Posted by Sharon Menke on June 11, 2007 at 4:52 PM
Hi, my name is Sharon and I am new here. I reside in San Diego and have been taking photos for a couple of years, but recently decided after a little nudging from friends to start posting. I have a Canon PowerShot G3 camera which I have set to large with superfine images. My question is whether it is better to keep the photos on the card or on an external hard drive. I have posted one photo to the fauna forum, but have others on photoportfolios.net as well as my website, menkephoto.com. Thank you in advance for your input.
I recommend burning 2 DVDs of different brands and technologies, and storing them in total darkness. Pay premium for better brands, preferable if you're tech savvy, DVDs made in Japan. Most big brands just rebadge DVDs from 3 or 4 manufacturing plants but don't tell you. So to tell gotta read the media with special tools, and to buy you need to know what the boxes look like for each manufacturer, or buy online from a vendors that knows.
I've noticed CDs go bad after barelly 4 or 5 years. Cheap ones (green or blue) become unreadable, good ones (kodak gold for ex.) start having errors. All the waranties are only for the media replacement, not the data!
In the future, I think using an online storage provider will be the solution.
CDs, DVDs and hard disks are all relatively unreliable media.
Think of pulling your archives out and re-saving them every few years as new denser storage media becomes available...
Posted by Nelcha Cross on June 12, 2007 at 4:36 AM
Hey Dan,
don't tell us all that and then NOT tell us where to go to get them
and to buy you need to know what the boxes look like for each manufacturer, or buy online from a vendors that knows.
can you give us some examples ??
I KNOW, this is ALL getting to be a real pain......
I buy an ext HD and them have to worry if the USB or firewire will be usable in a few years, not to mention the problems with CDs you listed....Thanks, I bought a numbner of the Kodak gold to use
If the film didn't deteriote is would be almost worth staying with that
I try to have enought CF cards for any given outing and then download to laptop then copy or burn as necessary. Please advise what dvds are best to buy!!
in gratitude,
Nelcha
Posted by Sharon Menke on June 12, 2007 at 11:58 AM
I have an 80GB external hard drive that I would download the photos from the cards to and then format the card. But I read somewhere that everytime that you copy/move a file, you lose data. That is why I was asking the question. Then, of course, my favorite ones are printed.
I have a small wolverine 80GB disk for travel that has card ports, so I can always use that when my memory cards are full. Often I'll just bring a laptop with a power inverter for the cigarette lighter.
You loose on lossy JPG compression every time you save a photo after editing it as Enrique mentions. Another way to loose data when copying is using bad media, and corrupting a part of the file. Unlikely.
As for DVDs, you'll need to read up, esp. on the media tags which identify manufacturers.
For quality check here:
I use Verbatims, and I have some HP, I backup on DVD+R *and* DVD-R.
If you wanna be technical, Nero has a test mode (nero speed?) that works on some DVD burners, which list CRC errors. Good media with good burner should yield very few CRC1, and no CRC2 errors - or whatever it is - So if it works, a good way to see the quality of your burns. Then when checked, keep the same protocol for all future burns.
I usually don't burn at max speed, but 4X or 8X on a 16X burner, so that I get a better quality DVD.
Overall I used to care about all this when it was a hot topic, now I just hope it's good when I buy a reputable brand.
Ritek/RiData and Taiyo Yuden used to be highly regarded then (maker), when picking top bin DVDs. The 50DVD spindle boxes used to have shiny black holders with squarish shapes, and a little foam ring on top to hold the DVDs, and the top had a lip. Hard to describe...
Posted by Scott Buckel on June 14, 2007 at 1:38 AM
I back up my cards on 2 external hard drives from my laptop. One of these days my archive of images will be backed up on DVD's and at least two hard drives, if not three. One of hard disks currently resides in my office at work. My raw files are archived in buckets and each of these buckets is the same size as a DVD to make burning the DVD easier.
Marc Rochind has a program called ImageVerifier that checks your digital files that looks interesting, he also has ImageIngester, that I use to make two copies of files from my cards and rename at the same time. His website is: ImageIngester
I am thinking that for long trips I need to have some sort of hard disk device like the Epson. I have a fear that my laptop may die during a trip and I would be lost.
Discussion
8 replies1) fill card and copy to Epson P2000
2) delete card and re-use
3) copy from Epson P2000 to Mac
4) back up images on Mac to DVD and x2 external drives
I've noticed CDs go bad after barelly 4 or 5 years. Cheap ones (green or blue) become unreadable, good ones (kodak gold for ex.) start having errors. All the waranties are only for the media replacement, not the data!
In the future, I think using an online storage provider will be the solution.
CDs, DVDs and hard disks are all relatively unreliable media.
Think of pulling your archives out and re-saving them every few years as new denser storage media becomes available...
don't tell us all that and then NOT tell us where to go to get them
can you give us some examples ??
I KNOW, this is ALL getting to be a real pain......
I buy an ext HD and them have to worry if the USB or firewire will be usable in a few years, not to mention the problems with CDs you listed....Thanks, I bought a numbner of the Kodak gold to use
If the film didn't deteriote is would be almost worth staying with that
I try to have enought CF cards for any given outing and then download to laptop then copy or burn as necessary. Please advise what dvds are best to buy!!
in gratitude,
Nelcha
With digital, each and every copy is identical to the original.
The only time that you lose data is when you open and re-save a JPG file.
You loose on lossy JPG compression every time you save a photo after editing it as Enrique mentions. Another way to loose data when copying is using bad media, and corrupting a part of the file. Unlikely.
As for DVDs, you'll need to read up, esp. on the media tags which identify manufacturers.
For quality check here:
http://www.videohelp.com/dvdmedia
http://www.dvd-recordable.org/Reviews+index-req-showcontent-id-76.phtml
I use Verbatims, and I have some HP, I backup on DVD+R *and* DVD-R.
If you wanna be technical, Nero has a test mode (nero speed?) that works on some DVD burners, which list CRC errors. Good media with good burner should yield very few CRC1, and no CRC2 errors - or whatever it is - So if it works, a good way to see the quality of your burns. Then when checked, keep the same protocol for all future burns.
I usually don't burn at max speed, but 4X or 8X on a 16X burner, so that I get a better quality DVD.
Overall I used to care about all this when it was a hot topic, now I just hope it's good when I buy a reputable brand.
Ritek/RiData and Taiyo Yuden used to be highly regarded then (maker), when picking top bin DVDs. The 50DVD spindle boxes used to have shiny black holders with squarish shapes, and a little foam ring on top to hold the DVDs, and the top had a lip. Hard to describe...
Marc Rochind has a program called ImageVerifier that checks your digital files that looks interesting, he also has ImageIngester, that I use to make two copies of files from my cards and rename at the same time. His website is: ImageIngester
I am thinking that for long trips I need to have some sort of hard disk device like the Epson. I have a fear that my laptop may die during a trip and I would be lost.
Scott