A question about storage

[Deleted User]

After seeing a thread about backing up your pictures, I wondered how people store there pictures. I have ove 17000 picture which equates to around 16gb of space from 3 years of taking pictures (the early days are typical holiday snaps types).

So how do you store them on your home PC, I download from the camera to a program called Digikam(1), (the actaul storage is on an external USB disk drive) in here I have two main albums Kite pictures and all other pictures. Within these two albums are albums dated by year and in these year albums are albums dated by the date and name of the photo shoot. Once downloaded I weed out the obvious dross but keep everything else even those that are a bit out because they are pictures of friends and family or events that in the future I may have long forgot.

Is that a sort of standard way for you guys keep your pictures??

Tim

(1) Digikam - http://www.digikam.org/
I run Linux just incase you did not guess

aktse

draggin wrote:

Is that a sort of standard way for you guys keep your pictures??

I don't think there is one set standard, but redundancy is the key.

1) Smugmug for jpgs (70gb +)
2) backup external HDs/dvd
3) separate on-line storage (various reviews on-line)

Do I do this for everything? Not yet (lazy), but I'm getting better at it. I need to script an automatic workflow one of these days.

CalfeeRider

aktse wrote:

I don't think there is one set standard, but redundancy is the key.

1) Smugmug for jpgs (70gb +)
2) backup external HDs/dvd
3) separate on-line storage (various reviews on-line)

Do I do this for everything? Not yet (lazy), but I'm getting better at it. I need to script an automatic workflow one of these days.

I agree with April about redundancy.

My new workstation at home has mirrored drives for the O/S (Vista) and for my workspace. Lightroom, CS3 and my temporary storage where I keep my workfile TIFFs are stored on another mirrored set and my finished/processed photos are kept in separate chronological folders (eg 2007\2007-09-29 Glacier NP) as well as being uploaded to Smugmug. I plan to dump copies of these folders to DVD occasionally as another backup of my finished files - but like April I'm a bit lazy at times too.

I also offload from my memory cards (or Epson P2000) all of my RAW files to a mirrored internal cabinet with removable drawers so when I fill up one "volume", I can pop out both drives out and store them in separate locations (work/home) and simply insert another set of drives to create another "volume." Using Lightroom to manage these RAW files helps keep down some of the volume as I delete the rejects from the disk.

Hope this helps!

LiquidAir

Right now, I am using a 750GB hard drive in my computer which I back up to a pair of external USB drives. I always keep one of those at home and one in the office. If I keep shooting at the rate I have been for the last year, that will setup will serve for another 4 years or so.

I am also in the process of setting up a small 2 drive NAS in my house so my wife and I can share data storage and backup. The system I am installing is a Synology DS-207 which is small Linux based server with two internal SATA bays.