Photo Management and Storage

[AdamS]

There seem to be a number of people here into photography, so I would like to pose a couple of questions about photo storage and organization.

[list type=decimal]
[*]How do you store / backup your photos? Do you keep them on your hard drive and have an external backup? Do you pay for a service?
[*]How do you organize your photos? Do you use Aperture? Picasa? Or just put them in a folder called 'new photos' like my wife?
[/list]

Personally, I currently have no means of backup. Pictures are stored on a hard drive connected to my home server. This scares the daylights out of me. I have about 100gb of home photos and movies and it would suck large to lose them.  I think my best option is an external drive that I backup and store in another physical location (ie someone else's house). I do not have access to high quality internet at home otherwise I would consider using google drive for backup ($2/mnth for 100gb).

With respect to organization, I have tried many programs and really I am not a fan. If I use one program to manage the pictures, it is difficult to use a different program to edit the photos. I have found a good directory structure is about the best, something like: YEAR -> DAY or EVENT -> pictures (and sometimes another sub folder for edits).

So what do you use?

 

[curiousphil]

a good directory structure is about the best, something like: YEAR -> DAY or EVENT -> pictures (and sometimes another sub folder for edits).

This is what I do, going back to approx 2004 , stored on my laptop's hard drive as well as my desktop's (I manually sync them once in a while).  Then I upload photos I like and want to share to either Facebook, Photobucket or Flickr, depending on the audience or my fancy of the day.  On Photobucket and Flickr, I create albums to house like-photos.  I'm mildly interested in trying out Picasa, I have my own webserver where I could easily install it.... just lack the motivation .

 

[Austin]

There seem to be a number of people here into photography, so I would like to pose a couple of questions about photo storage and organization.

[list type=decimal]
[*]How do you store / backup your photos? Do you keep them on your hard drive and have an external backup? Do you pay for a service?
[*]How do you organize your photos? Do you use Aperture? Picasa? Or just put them in a folder called 'new photos' like my wife?
[/list]

Personally, I currently have no means of backup. Pictures are stored on a hard drive connected to my home server. This scares the daylights out of me. I have about 100gb of home photos and movies and it would suck large to lose them.  I think my best option is an external drive that I backup and store in another physical location (ie someone else's house). I do not have access to high quality internet at home otherwise I would consider using google drive for backup ($2/mnth for 100gb).

With respect to organization, I have tried many programs and really I am not a fan. If I use one program to manage the pictures, it is difficult to use a different program to edit the photos. I have found a good directory structure is about the best, something like: YEAR -> DAY or EVENT -> pictures (and sometimes another sub folder for edits).

So what do you use?

I use external drives for photos and use lightroom for all photo naming/directory structure and editing.....there are some great videos on using lightroom that were a huge help.

 

[AdamS]

I have heard a lot about Lightroom, mostly good.

 

[Marz]

I use external drives for photos and use lightroom for all photo naming/directory structure and editing.....there are some great videos on using lightroom that were a huge help.

+1 I have no desire to use cloud storage for my photos. External drives with one as main and 1 as backup. Lightroom is excellent and my preference as well.

 

[AdamS]

With 2 drives do you worry about theft or fire, etc?

 

[Marz]

I have more than 2...5. Believe it nor not, I keep one at my office which I do a backup to when I remember. Then my wife writes them to DVD and they get stored...overkill maybe, but there's a ton of memories.

 

[TORX]

External drives, DVD, Private Facebook Albums, oh, and we do this really cool thing called 'printing them' I think. Wife even makes scrap books lol.

 

[benzzz]

What is this printing you speak of .....  ;D

Funny we had relatives over at christmas  and the wife has a couple photo albums laying around.  My girls sat down with their cousins to look at them and we all noticed the pictures ended about 10 yrs ago...  lol  now we just plug in a usb to the side of the tv and view the newer ones there. I can imagine the technology when they are our age

 

[curiousphil]

I can imagine the technology when they are our age

Lol, I can't!  It's going to be crazy.

 

[AdamS]

I have more than 2...5. Believe it nor not, I keep one at my office which I do a backup to when I remember. Then my wife writes them to DVD and they get stored...overkill maybe, but there's a ton of memories.

That's what I wanted to hear. I have been thinking of setting up crashplan at someone elses house, that way the backup is automatic and at a separate location.... now I just need the internet at home...

What is this printing you speak of .....  ;D

Funny we had relatives over at christmas  and the wife has a couple photo albums laying around.  My girls sat down with their cousins to look at them and we all noticed the pictures ended about 10 yrs ago...  lol  now we just plug in a usb to the side of the tv and view the newer ones there. I can imagine the technology when they are our age

I have read that there is concern that we may be less well documented as individuals in the future because everyone stores there pictures just on hard drives and when those hard drives are lost, so are the pictures.

External drives, DVD, Private Facebook Albums, oh, and we do this really cool thing called 'printing them' I think. Wife even makes scrap books lol.

I tell my wife to do this all the time...pictures are incredibly cheap to print, so just pick the top 50% and print them...alas she does not.

 

[curiousphil]

now I just need the internet at home...

Wait, what?!

 

[Duke]

i run an internal 2TB drive thats loaded with photos and videos and i have it auto sync over the network with an external 1tb drive so i have a redundant backup.. i really do mean to make another physical backup on discs as flash media(USB drives,SSD) isnt reliable enough imo and hard drives can fail, mind u the chance of both drives failing is probably very slim (unless your whole house gets zapped or something) for 50-60$ for a 1TB WD blue drive at canada computers its worth buying one and making a backup and putting it back in the box for safe keeping.

 

[TORX]

Usb and ssd need to be charged,  for lack of better words. They need to be pluggex in often or tge drive will corrupt.  Unlike a typical hdd, there is no way to recover lost data off a corrupt thumb drive.

Sent from my SGH-T989D using Tapatalk

 

[AdamS]

[quote author=AdamS link=topic=8544.msg91909#msg91909 date=1398776372]
now I just need the internet at home...

Wait, what?!
[/quote]

I know, i live just outside of civilization.

i run an internal 2TB drive thats loaded with photos and videos and i have it auto sync over the network with an external 1tb drive so i have a redundant backup.. i really do mean to make another physical backup on discs as flash media(USB drives,SSD) isnt reliable enough imo and hard drives can fail, mind u the chance of both drives failing is probably very slim (unless your whole house gets zapped or something) for 50-60$ for a 1TB WD blue drive at canada computers its worth buying one and making a backup and putting it back in the box for safe keeping.

Careful with discs, many are not rated to last more than a few years.

 

[averhoog]

I use two external hard drives and the one in computer cant ever have enough copys and I keep in different buildings I have lost stuff before and it sucks. never again I always tell people that if you lost something what would you spend to get them back

 

[curiousphil]

[quote author=Duke link=topic=8544.msg91966#msg91966 date=1398792988]
i run an internal 2TB drive thats loaded with photos and videos and i have it auto sync over the network with an external 1tb drive so i have a redundant backup.. i really do mean to make another physical backup on discs as flash media(USB drives,SSD) isnt reliable enough imo and hard drives can fail, mind u the chance of both drives failing is probably very slim (unless your whole house gets zapped or something) for 50-60$ for a 1TB WD blue drive at canada computers its worth buying one and making a backup and putting it back in the box for safe keeping.

Careful with discs, many are not rated to last more than a few years.
[/quote]

This is very true, I have experienced this first hand with a large number of music CDs.  Bought a stack of cheapo discs years ago and most of them have failed on me by the film peeling and flaking off.

 

[AdamS]

...I always tell people that if you lost something what would you spend to get them back

Good point

 

[Bece13]

I just registered and it looks like a nice community. (Thanks Kevin), so this is my first post.
I store the pictures on my NAS (2TB) From time to time I copy the whole HDD to an identical one and store it offsite.
I mainly shoot RAW and use LightRoom for processing and organization. I would highly recommend LightRoom if you are willing to learn how to use it properly.

 

[4Hummer]

Raided drives. Western digital my studio book II 6TB. Stores all my photos and music. Had a drive fail once in it, software notified me at the failure, popped out the defective drive, replaced with new one. Raid rebuilt in a couple hours no data loss,