Archiving Photographs

[pittenger]

I am interested in learning more about other members' experiences with various techniques for archiving photographs. I have read a lot that is commonly available and would like to know your practices and experience with the following.

CDs and a secondary backup:
The US Library of Congress has helpful tips regarding types of CDs to use, storage conditions, and warning about longevity. While I have several hard drives with 3 terabyte storage, I would like to be a bit OCD and have some type of simple storage I can put into a different location.

File format:
Save files in RAW, TIFF, PNG ... ?

Other recommendations?

My wife had the foresight to save all the negatives from our wedding (1980). I have scanned these and am pleased with the quality of the images. Any ideas about using actual prints as an archival tool?

[Geoff F]

There are a number of companies which do Cloud Storage on the Internet, David. Quite a lot of people use these.

But to some extent it depends on the volume and size of your images and your internet speed.

I tried it, and signed up for a 3 year initial deal because it was cheaper. But after trying to upload a number of larger files on a UK internet connection I haven't done any recently, simply because of the time required.

Fine for a reasonable number of Jpeg images though. But there is a small ongoing cost. I have been storing the original Raw files because if I need to retrieve them in the future I will probably have better editing software by then.

Also with a small cost for that sort of image, there are a number of hosting sites for images. I use P base but there are many others. Images can be publicly viewable or hidden by a keyword etc.

DVD's and a hard drive are my usual option but there is some risk involved. Let's look on the bright side.

If your house is burgled you are likely to lose those hard drives along with your computer and camera equipment!

And in the event of a fire your DVD collection could be lost as well unless it is stored at a different location.

That makes internet storage seem more plausible!

ps. Prints can quickly deteriorate with age. Some cheaper papers/inks will start fading in a couple of years. That is why film negatives, correctly stored have stood the test of time.

Suitable archive paper and ink quality prints can be OK in theory, but they need to be correctly stored away from light etc.

[Manfred M]

I wish I could say that there is a “magic bullet” solution, but unfortunately, there is not. There are a number of considerations that come into play, and what it really boils down to is how much time, effort and money you are willing to throw at it and what level of security you are willing to live with.

1. A single storage medium will eventually fail, so you will need to keep a duplicate, if not triplicate somewhere. Let’s face it, your hard disk on your computer will eventually fail and take everything on it when it does fail.

“Best practices” suggest that at least one of the storage options be “off-site”, and preferably in a different city.

2. Optical storage (with very limited exceptions) is not “permanent” and will fail over time, even when properly stored. The issue is that no one can guarantee how long the data will last. I’ve had high quality CDs and DVDs go bad in less than a year, and have others that have been around for over 10 years.

CDs, DVDs and Blu-Ray disks that you burn on your computer are not the same as commercial ones. Commercial disks are stamped, and hence relatively permanent (unless the protective lacquer layer is disrupted”. Optical disks created on a computer use a photochemical process and over time, these chemical reactions deteriorate to the point where the data becomes corrupted, even when stored properly.

3. If you use magnetic storage (hard disks), you should use a true backup solution, for example a RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks). If one disk fails in a RAID device, the defective hard disk can be replaced and the system will reconfigure itself, but depending on the specifics of the device, this can take some considerable time (measured in days) for large devices. If a second hard disk failure occurs during the restore operation, you will lose some (all?) data. This is the solution that I use as my secondary storage.

4. Online storage – this can be quite expensive (if you have lots of files, it will suck up a lot of bandwidth and time). Online storage companies can shut down or get out of the business, so there are risks here too. I store a limited number of the “best of the best” or other important files online, but not all my files.

5. “Digital Rot” – formats change over time. I have some floppy disks around, but try to get a reader, so even though I do have things backed up on these devices, not being able to read them makes this form of backup rather useless. Any electronic device storage will become obsolete over time and these files will have to be transferred to a more up to date device for the backup to stay relevant.

So, in my case, I use my computer as one level of storage, a RAID-like Data Robotics Drobo NAS device as my second level of storage and I use the cloud for "critical" images as my third level of backup.

As for formats, I generally store in jpeg + RAW. TIFFs are simply too large.

[pittenger]

Much of my concern stems from experience. My grandfather was a very good amateur photographer. He traveled extensively to Cuba, South America, and Western Europe in the 1930s and 40s taking thousands of pictures. He then stored his negatives -- medium format -- in the then state-of-art storage envelopes and put these in steel file drawers. My mother kept his collection of negatives after he died. Unfortunately, when my parents moved to their farm, the steel drawers were put into one of the barns and then soon became nests for vermin. My daughter now has six of his pictures from Cuba, all that remains of his work. These are outstanding pictures for their historical interest and aesthetic quality. What has been lost, I cannot imagine.

As an aside, storage on the internet, although slow, has the potential advantage of forcing one to select only one's best work. I fear that I become too infatuated with some pictures.

Given the many things that can worry me, I think I will perseverate on archiving my work as this is something I can control and is a pleasant distraction from matters far more grim.

[John 2]

Kodak (and maybe others) offer Gold Archive disks that, it is claimed, are guaranteed to last for 100 years. Easy to say but who is going to be around long enough to challenge that? I don't know if you have any experience of these Manfred? I have used them for instance to distribute copies of a friend's daughter's wedding video but I have seen no opinions on whether they are as good as they are claimed to be. Needless to say I also double back up to disk one of which is an external drive that remains disconnected except when I am backing up (I know someone that lost everything through a surge).

[Mike Buckley]

I backup all of my files to an external hard drive soon after I make changes, always no later than the same day I make them. I then backup all of my files to another external hard drive each weekend. That hard drive is stored offsite at my wife's office during the week.

It's unbelievable that I've never experienced a hard drive failure. That means that I'm closer than ever to it happening the first time.

[DanK]

John, thanks for the information about gold archive disks. Worth exploring.

Re cloud backup: my experience has been different from Geoff's. I use a cloud backup (CrashPlan) as my second backup, after a local external drive. When I first installed it, my connection was about 15Mbps up and down. The initial backup of my photos took a long time, perhaps 10 days or two weeks (I don't recall exactly). I just set my computer not to go to sleep and let it run. However, for incremental backups, the speed is fine. It churns away in the background, and I don't notice it. Since I have an immediate local backup, I don't care if it takes a while. For the numbers of images I take in a day, it doesn't take that long anyway.

However, I don't think of a backup as an archive. A cloud backup gives you a way to retrieve your photos if disaster strikes, e.g., a fire that destroys both your computer and your local backup (whether it be RAID, an external NAS, or just cheap external USB drives). However, I have no reason to believe that CrashPlan will even still be in existence 10 years from now. If they go under, I'll buy a new service and start over. For archiving, I would like something that my grandkids will be able to access 50 years from now.

Dan

[Manfred M]

Kodak (and maybe others) offer Gold Archive disks that, it is claimed, are guaranteed to last for 100 years. Easy to say but who is going to be around long enough to challenge that? I don't know if you have any experience of these Manfred? I have used them for instance to distribute copies of a friend's daughter's wedding video but I have seen no opinions on whether they are as good as they are claimed to be. Needless to say I also double back up to disk one of which is an external drive that remains disconnected except when I am backing up (I know someone that lost everything through a surge).

I suspect that "Gold" is more marketing jargon than anything else. The only system that I have considered (and may still look at is M-disk). The main reason that I have not done so is that with the amount of data I have, I would want to use Blu-Ray disks to reduce the number of disks required, and the M-disk Blu-Ray is not shipping yet (but will be very soon).

My main concern is that optical disks are slowly becoming obsolete and the "digital rot" issues are going to affect all optical disks sooner or later, so I'm not sure if I am going to bother.

Their website has some interesting documentation, including some independent lab analysis of the Gold disks.

http://www.mdisc.com/proving-ground/