Ok techies, I've a data storage question?

Internal hard drive, external flash or thumb drive, CD discs or DVD discs

I'm wanting to transfer and preserve pictures and usually do so onto flashdrives. They appear sturdier (no scratching) than discs. But I noticed while doing this lastnight the packaging states "not to be used for long term storage".

Sooo, what is the best way to save photos and other data long term?
Thanks,
Tess

I don't know about long term, but Thumbdrives are so easy and they hold tons of data!

I think when they say thumb drives aren't for long term storage, they're essentially saying they -will- eventually fail, but some claim to be able to retain data for up to 10 years. Hard to say for sure, but I would imagine that you could hold on to a flash drive for at least a couple of years and still get pictures off of it.

However, if you're looking for indefinite data storage, I would recommend a CD or DVD. You're right, they could get scratched or damaged more easily, but aside from that, the data will always be there.

I would not use DVDs. I have had cases where I wrote data to a DVD and verified it, put it in a desk drawer, and then tried to use it 6 months later, and most of the discs were unreadable - in the same drive that wrote them. I have not seen that problem with CDs though.

I have 2 PCs, so I just have a copy of stuff on both, and then make a backup to an external hard drive with Ghost occasionally.

I would recommend continuing to use the thumb drives. If long term storage 5+ years is a concern, invest in a new thumb drive and keep the older td as a back up!

just have redundancies. i do dvdrs and an external harddrive.

I would imagine that by the time your thumb drive approaches the end of it's life expectancy there will be some even better mode of storage.
In the computer world you know there's always something later and greater.

Depending on what you want spend and how many pictures you want to back up, you can find online backup for as cheap as 5 bucks a month which is nice since it is off site storage. The more data you have, the more expensive it can become, but all in all pretty reasonable. I use a NAS (network attached storage) with redundant drives so I have a backup...again however without online or off site storage you aren't truly protected. A cheaper way may be to use your thumb drives or an external drive, back up your data, and store it at a family or friends house...just make it part of your monthly routine. Good luck.

As a hobby photographer, I'm currently using smugmug.com. Their basic service is $40/yr and offers excellent control of gallery privacy. Plus unlimited photos and excellent viewers. Just the best that I've found.

You have control over searchability, indexing, short urls, anonymous urls, external links, passwords, etc.

Admittedly I use their Power service which adds video support for $60/yr. Still worth it IMO.

Thanks for the help!
I think I'll keep using the thumbdrives and back up on CD's as well. Keep one handy and one in a sd box.

If anyone hears about anything else "new and improved" please let us know. I'm sure I'm not the only one that has priceless photos I want saved for many years.
Tess

www.flickr.com is sweet for this!

Storage is cheap these days. Both storage in your computer and external storage.

Put the data on a DVD every so often and store it separately from the computer. They're cheap. Be SURE!!! to label it and put it somewhere you know where to find it.

Get a USB external hard drive. You can get a 2 TByte drive for $99 on sale at Frys. 2 TB is 2000 GB. That's the equivalent of 400 DVD's. Create a directory with todays date and make copies of your important files. Unplug the external hard drive and store it somewhere away from your computer. When you want to make another backup, leave the old directory on the drive and copy the data to a new backup directory.

Make one directory on your main computer be the "master" directory. Whenever you take new pictures, be sure that the pictures get copied to that drive and then do backups from there.

Use thumbdrives, too, if you like.

The more different forms of backup, the safer you are. If your DVD's don't last long, then you'll have the external hard drive. However, you can easily have a lot more DVD's than external hard drives. Don't trust ANY single form of backup.

Whatever form of backups you use, check every so often to be sure you can still read the data.

Don't trust any online storage system. Too many of them have unexpectedly lost data, shutdown without warning, decided to hold your data hostage, had security lapses, etc. They are OK as one of your types of backup as long as you have other backups, too.

Consider how much it will hurt if you lose your data. For instance, if you lose your only copy of the pictures you took at some family event, you'll be really unhappy. Make those backups.

I am in the computer storage industry and agree with all the comments. USB thumb drives are normally used by consumers and rarely found as a backup device in 99 percent of companies. Thumb drives can be very sensitive to static electricity - especially in the winter. Best practice is to have two copies of your data besides the originals. One copy should be close at hand for immediate retrival and the other copy should be stored off-site. Your choice of using a safety deposit box is perfect.

Now that the CLOUD is gaining momentum you can backup over the internet to safe off-site storage. This can be concerning to some since they dont know where or who can access their data. Most on-line backup companies use encryption and security but that's not taking into consideration the employees that handle the data centers.

Personally I use a local 2TB USB hard drive for on-site and a removable hard drive from ProStor for off-site protection.

Hope this helps. Good luck with your choices.

I've thought about this subject for several years actually. I did quite a bit of pro underwater photography in the 80's on Ektachrome and Kodachrome.
Well, as the years and technology rolled on, I began to think about long term storage and here's some of my thoughts... NOT TO get off topic,,, just thinking...
After a year or so, how many of us actually go back and sit in front of a computer screen to browse through old photos? One of the things I like about the "old fashioned" way is going through old shoe boxes full of childhood photos, family vacations, etc. The fun of digging through piles and piles of pics inherited from family and friends couldn't possibly be matched by crowding around a monitor, (or large screen tv) to look through old photos. And as we all know, technology will soon render ANY storage as obsolete.. (remember 5.25" floppies, can't even get a new machine that'll read them anymore).
How many of us actually go to the trouble of saving old (as in 3 yrs) photos when we upgrade machines? Especially shots on our cell phones that we thought were so great and would be fun to see in 20 years.. I would venture a guess that very few of us actually "save" all our shots. The ones that would be great to review in the future and have the conversations about the where/why/when the shots were taken.
I've taken to spending the $ to print (on archive paper) all my photos, good and bad.. (those are the fun ones after a lot of time passes)
Shots taken on motorcycle trips 20-30 yrs ago, with friends, scuba trips in the 70's, 80' and 90's.
I'm not sure how the memories will fare when everything is "too much trouble" to find on the disk, or card, instead of hauling out the old album or shoebox.
I have pics on my phone that just wouldn't be the same as passing around an old photo album and reminiscing..
Okay, rant over... Some things I'll miss in the digital future no doubt.
That's "my" version of "Backups"..

I am in the computer storage industry and agree with all the comments. USB thumb drives are normally used by consumers and rarely found as a backup device in 99 percent of companies. Thumb drives can be very sensitive to static electricity - especially in the winter. Best practice is to have two copies of your data besides the originals. One copy should be close at hand for immediate retrival and the other copy should be stored off-site. Your choice of using a safety deposit box is perfect.

Now that the CLOUD is gaining momentum you can backup over the internet to safe off-site storage. This can be concerning to some since they dont know where or who can access their data. Most on-line backup companies use encryption and security but that's not taking into consideration the employees that handle the data centers.

Personally I use a local 2TB USB hard drive for on-site and a removable hard drive from ProStor for off-site protection.

Hope this helps. Good luck with your choices. Originally Posted by Popcorn

Agree.

Off site storage is a good idea, in case your house catches fire or it gets hit w/ a tornado. But somehow, I don't think that you had such extremes in mind when you posted the OQ...

Here's my 2 cents... get an external USB hard drive, and run weekly backups from your computer to it. You can schedule it to kick up automatically at a predetermined time through Window's Task Scheduler.

For your second copy, just run another scheduled task to copy the directory/s containing your data onto a flash card.

Both copies will therefore be on removeable media.

So basically, you'll have 3 copies: #1 resident on your computer, #2 on your external usb hard drive, and #3 on your flash card.

You can go the route of cloud computing or net backups, but your application hardly warrants the expense or the bother (IMHO).

In your situation, at most, I (personally) would maybe format the external usb drive into two partitions, and use partitrion #1 with NTFS and backup my computer to it, and partition #2 would be configured for software raid level 0 against my computer's boot partition yielding a vritual mirrored root volume.

I know, I know. That was probably all Japanese. If you have a techie nerd for a friend, print this out and give it to him for his thoughts and perhaps implementation.

Total cost: approx $200 maybe ?

P.S. On my home computers, at the end of my weekly backups, my backup script also forces a reboot w/ a full CHKDSK scan upon reboot. Why you ask ? If an unsuccessful bad block replacement happens at the hardware level, then the resulting file system corruption will be remain hidden, and you'll actually be backing up corrupt and unreadable data to your removeable media. Windows is notoriously bad about this, and the failsafe is a full CHKDSK at regular intervals.