How to Store Digital Photos

[Larry Frank]

I am in the process of scanning a large number of 35mm slides and photos and am trying to figure out how to long term store them. There are a number of options that I can think of......

1. CD/DVD - The life of a DVD or CD is said to be 2-5 years but I think it is a bit longer than that. For more money, I can burn them to archival grade DVD which has a life supposedly or 100 years. Who knows if there is anything that can read them in even 20 years.
2. Hard Drive - The life of a hard drive is on the same order of 2-5 years but who knows with them.
3. Flash Drives - The life of these thumb drives is not given. I wrote to one of the major suppliers of them and they were not very nice in telling me that they do not provide such data. My guess is that they are on the same order as the other storage media. There was one called a Sandisk Memory Vault that supposedly has a 100 year life but they no longer make it. You can buy them some places for anywhere from $25-$90.
4. Archival Prints - One can pay for Archival prints which have a long life but cost $9 for a 5x7 print.
5. Print High Quality at Home - One can buy archival grade paper and and printer with the right ink and print long lasting prints at home.

In this day and age of people shooting hundreds of pictures with their cell phones, I wonder if anyone has given any thought to what happens to these pictures. What will you have to show your kids or grandkids in 30 years. I doubt that they will still be in the cloud or on Facebook.

As I scan and sort slides and prints, I am picking a few from every year that are the most important or most representative and will be finding a way to make certain to preserve these. The rest of the pictures that I scan will be saved probably on archival DVD disks.

What are other people doing with all their old pictures and ones taken now on phones or digital cameras. There are so many pictures being taken now, I really wonder what will happen to them. Maybe, the interest is for today or this year and then forget them.

[Raymond Fries]

I backup mine from the computer to an external hard drive.

[Myk Rian]

3tb external drive.

[Matt Day]

The life of a CD is 2-5 years??? What? Where did you get that information from? I have data CD's from college (15 years ago) that still work, and audio cd's from 20 years ago that work.

To answer your question, I use an external HD.

We also upload to Shutterfly.

[Larry Frank]

I was a bit surprised about the life of them but this is what I found on an archive site

"6. How long can I expect my recorded CDs/DVDs to last?

CD/DVD experiential life expectancy is 2 to 5 years even though published life expectancies are often cited as 10 years, 25 years, or longer. However, a variety of factors discussed in the sources cited in FAQ 15, below, may result in a much shorter life span for CDs/DVDs. Life expectancies are statistically based; any specific medium may experience a critical failure before its life expectancy is reached. Additionally, the quality of your storage environment may increase or decrease the life expectancy of the media. We recommend testing your media at least every two years to assure your records are still readable."

I found this info on a couple of websites while others suggested longer. The real issue is if you have data that you do not want to lose, you need to transfer it to a newer dvd at some interval maybe 5 years.

[Dan Hintz]

If it was really that important to me, I would use archival DVDs. Who cares if the technology is around 100 years from now... you won't be, and if it looks like the technology is falling out of favor, just transfer it to a new medium (it's not like you wake up one day and suddenly <poof> all DVD writers are gone).

I would also trust Flash drives for a significant time period.

[Chuck Wintle]

I am in the process of scanning a large number of 35mm slides and photos and am trying to figure out how to long term store them. There are a number of options that I can think of......

1. CD/DVD - The life of a DVD or CD is said to be 2-5 years but I think it is a bit longer than that. For more money, I can burn them to archival grade DVD which has a life supposedly or 100 years. Who knows if there is anything that can read them in even 20 years.

As I scan and sort slides and prints, I am picking a few from every year that are the most important or most representative and will be finding a way to make certain to preserve these. The rest of the pictures that I scan will be saved probably on archival DVD disks.

What are other people doing with all their old pictures and ones taken now on phones or digital cameras. There are so many pictures being taken now, I really wonder what will happen to them. Maybe, the interest is for today or this year and then forget them.

If these archival grade cd's or dvd's are kept away from bright light then, IMO, should last many years but as you suggest will the readers exist that far into the future? Just wondering which brand of archival grade media did you piurchase or are considering to purchase?

My photos are backed up several times to a combination of SSD's and regular hard drives.

[Frederick Skelly]

If it was really that important to me, I would use archival DVDs. Who cares if the technology is around 100 years from now... you won't be, and if it looks like the technology is falling out of favor, just transfer it to a new medium (it's not like you wake up one day and suddenly <poof> all DVD writers are gone).

I would also trust Flash drives for a significant time period.

Well said Dan. +1 on both points.

[Mike Cutler]

Larry

A tiered, or layered approach is what most professionals are using now. The data files, or photos are backed up to multiple external drives, and disc, and storage services. You can back up to "the cloud" also. It's not going away, and will only get bigger as time goes on. This concept is the future. The present form is kind of crude, but as it evolves I can see that computers, as we presently know them, will only become peripheral access point devices for a "cloud" type architecture.
The experiential life expectancy is one aspect, but strict storage for backup is another matter. If you were routinely saving to disc, and then working from those same discs, then that short lifespan would be a factor, but to back up and store, the life expectancy would be longer.

Technology will change, as Dan stated and then it is a matter of transferring the files to the new medium. However, what does change is the software /firmware of the main operating station, and it will obsolete the peripheral and storage devices. I don't see this as a problem for storing photo files though. it is a big problem in industrial applications though.

Bottom line is that if it's important, take a multi layered approach and don't trust any single medium.

[Scott Shepherd]

I agree with Mike, you need at least 3 tiers to your system, if not more. On a hard drive, backed up on archival DVD's, stored off site on a server. It's VERY important that your backup plan includes storage off site, preferably in more than one format off site (backup DVD's AND stored on a offsite server).

Remember, if it's digital, and it's only one copy, once it's gone, it's pretty much gone forever.

[roger wiegand]

I guess I have a four tier approach. Lightroom files and directories live on my local "disk" (not a disk anymore, of course), they are backed up locally to a RAID file server, and both the server and local disk are backed up to Crashplan. In addition I use Smugmug as a web storage and image server choice for selected photos (typically when I get back from a trip with 1200 new photos 400 of them go straight to trash, I keep the rest, but put only the 50-100 that I think I or anyone else will actually want to look at onto Smugmug. This was chosen as a relatively robust paid service that I hope will last longer than prior "free" photo sites did. I currently have probably 30,000 photos locally, but only 500-1000 "published" where others can see them.

This has been an evolving system, moving with the technology from floppies that could hold a couple hundred pictures from my first digital camera, through CDs, DVD's, and now a combination of local and cloud-based online resources. I'm sure I'll have to move them again as the technology evolves. Every once in a while I'll print a book full of pictures I think someone might actually care about in the future. Paper is probably the only medium that will survive without active intervention.

File format is, of course, a bugaboo. Fortunately I think some formats will continue to be used indefinitely because so much material already exists in that form-- thinking jpeg and pdf. I keep jpegs of everything I want to be sure to keep, but most of my files are in the Adobe digital negative format (.dng) I trust there will be a converter available when that changes, there are enough Photoshop users that it probably won't vanish without a trace.

[Larry Frank]

I am using a 3 layer approach now as I scan things using DVD, flash drive and external hard drive. I will put a DVD and flash drive in my safety deposit box.

I will probably use JVC archival disks but have been reading about M-disks and will investigate more.

I am using a Nikon Coolscan 5000 with a slide feeder. The slide feeder works most of the time. I am not certain what I will use for scanning prints. I scanning to jpeg now but setting aside the very best to later scan to RAW format.

Eventually, I will add tags and a rating. I also am putting the slides in archival type boxes.

I am much more careful now to sort and delete bad pictures as I take them digitally.

[Dave Haughs]

Multiple redundancy.

Local Mac has my most recent photos. Backed up to Local server (using Mac Time Machine) and local NAS (RAID) drive. Older photos on NAS drive. NAS drive (all photos here) is backed up nightly to an offsite company that does their own backups (crashplan). Most of my current working photos are also on my laptop.

I put my faith in hard drives because they are cheap and far easier than DVDs/CDs/BluRays that don't hold much. But I ALWAYS have them on at least two. After a shoot I backup all my photos and they stay on a memory card until the next day (at the earliest) when the online backup is complete. This way a lightning strike, tornado or flood that could destroy my local hard drives, I'll still have the memory card. The offsite backup is mainly protection against a lightning strike or fire that could damage my multiple drives at once.

I guess I'm not far of from Roger Wiegand. As he states, as technology evolves so will my storage plan.

Offsite backup can be less than ideal depending on your connection. I moved away from U-verse and back to cable specifically because of this so I could get fast upload speeds. You can seed your backup for a price with a hard drive they send you, BUT look at the file size of a modern digital camera, especially an SLR. Say I go on vacation or I go shoot a wedding or race or some other event. I come home and I have 10 gig of photos to process. I want that 10 gig to upload in a night, not a month.

[Myk Rian]

The life of a CD is 2-5 years???

That's all you can count on.
The only way to make a permanent CD/DVD is with an M-Disc. It's like writing on stone. Permanent.
Good for 1,000 years.

[Mike Ontko]

I use a multi-tiered system as well including:

1. on-camera or card (I don't always move things immediately to long term storage)
2. computer file storage (folders, folders, folders)
3. prints and slides (stored in plastic boxes with dessicant packs)
4. Cloud based (Flickr)
5. CDs/DVDs (not archival quality, but stored in paper sleeves or jewel cases)

I've been into photography as a amateur and hobbyist since I had my first camera at 10--a Kodak Instamatic X-15. Storage isn't so much an issue for me as is having a common scheme for identification/classification, labeling, and organization.