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    Image Storage.

    In the early days of Digital Photography, we were advised to keep everything. We were also advised to back-up our data to CD's, or DVD's. Very sound advice, especially as CD's were considered incorruptible, subject to being kept in a reasonable environment. Some years later, there were mutterings that CD's weren't as safe as everyone originally thought and there were quite a few reports of problems.

    Now that my new "Study" is finished, I am going through years of accumulated stuff that has been filling up shelves and drawers for a number of years and only keeping things that I use reasonably regularly. When I feel the need for a sort-out I can be quite ruthless and this time, it included my hundreds and hundreds of CD's. I spent a day checking through everything and ensuring that the files were duplicated on Hard Drives and during this, I was quite surprised to see a number of images where only half of the image was readable and a similar number where the whole image wasn't readable. There was no logic to which images were affected, there wasn't a sequence of images and generally they were hundreds, possibly thousands of images apart. Thankfully, I duplicated my image storage over at least two CD's and I even used two different makes of CD ............ just in case!

    I thought I was being a little paranoid at the time, but as it turned out, any of my corrupted images were not corrupt on the second CD. Many of these images go back to 2003 and possibly earlier. I wonder how much longer they would have survived? Certainly not the "Forever" originally envisaged!
    Colin

    #2
    Re: Image Storage.

    I certainly agree that all the files that you value certainly need to be in at least two places, be they pics or anything else. I have backed up my pics onto CDs in the past so from your experience it would be worth my while checking what cds I have to see If they are ok. Your tip is appreciated!

    Currently my pics are all stored on my own dual raid drive system at a minimum (some of them are also duplicated on other computer hard drives I have). External cloud storage doesn’t count.

    The biggest single source pics that I have is the huge number of colour slides and pictures that I took in the predigital age ( and before computers could reasonably handle pictures). Looking at some of them recently I noticed that some of the colours on the slides had deteriorated despite being kept Cool dry and dark; some makes seemed to handle ageing a lot better that others.

    There’s too many to scan them all but I do need to backup images of the best and important ones so they are not lost, at present I have a potential single point failure

    Ian
    Ian

    Flickr page https://www.flickr.com/photos/154026104@N07

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      #3
      Re: Image Storage.

      I also have plenty of colour slides and negatives and like you, I have noticed some colour degradation. However, an added complication for me is that most of them are medium format, 6x6 and 6x7. A solution for scanning those sizes is a bit on the expensive side and I find it difficult to justify the time and expense involved, especially when the only potential benefit is nostalgia.

      I think I may pick out just a few that I think are special and leave the rest in their Patterson storage files.
      Colin

      Comment


        #4
        Re: Image Storage.

        You can get excellent results copying slides by simply photographing them, all you need is a basic light box behind the slide (led panels with a diffuser are perfect and very cheap) and a lens that can focus close enough. I've used a macro lens, but a set of cheap extension tubes works as well. For medium format slides, it's even easier as you don't need to get as close. The resolution of any present day digital camera far exceeds that of slide film and so you can easily capture all of the detail. I even did some years ago with the 3 megapixel D30 and they were pretty good. Just make sure you've removed every speck of dust from the slide first, unless you want to spend a lot of time cleaning up on the computer.
        EOS 6D, 6D Mk II, 80D, 70D, 100D, 200D, M50, M100. Canon 10-18, 18 - 55, 55 - 250 IS STM lenses, Canon 16 - 35 mm F4L, 35 mm EF-S macro, 50 mm F1.8 STM, 60 mm EF-S macro, MPE-65 macro, 85 mm F1.8, 200 mm F2.8 L II, M 15 - 45 mm, M 22mm F2, M 32mm F1.4. Sigma 24 - 35 F2 Art, 135 mm F1.8 Art, 17 - 50 F2.8 DC, 105 mm OS macro, 100 - 400 C, 150 - 600 C.

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          #5
          Re: Image Storage.

          I'm a bit too new to photography to have loads of stuff backed up on CDs (although I do have a few). My dad however has recently found that old holiday videos that he'd put on DVD had deteriorated so badly that they were unwatchable. He's now transferring them to M-DISC which allegedly will last a lot longer than traditional CD/DVDs
          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC

          Interestingly, it's only his own DVDs (i.e. that he created himself from blanks) that have deteriorated. DVDs for films that he has, and that are far older than his home-created ones are all perfectly fine, so either consumer blank CDs & DVDs are rubbish, or commercially produced ones go through a process to give longevity that home-created ones don't.
          Chris
          80D - 10-18 IS STM - 15-85 IS USM - 55-250 IS STM - 50 f/1.8 STM - 100-400L IS II USM - 100 f/2.8L Macro - 1.4x III

          Comment


            #6
            Re: Image Storage.

            Nas drive which works on wifi and automatically backs up my computer and even my phone when I walk in the house. Some images on separate stand alone plug in storage drives and some on Flickr (which also can have private images) it's two terabytes for nothing... so why not . [emoji4]
            I've just remembered I do have discs and dvds... I'd better check them.
            Di.
            Last edited by DeeGee; 13-04-2018, 18:50.
            Di ~ Trying to take "the" photograph.
            Di's Flickr

            Comment


              #7
              Re: Image Storage.

              With commercially produced DVDs (Feature films etc), the 'pits' and 'lands' (Binary ones and zeros) are pressed into the substrate, and as such will have a nice clean square shape. Correctly stored, and treated with respect, the stored data will outlast our home burnt ones, by a great many years.

              Our homemade DVDs, where the data is burnt into the substrate (Alumimium) by a laser, do not have a nice square shape, and can be somewhat rounded. As such any degradation over time, will make the data unreadable in far lees time than a would a pressed DVD.

              How long this is in real time, I don't think anyone has put a finite time on it. That said, I have home made holiday DVD videos, that are many years old, and they still play fine.

              A high quality DVD player, will be quite fussy as to what it will play, as it will have only limited error correction. A 'cheapo' DVD player will by its very nature, have lots of built in error correction, and as such is more likely to play a poor quality DVD.
              Last edited by Dave_S; 19-04-2018, 19:00.
              Dave

              Website:- https://davesimaging.wixsite.com/mysite

              Comment


                #8
                Re: Image Storage.

                I have three back up drives full of old shots ,but in all honesty they are a total waste of time ,if it all went bang tomorrow I would simply start afresh ,the best of my work is on Flickr hopefully that will be retained under the new owners .. surprisingly the best way of storage is the old photo albums of mum and dads in the loft . We have lost something on the journey into the future

                Comment


                  #9
                  Re: Image Storage.

                  Originally posted by colin C View Post
                  In the early days of Digital Photography, we were advised to keep everything. We were also advised to back-up our data to CD's, or DVD's. Very sound advice, especially as CD's were considered incorruptible, subject to being kept in a reasonable environment. Some years later, there were mutterings that CD's weren't as safe as everyone originally thought and there were quite a few reports of problems.

                  Now that my new "Study" is finished, I am going through years of accumulated stuff that has been filling up shelves and drawers for a number of years and only keeping things that I use reasonably regularly. When I feel the need for a sort-out I can be quite ruthless and this time, it included my hundreds and hundreds of CD's. I spent a day checking through everything and ensuring that the files were duplicated on Hard Drives and during this, I was quite surprised to see a number of images where only half of the image was readable and a similar number where the whole image wasn't readable. There was no logic to which images were affected, there wasn't a sequence of images and generally they were hundreds, possibly thousands of images apart. Thankfully, I duplicated my image storage over at least two CD's and I even used two different makes of CD ............ just in case!

                  I thought I was being a little paranoid at the time, but as it turned out, any of my corrupted images were not corrupt on the second CD. Many of these images go back to 2003 and possibly earlier. I wonder how much longer they would have survived? Certainly not the "Forever" originally envisaged!
                  My first digital camera was a Sony Mavica which saved on to a floppy disk. After taking pics of a school reunion, I found that some of the files were corrupted. A former schoolmate suggested that it was most likely to have been a problem with the transfer process rather than with the disk and that I should edit the file names to show a fictitious suffix, transfer them to another location and then rename them correclty. I followed the advice and it worked!.

                  Martin

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Re: Image Storage.

                    Two points:
                    1. I use a NAS Drive and that offers full redundancy. Being paranoid I do also have my most important images on an external drive as well. My NAS drive is in a separate building (Used to be my garage now my studio). I don't use a wireless connection I have run an Ethernet cable out there.
                    2. One thing to keep in mind is compatibility. File types change an you need to ensure that you have software that can read your files. I do not use any form of file compression when storing files. I have 351,000 image files mainly RAW and PSD and a few Jpeg current storage 20 TB NAS Drive (10 TB usable).
                    Alan

                    No longer using Canon but still teaching new Canon users (and others) the gentle art of Photography.

                    http://www.springfield-photography.com/

                    Comment

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