst I have used several USB keys for moving files around transiently, I am not sure how they would stand up to storing files long term (flash memory I think it is referred to as?).

[Zonda]

I would prefer a usb device, its quick and easy, and less likely to suffer damage. Surely dvds and cds are old tec now. I definitely will not trust a 'SINGLE' external memory device again, no matter how expensive it is. i think 'TWO' good quality external usb devices may be the way for me. Now,,,,,,, what shall i get? Any recommendations?

[Dave McCormick]

I would like a HVD (Holographic Versatile Disc) but I am not sure if they are available yet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_Versatile_Disc One reason because the link says "100 GB at 18 microns separation, 200 GB at 13 micrometers, 500 GB at 8 micrometers and a demonstrated maximum of 5 TB for 3 microns separation on a 10 cm disc."

I may get some archive grade DVDs (dual layer) myself but I'll need a lot to backup my suff as I have about 100GBs of stuff to backup

[Markulous]

Coming to this a little late but my solution is (and has been for 25+ years!) backing up to hard disk. I used to use separate systems, networked, but now use external hard disks. Being in the business I've used every known method - floppy, hard disk, CD (R and RW), DVD (+/- and RAM), tape, flash cards/drives, etc and the most reliable has always been hard disk - I've never lost any data but I've had everything fail at one time or another.

I much prefer internal hard disks as they've a halfway decent power supply and are well protected in a system unit but there's nothing wrong with external drives if they've an OK power supply and are placed somewhere where they will never be knocked or even moved (preferably laid flat however 'cool' the stand may be). Best only switched on to do the backup and best if there's no other disk-based activity going on

I categorise disk failure into 3: logical (where the data has been randomly written - usually due to overwhelming the disk I/O with too much activity), hardware (usually on-disk controller) and physical disk failure (bearings or head crash). First two are usually fixable but there may be some data loss (replacing the disk circuit board for the controller) and sometimes bearing failure can be rectified (to get data off: I've manually started the spin on hard disks to retrieve data). Head crashes are next to impossible to retrieve as the heads have physically damaged the data-holding disk surface - some labs of a forensic nature can rescue some data but very, very difficult. Head crash can happen (probably will!) if you knock over an external drive when it's reading/writing data - hence laying them flat!

My personal backup method nowadays is to install a hard disk in my system and when it's full, 'retire' it to backup use, buying a new disk to replace it. I'm currently up to about 3TBs of 'retired' external disks and 5TBs of live disk

[bugmadmark]

Thanks for this. I noted hard disks are getting much cheaper so i think I will go this direction. Incidentally I have a Western Digital 500Gb external for back ups at the mo. My PC is on the landing and one of my kids managed to knock the drive off the back of the desk, throuh the banisters and it bounced all teh way down the stairs. I was sure it was bug gered - but amazingly all data was retrievable and still functions, altho the casing was slightly warped. I intend to change it tho as I have noticed it is very slow to write to now but at least with the model I have I have some faith in its reliability!

[Markulous]

Something that I've begun to use are the online archiving systems of which there appear to be a bewildering number nowadays - used to use Carbonite but now use Dropbox and SugarSync. Great for getting images to people (though I tend to use YouSendIt for that!)

[GOLDENORFE]

one of my external hds just failed

just goes to prove you must have more than one backup, have all my pics on a second hd so havnt lost anything

just ordered 1tb wd hd for £64 on amazon, will probably get a second one soon!

backing up to cd/dvd soo much hassle, especially the amount i shoot
phil

[Dave McCormick]

backing up to cd/dvd soo much hassle, especially the amount i shoot
phil

I know what you mean, if you don't scratch a CD/DVD, they can last long enough, but are low capacity for what we do. I already shot over 15GB of videos and images in past 3 months or so and that already is too much for a DVD to fit. I already have 60GB+ of files. I currently have 3 external drives and so far have 4 back up areas...one hard disk I use for backing up which I keep secure away from my PC, my laptop which I rarely use, seems good to use to backup files on its 300GB HD when I never use it much, another external HD and my PC main drive documents.

[LCPete]

I managed to bugger up a drive full of pics by pluggling in the lead from my laptop into it ! 20v instead of 12
I did try changing the chassis and power supply but it was US
Luckily I had backed up all the best shots onto another drive
I now have 3 external drives on the go with a 4th one full
I do still back up to DVD too and store them at work, but it is time consuming and have had those fail in the past as well
may look into online strage but our internet connection is slow so it may not be an option
Pete

[Markulous]

I managed to bugger up a drive full of pics by pluggling in the lead from my laptop into it ! 20v instead of 12
I did try changing the chassis and power supply but it was US

Probably rescueable if you need to - likelihood is that the physical drive will be OK but it's circuitry is fried, so just a question of replacing the drive circuit board (done it before - the PIA is sourcing the identical drive!). If they're the only copies you have, worth trying - I've no probs with giving it a whirl if you want

[LCPete]

Thanks very much for offering that very kind of you
I had gone through already and picked out the best shots and backed them up to another drive luckily so dont need the ones that are on the broken drive
I am so glad I did that would have lost a years worth of shots.
Thanks anyway though
Pete

[LCPete]

Something that I've begun to use are the online archiving systems of which there appear to be a bewildering number nowadays - used to use Carbonite but now use Dropbox and SugarSync. Great for getting images to people (though I tend to use YouSendIt for that!)

Just uploading the best ones to dropbox at the moment too , the first 2GB is free
thanks for the heads up on that
I do have a lot saved on photobucket but they are on low res small jpegs only will have a look at flicker
pete

[Paul Wetton]

I go with data backed up on 2 external HDs. Just purchased one from PC World. 2TB WD for £90.

Video was mentioned earlier. I try and back up that which is currently in use or from recently produced DVD's etc but have all video on miniDV. Never re-use the tapes. Not sure how long they will last as storage. Does anyone know?

Obviously many modern camcorders use HDD or SD media and HD video uses a heck of a lot of memory. I'll stick with broadcast quality standard def on miniDV for the time being.

I'd be extremely interested in how folks back up HD video files tho???

[Markulous]

I go with data backed up on 2 external HDs. Just purchased one from PC World. 2TB WD for £90.

Video was mentioned earlier. I try and back up that which is currently in use or from recently produced DVD's etc but have all video on miniDV. Never re-use the tapes. Not sure how long they will last as storage. Does anyone know?

Obviously many modern camcorders use HDD or SD media and HD video uses a heck of a lot of memory. I'll stick with broadcast quality standard def on miniDV for the time being.

I'd be extremely interested in how folks back up HD video files tho???

I know that tape will gradually deteriorate - both the physical tape and the magnetic 'pattern' - the latter can suffer 'print through' from the tape layer lying either side. But how long? Dunno, but I see this: http://www.simplevideoediting.com/video ... f-life/54/

Personally, I'd recommend Hard Disks, which is what I've used since the 80s and never lost any data yet - had H/Ds fail (usually logical but a couple of head crashes) but just made sure that critical data was never left on disks that were getting slightly old. New disks get put into systems for immediate use and old disks are retired to backup duties (stick them in external caddies or keep them 'naked' and plug into a drive reader)

The warning on external H/Ds bears repeating: disks in systems are protected by a system case which is pretty bombproof but externals are in simple cases and, so very often, have a vertical stand - an H/D falling over on the desk is not good, often terminal if it's switched on! Add to that, the external case has it's own power supply which may or may not be any good, whereas the internals have the system power (which you hope is good - but I've seen many a rubbish power supply, especially nowadays and if you add more hard disks to the system.......). Don't get me wrong, external H/Ds are excellent but they do need a little careful looking after!