Question:
Hi guys, hope you can help,
I like to take lots of digital photos which I download off my memory card onto my computer. I like to make a backup of these photos - just in case anything nasty happens to the computer - so that I have a safe copy. At the moment I'm burning them onto DVD's - but it's taking up a lot of DVD space. Is there a more efficient way to do this? e.g. an external hard drive. And if so, what should I be paying for one, and are any brands better than others.
Many thanks
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For long term access (i.e. your great-grand kids) you'll want to get them printed... do you think any tech will be readable in 40 years time?
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For long term access (i.e. your great-grand kids) you'll want to get them printed... do you think any tech will be readable in 40 years time?
Not really practical (or cost effective) if there are thousands of photos. Irrelevant whether a DVD or whatever is readable in 40 years time, presumably in that time the data will be transferred to the most appropriate media. It's the raw data that's important which of course would be seriously degraded by relying on printouts.
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Hi guys, hope you can help,
I like to take lots of digital photos which I download off my memory card onto my computer. I like to make a backup of these photos - just in case anything nasty happens to the computer - so that I have a safe copy. At the moment I'm burning them onto DVD's - but it's taking up a lot of DVD space. Is there a more efficient way to do this? e.g. an external hard drive. And if so, what should I be paying for one, and are any brands better than others.
Many thanks
is the best by far.
Having a second copy on DVD or external HD is also vital. Look at Western digital or Buffalo hard drives from Amazon.co.uk
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You can burn them onto CD`s
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You can burn them onto CD`s
Why is that different to burning them onto DVD in the OP?
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Why is that different to burning them onto DVD in the OP?
Much CHEAPER
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Much CHEAPER
Not true, a single layer DVD can hold 6 CD's of data but it only costs slightly more than one CD
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I'm currently trialing to backup all my documents (pictures included). It costs about £30 per year but it's unlimited storage. As it's an online backup facility it may take a long time to upload but the advantage is that you have a backup independant of your home (eg in case of fire, burglary etc).
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You could get an external hard drive, which are not too expensive, or you could sit it out for a few more months when Id expect Blueray writers to come down, which can hold 5 times a DVD. Whatever you do, Id back them up online on one of the sites.
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I would say at the moment the best way to back up photos etc is on dvd or cd. An external HDD can fail & take into account that ALL your pictures will be on it, so you could lose everything in one go.
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I would say at the moment the best way to back up photos etc is on dvd or cd. An external HDD can fail & take into account that ALL your pictures will be on it, so you could lose everything in one go.
I run backup on External Hd. The whole point of backing up is that you keep more than 1 copy of the file, so if 1 goes down you have the backup. Ive got 2-3 copies of files that i cannot replace if lost.
Any Storage media can fail and its only your own fault if you only keep one copy on whatever medium.
Harddrives can fail
CD's/DVD's overtime can fail to work - bad media.
Online Storage servers can lose data, e.g google losing thousands of peoples emails stored on googlemail.
Keep more than 1 copy.
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I can't imagine how you are finding that it takes up a lot of dvd space considering how many pics a DVD will hold. The only thing I can assume is that you burn a dvd every time you take a collection of photos.
If that is the case than I suggest that you put them in named and dated folders and burn them onto a DVD-RW so that you can keep on adding. When the DVD-RW is full then store it and begin a new one - or burrn the DVD-RW onto a DVD-R (slightly cheaper and impossible to overwrite accidentally) then delete all on the DVD-RW and start all over again
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Assuming an average of about 3 MiB per photo a DVD should hold 1600 photos. So it would be interesting to hear what sort of numbers the OP has. Although if you're including hi res scans of photos then that could of course mean over 100 MiB per photo.
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Assuming an average of about 3 MiB per photo a DVD should hold 1600 photos. So it would be interesting to hear what sort of numbers the OP has. Although if you're including hi res scans of photos then that could of course mean over 100 MiB per photo.
The DVD I use hold 4.7gb each - I do take a lot of photos! and my camera is quite high spec - so they're at least 4mb min, plus I take lots of little videos on it too which seem to take loads of space. DVD's are pretty cheap to buy - just don't like having to store them, and I'm concerned that they could get corrupted. Thanks for everyones suggestions - I didn't know about all the online storage things - so that's a great tip
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The DVD I use hold 4.7gb each - I do take a lot of photos! and my camera is quite high spec - so they're at least 4mb min, plus I take lots of little videos on it too which seem to take loads of space. DVD's are pretty cheap to buy - just don't like having to store them, and I'm concerned that they could get corrupted. Thanks for everyones suggestions - I didn't know about all the online storage things - so that's a great tip
Probably best not to take one person's advice on board but as many as possible. Best to have a variety of different backups and backup methods. I think probably the ideal would be cd/dvd backups, external hard drive and online backup.
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For this purpose we use Picasa v2 (find via google)to produce a "gift" dvd.
This allows you to select some/all photos/albums, shows the space required (and number of dvds/cds/required) and has its own built in burning software.
It also puts a copy of Picasa on the DVD so you have a method of accessing and printing the photos easily as well as putting a front-end on the DVD (displays as a slideshow).
Once we have done the gift DVD we gave the copy to the MIL to store at her house. What is the point of a backup in the same location as the original in case of fire/flood etc? We always check the DVD in another DVD reader to make sure it can be read.
Finally Picasa is freeware so very Here!
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Assuming an average of about 3 MiB per photo a DVD should hold 1600 photos. So it would be interesting to hear what sort of numbers the OP has. Although if you're including hi res scans of photos then that could of course mean over 100 MiB per photo.
Well that'd be about 3 months worth for me, though I might slow down when my 3 month old son gets a bit older ;-)
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Well that'd be about 3 months worth for me, though I might slow down when my 3 month old son gets a bit older ;-)
Nowadays with the prevalence of digital cameras and the cheap cost of memory storage, why not "over do it" on photos. Better to have too many than too few.
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I have a lot of photos ( and other documents) which I certainly don't want to lose.
I already have 2 HDDs in my PC and have bought a stand alone hard drive (WD book) and back everything up on that as well. It is only powered up when I am actually backing up to it
Don't worry about a technology being "readable in 40 years time" - when you upgrade you PC, upgrade your backup hardware as necessary. Hard drives are cheap as chips nowadays !