what do you do with all your RAWs?

babygodzilla

Sorry if this is the wrong forum.

So anyway, obviously I have gigabytes of RAWs, and one day soon my HD will run out of space. I use Lightroom and all my RAWs are catalogued in it.

What should I do with my old RAWs? I don't wanna delete them obviously. Should I just move em to an external HD? If I do, how do I manage my Lightroom catalogue?

What do you guys do in this situation?

Thanks!

poker

I don't use LR.

I have an external hard drive but files ultimately end on up on double layer DVDs. I don't know how much longer this will work since files get bigger and bigger with every new camera. I guess the next step is to store on blu ray data disk.

jfriend

Just buy a larger HD. It's $69 for a 1TB internal hard drive, $99 for 1.5TB.

The advantages of having all your images on hard disk and available in the LR catalog (instant access at any time, easier to make backups) and the incredible decline in $$/GB for hard drive space make this a no-brainer for me. I've got 900GB of RAWs now so I'm about to move to a 1.5TB drive. Fortunately hard drive prices are declining faster than digital camera MPs are growing.

FYI, I use my older hard drives for backups along with backing them up to BackBlaze online. Right now, I'm backing up my 1TB drive to an older 400GB and 500GB drive. When I get the 1.5TB drive, I'll back it up to the 1TB and the 500GB drive and retire the 400.

aquaticvideographer

Drobo
If you're comfortable storing them on an external HD, try Drobo. It's expandable and really easy, and as a bonus, it's fault-tolerant. When you run out of space, you just pop in some larger hard drives.

Richard

My archive is on an external drive and I also have DVD copies. I keep my working pics on my internal drive, which is backed up nightly automatically to the external drive. You want a minimum of two copies on separate media of everything that you care about.

colourbox

babygodzilla wrote:

obviously I have gigabytes of RAWs, and one day soon my HD will run out of space. I use Lightroom and all my RAWs are catalogued in it.

Number one thing if you haven't already is get them off the system disk to a disk of their own, both so you can take full advantage of an entire hard disk's space and also so other documents and system files never start crowding out the photos and videos.

What's been happening to me over the years is that when my disk gets full every couple of years, I spend $450 on expansion. It doesn't matter how large they are, the most practical capacity ends up being about a $150 disk. Last time, that was a 1TB disk. Right now, $150 is a 2TB disk. Why one disk? So Lightroom can find everything in one place. Why $450? I need at least two other disks just as large, for backup.

Also I try to be pretty severe about culling bad shots because who wants to haul them and back up all those useless images? Some see it the opposite way; Chase Jarvis says culling is not worth the time and that storage is cheap, so he says they keep everything.

PhotoLasVegas

We have never deleted the RAW files from any of our events, and we have over 400 of them over the last 2 years of shooting RAW... we have the following:

Internal 1gb (OS drive with all our programs and a small amount of business-related files, but no photos to speak of)
1 - internal 2gb (working drive)
2- 1.5gb externals (duplicate backups of working, and everything stays on for 1 year)
1 - 1.5gb external ("final" archive). This one is almost full and we'll buy another when it's full, etc.

This setup allows us to have a working drive, redundant backups, and then after 1 year, 1 drive for archive.

We half-thought about keeping only the HR JPEGs after a year, but with 1.5tb drives in the $100 range, it's not even worth our time to go thru and delete the RAWs.

MarkR

poker wrote:

I don't use LR.

I have an external hard drive but files ultimately end on up on double layer DVDs. I don't know how much longer this will work since files get bigger and bigger with every new camera. I guess the next step is to store on blu ray data disk.

If you do go the DVD route, please read THIS from the National Archives.

Short form: DVD-Rs just don't last as long as they are often advertised. And I've read somewhere that Blu-Ray is even more susceptible to "bitrot" than regular cd/dvds.

I would suggest a 2nd backup method in addition to the DVD solution. As others on this thread have said, backup hard drives are getting cheaper every day.

alexf

I use external 1TB HD. I have two identical LaCie drives. One in use, one in the safety deposit box at the bank. I switch them monthly and re-synch with Beyond Compare, a nifty little windows utility program I've used for years (I don't use LR).

I do not keep jpegs. Only shoot - and keep - RAW. I treat them as my negatives, and are all kept in the internal HD (it's big and they still fit), then backed up to the external LaCie as indicated.

angevin1

PhotoLasVegas wrote:

We have never deleted the RAW files from any of our events, and we have over 400 of them over the last 2 years of shooting RAW..

You're kidding .... Some Zero's missing perhaps?

chrisjohnson

babygodzilla wrote:

Sorry if this is the wrong forum.

So anyway, obviously I have gigabytes of RAWs, and one day soon my HD will run out of space. I use Lightroom and all my RAWs are catalogued in it.

What should I do with my old RAWs? I don't wanna delete them obviously. Should I just move em to an external HD? If I do, how do I manage my Lightroom catalogue?

What do you guys do in this situation?

Thanks!

Deleting is not bad. Lots of photos are write once read never. I keep my library to a size that I can manage with my limited brain - 1000 tops. Your software also runs faster.

Different if you are commercially active - then I would dump projects onto some low-cost external hard disk and forget. Tell your customers that you will only keep their projects (reasonable efforts) for 3 years max.

mercphoto

angevin1 wrote:

You're kidding .... Some Zero's missing perhaps?

400 events, not photos.

zoomer

Why can't you delete them?
You have all the finished Jpegs.

I delete all mine, never been a problem.

mercphoto

zoomer wrote:

Why can't you delete them?
You have all the finished Jpegs.

I delete all mine, never been a problem.

You get a newer, better RAW converter. You want to change your conversion settings. You want a different look from an old image. You need to up-rez for a large print. I always keep the RAWs, I throw away the JPGs. Of course, Lightroom and Aperture work flows make this utterly simple to do.

PhotoLasVegas

angevin1 wrote:

You're kidding .... Some Zero's missing perhaps?

400 EVENTS, not RAW files... I'd say we have close to around 300,000 RAW files, the Hires Jpegs of those files, and the lowres jpegs of those files

jfriend

zoomer wrote:

Why can't you delete them?
You have all the finished Jpegs.

I delete all mine, never been a problem.

Just yesterday, I needed a fairly old image for an upcoming publication. Because of the constraints of the publication, it was an unusual crop dimension (not a std photo size). To make my selected image fit appropriately, I had to go back to the RAW file, make a new copy of the image and crop it from scratch to get these new constraints. My previous crop would have not fit the new dimensions. This kind of thing happens to me all the time. I keep all my keeper RAW files.

Art Scott

All my raws are changed to DNG as I import into LR....the raws themselves are archived along with the DNG and the final JPG or Tiff.....as my hard drives fill I buy 3 more.....I work in variables of at least 3 archives for everything....photos, music and software............one day I will need a bank vault to keep my archives in and not a tiny branch bank but something like Ft Knoxwinkwink

PhotoLasVegas

zoomer wrote:

Why can't you delete them?
You have all the finished Jpegs.

I delete all mine, never been a problem.

I think the better question is why WOULD you delete them... again with storage So cheap, it's almost not worth the time to go thru and delete.

Since we do a catalog for each event, we're not worried about catalog size.

jjbong

Another reason to save the raws, if you work seriously in post, is to see how your post technique improves (or doesn't) over time, and to evaluate new techniques. When exposed to a new technique, I've found it useful to try it out on some old raws, and then see how the result compared to what I did at the time.

babygodzilla

thanks much for the suggestions guys. sounds like the general idea is to just buy bigger and bigger storage as prices drop. I supposed that's the only thing doable for the near future..

i'll go and ponder this. thanks!

babygodzilla

PhotoLasVegas wrote:

I think the better question is why WOULD you delete them... again with storage So cheap, it's almost not worth the time to go thru and delete.

Since we do a catalog for each event, we're not worried about catalog size.

what's the advantage of having a catalog for each event? is that just for cleaner management? so far I just have 1 catalogue with about 10,000 photos... is that bad?

PhotoLasVegas

babygodzilla wrote:

what's the advantage of having a catalog for each event? is that just for cleaner management? so far I just have 1 catalogue with about 10,000 photos... is that bad?

i think it's personal preference. We tried doing monthly catalogs, but that was a PITA cuz we'd always have to remember what month the event was in. We can't have just 1 catalog (400k images and counting!).

The negative is that, let's say I'm outputting 1000 photos to .jpeg, I do it in Hires as well as web versions, so that's 2000 outputs - takes a while, and I can't work on another client during that time. If they were in the same catalog, I could. But there's other negatives, at least to our workflow, that makes 1-client-1-catalog the best way for us. Oh, plus there's never a cross between clients, so it's not like we're landscape photogs and would want to be able to quick search for "waterfall" photos - it would be a PITA to have separate catalogs every time a landscape photog went out to shoot.

Finally, since we don't have a RAID backup system or automatic backups, it's easier to just copy an entire client's folder to the backup drives instead of doing it for a huge folder of a month's worth of clients.

pward76

I used to buy internal drives and an external case for each new drive until I ran across THIS little gem.

I have installed an eSata card in the computer, and via the appropriate eSata cables, hook the docking station to the card, which gives me external drives running at internal drive speed.

I have 2 drives in the station - 1TB each. You can pull one drive and pop in a new one - it's like having 1TB floppies.

Need more storage? Buy a bare internal drive, pop it in, format it, and away you go.


Viola - unlimited storage, and you only have to open your case once. Fill a drive - label it, copy it, take one copy offsite. Your options are all open.

ABCL

I keep all of my RAW's (even the crappy ones). When I get to 60GB, I offload them onto an external redundant drive for catalogging and preservation. When the external drive is full, I buy another one and begin again.

I see it as a digital version of keeping all your film exposures in those little tins

PhotoLasVegas

pward76 wrote:

I used to buy internal drives and an external case for each new drive until I ran across THIS little gem.

See, now THAT is cool. My 'puter already has eSATA (but it's temperamental).. and "internal" drives are always less expensive. Gotta get me one of those! Thanks!

Art Scott

pward76 wrote:

I used to buy internal drives and an external case for each new drive until I ran across THIS little gem..

that is the BOOOOOOOMB.......those things are life savers......I love mine ...... I have had a single for long time ....then got the double ......ThermalTake has some great stuff..............another thing I have done to decrease storage size is I started using 2.5" laptop drives, which the ThermalTake docks take just fine narry a problem .......

Jeremy_22

www.drobo.com

graham

Great post

pward76 wrote:

I used to buy internal drives and an external case for each new drive until I ran across THIS little gem.

I have installed an eSata card in the computer, and via the appropriate eSata cables, hook the docking station to the card, which gives me external drives running at internal drive speed.

I have 2 drives in the station - 1TB each. You can pull one drive and pop in a new one - it's like having 1TB floppies.

Need more storage? Buy a bare internal drive, pop it in, format it, and away you go.


Viola - unlimited storage, and you only have to open your case once. Fill a drive - label it, copy it, take one copy offsite. Your options are all open.

Thanks for sharing. The single docks are going for under $35 including postage and if it works as well as you guys say (and the reviews that I read elsewhere), this looks like a great, affordable, solution for many of my needs. Thanks.

malch

graham wrote:

Thanks for sharing. The single docks are going for under $35 including postage and if it works as well as you guys say (and the reviews that I read elsewhere), this looks like a great, affordable, solution for many of my needs. Thanks.

Those docks are really cool. Just stuff in a bare SATA drive... gotta love it.

However, it can really be tough to make eSATA work well on many systems. And USB2 is a little slow.

I'm holding out for a USB3 version and then someone is gonna get some of my dosh.