Long Term Photo Storage

[p38arover]

The recent theft of hillbilliywheelchair's computers and bblaze's loss of his camera brings to mind the subject of long term storage of digital pics.

Many of the Kodak gold CDs I burned less than 10 years ago are now unreadable so what can one do to protect digital images (oddly enough, data tapes I have that are much, much older are still perfectly readable).

I've seen archival CDs for sale but hoiw can we be sure they will last even our lifetime, let alone the claimed 300 years.

Archival CDs don't have the capacity for storing many images and they are about $10 each so they aren't a viable option for most of us.

What do you use to back up your pics?

[rmp]

How to: techniques explained by members in a tutorial

covers what I do. As for the long-term, simply put them on multiple hard disks. At $130 for 1Tb you can't go wrong. Every few years swap the disks over to new ones. Don't rely on CDs or the like through the ages. Right now USB2 rules, in 10 years time it won't and you'll need new connectors, so keep updating.

It's worth it, pix are priceless.

[p38arover]

Thanks Robert. I missed that thread.

I hadn't realised 1Tb drives were so cheap now!

You wanna see what we paid for 5Mb drives in the 80s!

[rmp]

Yes, I recall the days of 5.25" floppies, the wonders of a 720Mb 3.5 and then a 1.44Mb, emm386.exe, Windows 3.0, WordPerfect 5.1, WordStar before that.....

At the moment, storage prices are dropping quicker than camera image sizes, which is good. There is a logical limit to just how big an image people need, and for me 15Mp is plenty, whereas disk storage continues to grow apace. But there's no similar limit to disk size.

S'funny, people used to look at my SLRs and ask The Number Two Most Popular Question -- "how many megapixels is that" and the answer of 8 used to impress. Now they're shocked because their little p&s is 12!

[p38arover]

So true!

My 6Mp Pentax *istD DSLR camera is ample for my needs. I don't do photography for publication and the camera is relatively small and light (for a DSLR).

[inside]

Don't discount the web either for long term storage like Flickr, Picasa etc. You may not want to upload your high res pics but even lower res versions for a "just in case" might save you one day.

[abaddonxi]

Worthwhile looking into online backup as well. Doesn't cost much and subscriptions to two services should safeguard.

Other thing is that the security is pretty strong, so you don't have to worry about that pic going public.

[p38arover]

I did that and just found SnapFish - owned by Hewlett Packard. I expect they would be reputable.

[rmp]

Other thing is that the security is pretty strong, so you don't have to worry about that pic going public.

hmmmm

[stirlsilver]

If you are going to use online storage avoid anything that is free, because you never know when they might simply vanish. Use a paid service for the backup of your photos.

I myself use smugmug which I have to pay an annual fee for. And as a bonus you get some cool gallery features. The website is SmugMug Photo & Video Sharing. You look better here.