Your photo collection

<p>How big is your digital photo collection? Is it well organized? is it backed up on a separate hdd?</p>

<p>My answers</p>

<p>35,000<br>

Yes, very<br>

Yes</p>

<p> </p>

<p>At least that.<br /><br />Well enough.<br /><br />One separate HDD isn't enough of a backup, where I come from! Three ore more storage devices (each itself an internally redundant array), in physical rotation to other physical locations.<br /><br />Add to your list: how often do you test/refresh your redundant file copies?</p>

<p>Once a month for me. I would hate to loose a months worth of photos but I could live with it. Funny that you said 3, thats what I keep, the original and two rotating backups in two locations, work and home. </p>

<ul>

<li>40,000, but that's only because I should really have deleted 35,000 of them!, but then again, how else could I have stuff to contribute to our No Words forum? :=)</li>

</ul>

<ul>

<li>I just checked (Thank You for this) I just checked and got reminded that 10,000 of them are not categorised in any sort of way?!)</li>

</ul>

<ul>

<li>Yes. I also, (if it is any consolation to safeguard or fool me), have an internal hard drive separated from the operating system with only my images on them.</li>

</ul>

<p>around 70,000. I have them on a external drive and on a off site, on line storage facility.</p>

<p>Hm, I seem to have 328,834 file in my photo directory. But some of these are dups and some are not photos and some are photos that other people have emailed me. At a guess I would say I have around 200 original photos. They are very well organized and they are all backup, those that I really care about are backup very well.</p>

<p>73,000, backed up off site nightly.</p>

<p>~Jack</p>

<p>I back up everything on an external hard drive. I shoot mostly film so I have the negs also. I do not shoot a large volume of photos since film is expensive and I work a lot anyway.</p>

<p>I don't know the number, but two terabytes can hold my digital files, and four double-drawer file cabinets can hold my sleeved film transparencies. They are organized, but it's a system that I keep in my head; I can find a particular photo in a reasonably short time. I keep two RAID systems on-site for both digital and scanned transparencies, and a third RAID system (digital and scanned transparencies) in a safety deposit box that is updated whenever I've done some "significant" digital shooting. Therefore, every digital photo and scanned photo is duplicated on six drives, two of which are stored offsite. I'm comfortable with that. Having copies of all my work stored offsite is especially reassuring.</p>

<p><em> is it backed up on a separate hdd?</em></p>

<p>No, how about 4 or 5 externals? "A" is not enough. Having not read the other answers I hope to dog I am not the 1st to point that out.</p>

<p>65,000+ digital images since 120 mos. ago and I can access any one of those image files in less than 30 secs.</p>

<p>As far as slides, film & print scans, there's another 6,000 easy to find. And multipley backed up.</p>

<p>Also stored offsite too (safe deposit box rotation of external HDDs).</p>

<p>135 digital files on 3 hdd (one off site) and DVDs</p>

<p>12000 slides and negatives, filed on binders</p>

<p>Thumbnail files of most of my slides and negatives</p>

<p>All organized by Year/Month/Day-Subject</p>

<p>I meant 135,000 not 135</p>

<p>I have no idea, but a large percentage of them will never see the light of day.</p>

<p>- Many thousands are personal (family, friends, etc.)<br>

- Many were experimental and didn't turn out well.<br>

- Many were taken with cameras that I now consider to be of substandard quality (D70, D200, and various compacts).<br>

- And many, many more just aren't good enough to display, although they are useful to me as learning tools and as a record of my development over the years.</p>

<p>Wow... surprised at how many have more than one backup and include off-site. Can I ask if those responding as such are pro or does that include amateurs?</p>

<p>For me its one backup HDD, but maybe I need to rethink...</p>

<p>Ive got about 2.4T (~325,000 image files) on hard disks, about 1000 CD/DVDs with older files. In addition to that about 30 years worth of negatives and slides.<br>

I must get a better slide/film scanner, my current on is awful.</p>

<p>From my DSLR's I probably have 10K photos.<br>

all are backed up on 2 external HDD. They are all well organized well at least I know how to find them without any problems.</p>

<p>Yes, yes, and yes x 3...</p>

 

<p>How big ? about a terabyte, mostly on hard drive, plus a couple of dozen DVD.<br>

All backed up, but only essentials are stored off site as well. So far.</p>

<p>How many ? I have no idea.<br>

Then there's the shelf of negatives and transparencies waiting for digital conversion.</p>

<p>Just one box of negatives for me!</p>

<p><em>For me its one backup HDD, but maybe I need to rethink...</em></p>

<p>Yes and pronto -- you're not alone it seems. Hard drive do fail, all of them will fail.<br>

Things happen to your residence too -- fires, floods, earthquakes, lightening, mud slides, ... -- so you never know. Off site storage is a MUST, not a "nice to have".<br>

Pro or amateur -- a disaster doesn't discriminate. What do you value besides your loved ones?</p>

<p>I lost EVERY image I made from around the time the Oly C-4040 (approx. 2001) came out (my first digital) until around Aug 2008, when my mom died (including my last pictures of her on my 5D).</p>

<p>For YEARS I thought, yes I need to back up, but I didn't. LEARN FROM ME lol! I have all my paid jobs/favours for friends on DVD, but all my own personal/art/passionate/love/family etc. work was lost.</p>

<p>Something happened on my computer and neither myself nor anyone else has been able to get back into the harddrives. They just fried one day, concurrently.</p>

<p>I wasn't redundantly backed up. It really put me off photography for a while, but I'm back, and when my iMac arrives, my PC (quadcore/dual proc AMD Supermicro server I built) will function as immediate backup on multiple drives, and will be burning everything to DVD, full shoots at the moment the folder has downloaded to the computer after the shoot...now that I'm back shooting again.</p>

<p>I have probably 50,000 negs from before then, always have meant to buy a good scanner, but I progressed so quickly with digital that I just never seem to put the effort/finances in to scanning. I will some day:)</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Nice to see you back in action with good *DAM process, Shawn. Ouch!</p>

<p>Anything new I INSTANTLY backup before reformating the memory card.</p>

<p>Anyone who is even halfway serious needs at least two backups of your main data--cannot be emphasized enough. The next step is probably a 3rd device to backup to and a rotation system for offsite storage of a device.</p>

<p>* DAM = Digital Assets Mngt (a whole book has been written on it!)</p>

<p>I still have more slides, negatives and prints than digital images (30,000+), but all the digital images are backed up on two hard drives in different locations, and select collections of images are on Taiyo Yuden DVD+Rs. The digital image collection is growing fast, and I am not looking forward to when tiff, jpg and NEF files are replaced with something else. The organization could be better...</p>

Hey Ken. Yep, instant backup is critical. And what's funny is I'm a

media specialist at work, wouldn't dream of saving something to my

local box. I've learned a lot the hard way lol.

 

In fact backup in another region altogether is optimal, another

continent with 24 hour backup. Whatever disaster may hit you won't

hit the other side of the world for a few hours, if you're still alive to

care

<p>Hmm... I'm not sure if I even have a thousand keepers. Organized? Only by year/date/location. Backups? Er.... :P</p>