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How do you store you data... Not to get in a debate on who makes what better than the other company.. But how do you store you photo data and in what format.. on-line ~ CD ~ DVD ~ Flash Card ~ Blue Ray ~ Free Standing External Hard Drive...or processed on archival paper. Or any other not mentioned..
Location: Splitting time between Dayton, NJ and Needmore, PA
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First I download the files to a sub-directory on a dedicated HDD for photos. After developing the photos in Lightroom, I save the JPGs to the same sub-directory on the HDD and burn a DVD of all the files. The HDD is backed up to a separate external drive using Time Machine. The JPGs are then posted to my SmugMug account which has its own back-up system.
The original RAW files get imported off the CF card into Lightroom 2 which I have set to store them on the hard drive in the format \year\date\filename.cr2. That is on a 500GB mirror set inside my PC which then periodically gets backed up to a couple of external hard drives and my Amazon S3 storage in the sky.
I have two RAID arrays, a Drobo and a LaCie. I load a file to either one and it's immediately backed up. The Drobo is the newer one, and I like it better tan the LaCie.
I used to use CDs and DVDs, but who knows how long they'll last, and they get a little cumbersome after awhile.
Big internal hard drives + Carbonite. If I feel the need to archive something and get it off my drive, I zip it up and put it on two geographically dispersed colocated servers.
Whatever format they are in to begin with, usually .JPG, you don;t want to convert them to anything is what I'm saying unless it's another uncompressed format.
If you're scanning either TIFF, PNG or if you need to save space a lightly compressed .JPG
If you're scanning documents with little color in them .GIF can be used to save space and would actually provide a near perfect copy. It's excellent format for that purpose.
I store everything on an external hard drive (my laptop doesn't have enough space for all my photos) and back it all up to a 1TB NetGear ReadyNAS: ReadyNAS Duo - RND2110, RND2150 & RND2175 (http://www.netgear.co.uk/readynasduo.php?src=home - broken link)
As for file format, I have RAW, PSD and JPG. ALL formats are stored on both my working external hard drive and my back up ReadyNAS. I could probably live without backing up my JPGs because as long as I have the original RAW and all my work saved as PSD, the JPGs are easily replicated. But there's not much point since I have 1 Terrabyte of space! I will need to eventually upgrade my working external for more space but hard drives never last forever anyway (hence the need to store everything in two places).
On the external hard drive storage with multiple hard drives... Can these units be shut down and turned off with out any problems.. and can the hard drive be removed and stored with the data for future use. If the drive can be used in the future what time frame are we talking...and what care should be used on the storage.. and are you able to see what data is where on the hard drive...
And do these free standing units also act as emergency back up... system failure and everything would be sent to the external hard drives automatically...
Great information thanks every one for sharing your knowledge
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