Help with best way to store digital camera photos

hjb123

Hi, am hoping someone can help or advise on the best way to store digital camera photos.

We have quite alot and we have quite a few on CD. We dont want them to be stored on the computer alone as when the computer breaks down we could lose them.

Each picture transferred is about 1.1mb, which is quite big? What is the best way to store them do you think?

The things that am also wondering are:

1 - if on cd can you delete them off or do you have to have CDRWs (dont really know the difference between CDR, CDRW and CDs so if anyone is able to enlighten me?!

2 - would they be able to be deleted off USB sticks?

3 - with the pictures being quite big where could we store the most the safest?


Thanks

Helen

poppy_f1

CD would be the best option, you can get CDrw's then you can rewrite as and when you need to
for ones you wont delete again cdr would be the best option then the quality would be better as cdrw can degrade slightly the more you write on them (least in my experience that is)

if you have a dvd burner on your pc then i'd write to dvd or dvd rw - more space that way


once deleted from the usb stick they are gone


i have my pics on my pc, on a dvd as well as some of them on a webserver

superscaper

poppy_f1 wrote: »

i have my pics on my pc, on a dvd as well as some of them on a webserver

Agreed, I backup (everything, photos included) to DVD and online to Mozy.

hjb123

sorry, being thick but whats the difference between cd and dvd for storing pictures then?

poppy_f1

hjb123 wrote: »

sorry, being thick but whats the difference between cd and dvd for storing pictures then?

cds only hold 700mb where a dvd holds 4.7gb
so a lot more space on a dvd rather than a cd

hjb123

I learn something new every day!

superscaper

hjb123 wrote: »

I learn something new every day!

That's why you get films on DVD not CD (unless you only wanted a film to last twenty minutes).

Chrith

I agree with superscaper if you have a DVD burner on your computer I would deff do that... you can buy very cheap DVDs and CDs... at bigpockets.co.uk

LittleJo

Hi,
Would file compression software be worth using?
If so, ant helpful hints, please.
Sorry, am not hijacking thread.
Jo

john_kent

I wouldnt use CD/dvd/external ghard drive for long term backups , I would use and online solution. I use DIINO and my web space. CD/DVD is ok , but the do degrade with time. AN external HArd Drive can hold more, and maybe get two off the same make/batch. keep a backup on both and put one in a friends house incase your house gets burnt down or local chav breaks in.

The benefit of using two the sam , is taht if the electronics in one fails , in theory , you can swap the drive into the other.

Nilrem

My advise is as follows:
1: Get into the habit of renaming the pictures and storing them in folders by type - it makes finding the one you want easier (when I started it took me about a day to organise my stuff - now it's five to fifteen minutes when I add another load).
2: Keep copies on both your PC and CDR/DVDR (I'd recommend DVDR if you've got a number of pics). Burn a fresh DVDR every time you empty the camera's memory card onto the PC, and keep both the previous DVDR and new one.
3: Label your backup media with the date it was made.

Lupas Rename is a good free, very versatile piece of free software that can rename large number of pictures quickly and easily (I rename mine to show both the subject name, date/time the picture was taken, keeping the original camera filename at the end, so it might look like pet1_01_03_2007_IMG_345_jpg).

The reason I recommend keeping copies on both the PC and backup media is twofold, it makes it easy to find the one you want, whilst not leaving you at the mercy of either your Hard drives reliability, or the reliability of your chosen media.
The reason I recommend keeping both the most recent, and current copies of the backup media is because that way you have two off PC copies.

I've learned not to trust computers for important data without multiple backups due to multiple hard drive failures over the years, and problems with CDR/DVDR media going wrong (and a burner that would seem to burn ok, but you couldn't read the disks on other machines).
Hence my belt and braces approach

For really important pictures, i'd go as far as to recommend you keep a copy on flash media - it's cheap enough these days to be feasible (a fiver a gig or so), and flash media is generally much more reliable than hard drives (mechanical problems), and burning media (chemical reactions affected by heat etc).
At the very least, for important data use decent quality CDR/DVDR, tell the burning software to verify the data is burned ok (in nero it's a tickbox), and then check it in another drive to make sure it's readable in more than just the original drive.


Littlejo, compression software can help a bit at times, but probably not a great deal with jpg's (they are already partially compressed as standard), and it can make for problems later on - if the media becomes damaged you have a chance of recovering individual files, but if they are in a compressed format you may lose all the ones in the compressed file.


In case anyone hasn't guessed, i'm mildly paranoid about media failures - i had a run of bad luck with hard drives, and a CDRW that had problems a while back, and my backup routine evolved from that (complete backups to DVDR every month, and more frequent backups to secondary hard drives).