Backing Up Images to DVD

[richard_clark8]

<p>I was wondering what people do in their workflow to put final images onto DVD for clients. Often I find I can be providing 30+ GB to clients and I need a simple system where I by I can select the files and have them then burned across multiple DVDs. I'm sure I am missing something as I have been doing this manually which is a pain in the rear.<br>

Any ideas ?<br>

I work with Lightroom, CS4 and I have NERO on a Vista 64 System.</p>

<p>PS The only thing I could see with a simple easy to find option was Picasa and that naturally hit an error and spat the DVD out.</p>

[ed_lusthoff]

<p>What type of set up do you have as far as DVD burners?</p>

[Ed_Ingold]

<p>I use Nero BackItUp for backups which span more than a couple of DVDs. If you elect to backup with NO compression, the original directory tree*, files and formats are retained, and can be read with any software. I'm sure there is other software which will do the same. It's important to create discs which don't need proprietary software to decipher.</p>

<p>Another possibility is to deliver the files on BD discs. Burners and discs are coming down in price. The latest quote I received for Verbatim 4x BD discs is $6 in stacks of 50 - half of what they cost 2 months ago. Pioneer 6x burners (arguably the best available) are in the $200 range.</p>

<p>* BackItUp adds a couple of directory layers which are used by that software to verify and restore the files.</p>

[howard_owen]

<p>If you're feeding in your discs one at a time to a single burner, there are some options here for automatically splitting groups of files into 4.7GB chuncks.<br /><a href="http://www.jonnysblog.com/2009/04/12/how-to-split-directories-to-span-dvd%E2%80%99s/">http://www.jonnysblog.com/2009/04/12/how-to-split-directories-to-span-dvd%E2%80%99s/</a></p>

<p>Hard Links works for me.</p>

[mendel_leisk]

<p>You have a single folder with several DVD's worth of files that you would like to burn. You'd like to order them sequentionally, as many as possible on disk one, then on to disk 2, with no overlaps or omissions. You don't wan't fancy back-up protocol, just files at destination same as files at source, ie: a "data" disk.</p>

<p>This has got to be one of the most common chores going, and yet, both Nero and Roxio fall flat on their faces on this. Both are busy cramming more options into their burgeoning suites, and leaving users in the lurch on this (seemingly) simple chore.</p>

<p>Howard's links look promising, but it's too bad you have to resort to third party solutions involving extra folder creation.</p>

[Spearhead]

<blockquote>

<p>both Nero and Roxio fall flat on their faces on this.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I'm on a Mac now, but every recent PC I got had a free version of Roxio that did exactly that. No face falling. The pay version also has it.</p>

[mendel_leisk]

<p>Was that just regular "data" disk creation, that copies file by file, or special back-up function that creates a single back-up entity on the disk, requiring special software to restore. If the former, that would be great, I'd love to be wrong.</p>

[Ed_Ingold]

<p>A multi-disc backup created using Nero BackItUp ($39) WITHOUT COMPRESSION can be restored with any system file utility. Images don't compress well, so there's no disadvantage to backing up in this manner.</p>

<p>You can parse a large file set yourself and create a backup using any burning program, but that's tedious and prone to errors of duplication or omission. All that's required in BackItUp is to number the discs as you burn them (so that when BackItUp asks for a certain disc number, you don't have to guess).</p>

[richard_clark8]

<p>Thanks for the responses. It appears that there is no simple fix. I am actually amazed that from what I have seen of CS4 or Lightroom there is not a feature to do this. You would assume that every single photographer will at some stage need to supply a client with a host of images on disc. With file sizes growing all the time I'm surprised that Bridge, Photoshop, Lightoom etc don't have a simple feature to do this.<br>

I'll have a look into Nero Back it up and search on. Maybe a few letters are in order.</p>