Digital still archives

[ffejdraga 0]

I am looking for the various methods and specific brands of archiving digital stills.

slides are easy, books and sheets, away from dust.
and most likely in 20 or so years they will be ok.

if you archive to cds, any of you digital shooters worry about not being able to access the thousands of pics in years to come...

any info is appreciated, as I am just now crossing into the digital domain, and see no reason to reinvent the wheel.

thanks,
jeff D-16906

[quade 4]

The ONLY solution to archiving digital images is to back them up on optical media. I currently do it on CD's but have been considering changing the archive to DVD-ROM.

The key is that you make a change over from one digital archiving format to another before the old one totally fades to black. CD's will continue to be with us for another few years at least so you're probably safe doing your backup to CD for at least two or three years. If you have a DVD writer and are just starting out, you might just start out with DVD's to begin with. DVD's are definately not going away for quite awhile.

You'll also want to get hold of some sort of file management system. I use iView but you might not be running a Mac.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[ffejdraga 0]

cool, thanks quade.

I do have a dvd burner and i am running a PC.
what brand of dvd do you suggest?

hopefully the price of dvd roms come down to the cd level.

jeff D-16906

[Luza 0]

I'm using DVD too...but the main problem is the file mangament system....quade, u said u used iView, but does any1 have any good suggestion to use wuth a pc?

[kevin922 0]

I'm starting to play with Adobe Photoshop Album 2.0, the one i'm playing with is the free version but a registered version (with all the bells and whistles) is about 40 bucks. Pretty nice and it provides a "burn to disk" feature.

[Bolt 0]

I just bought a stand alone external hard drive that I use for storing my images, it works great.

http://secure.serverlab.net/shop/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=6020&Category_Code=SixPac&Store_Code=T00107

[EricTheRed 0]

Try Thumbs plus. I think it's a great program.

Free trial at http://www.cerious.com

Works great for me and it lets you manage offline storage (DVD/CD)

One thing to note: DVD's DO HAVE A LIMITED LIFESPAN!
http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/ptech/05/06/disc.rot.ap/

illegible usually

[tonyhathaway 0]

Right now, my "good" photos are on 2 drives in my computer at the DZ, one external HD at home, and on CD's in a fireproof safe along with my slides. A couple of years ago I had a computer get fried by lightning. The ONLY thing that didn't get damaged were the drives. So, I managed to keep all of my photos. Now I make sure to keep them in 2 different places on 4 different types of media. -Tony

My O.C.D. has me chasing a dream my A.D.D. won't let me catch.

[jmfreefly 0]

Search the archive here about CD degradation. In some tests with burned media, CDs have deteriorated within just 13 months. I posted a link to an article a while back. I'm too lazy to search for it.

I have never experienced it, but just keep in mind that it can happen on (I believe) super cheap medium.

j

[ffejdraga 0]

so then is there a brand of cd-r that is better or highly recommended for this purpose?

jeff D-16906